Rio Mullins, 8, said he was getting ready for school about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at his family's apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side when he noticed a raccoon watching him from just inside his open window.
Mullins' babysitter brought him and his sibling out of the apartment and called police.
The New York Police Department's Emergency Services Department said the raccoon seemed docile and was captured without incident.
"The window was open. We think it came in through the fire escape," the building's doorman told the New York Post.
Police said the burgling trash panda would either be turned over to Animal Care Centers of NYC or released into nearby Riverside Park.