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Long Island residents surprised to see albino raccoon in neighborhood

EAST NORTHPORT, N.Y. — Raccoons are not unusual in New York, but residents of a Long Island neighborhood were surprised to see a bright white, fluffy one.

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Dan Down, of Eastport, said the furry animals dig in his vegetable garden for worms, but when one of his regular had babies, he noticed one of them was an albino, WCBS reported.

“There were three raccoons, you could tell were raccoons, and one white fluff," Down told the television station. "(At) first we thought it was a possum and got the camera out, zoomed in and it was a raccoon.

“I call her Blanca.”

A wildlife expert told WCBS the odds of seeing an albino raccoon are about 1 in 750,000,

“This was really cool,” Janine Bendicksen, director of Wildlife Rehabilitation at the Sweet Briar Nature Center in Smithtown, told the television station. “I would love to see it in person.”

The young raccoon is now a regular in Down's neighborhood.

"It's neat," Down told WCBS. "It's a little special part of nature that likes to hang around, so I'm gonna help it out."