by Chris Michael
The Guardian
A liquor store employee in Virginia was startled Nov. 29 to discover smashed whisky bottles on the floor of the shop and, upon entering the bathroom, an apparently drunk, sleeping and spread-eagled raccoon.
“He fell through one of the ceiling tiles and went on a full-blown rampage, drinking everything,” Samantha Martin, a local animal control officer, told the Daily Mail.
“The masked burglar broke into the closed Ashland, Virginia liquor store early on Saturday and hit the bottom shelf, where the scotch and whisky were stored,” The Associated Press wrote. “The bandit was something of a nocturnal menace: bottles were smashed, a ceiling tile collapsed and alcohol pooled on the floor.”
“The suspect acted like an animal because, in fact, he’s a raccoon.”
The Hanover county animal protection and shelter confirmed the raccoon was drunk and said it had since become sober.
“After a few hours of sleep and zero signs of injury (other than maybe a hangover and regret of poor life choices), he was safely released back to the wild, hopefully having learned that breaking and entering is not the answer,” the agency said.
In-store cameras filmed the intruder in action. The raccoon broke or attempted to break more than a dozen bottles, leaving a boozy mess for workers to clean up in the morning.
You could say the raccoon was a boozy mess himself, face down, passed out on the bathroom floor.
Martin said she took the raccoon back to the animal shelter, though she had her fair share of giggles along the way. “I personally like raccoons,” she said. “They are funny little critters.”
“Another day in the life of an animal control officer, I guess,” she said.
Raccoons have adapted to living in urban areas to such an extent that they are now showing physical changes that resemble early signs of domestication, according to a recent study.
Their snouts have become shorter than raccoons living in wild environments – a trait that domesticated animals tend to develop. Other traits are smaller teeth, curlier tails, smaller brains and floppier ears.
Raccoons have proved remarkably successful at living alongside humans, in part because of their adaptability at surviving on human refuse.
“Wherever humans go, there is trash,” Dr Raffaela Lesch, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, recently told the Guardian. “Animals love our trash. It’s an easy source of food. All they have to do is endure our presence, not be aggressive, and then they can feast on anything we throw away.”
In Toronto, Canada, raccoons have become so numerous that a popular T-shirt boasting “Toronto v Everybody” has now been widely supplanted by one that now reads “Raccoons v Toronto.”
Alcohol consumption is abundant in the natural world, according to a recent study. It occurs in nearly every ecosystem, with most animals that eat sugary fruits and nectar likely to be regularly drinking it.
A rampage by a feral pig that stole three six-packs of beer in the DeGrey River rest area in Western Australia prompted warnings for campers to secure their food and alcohol. One camper said the pig drank all 18 beers, then got involved in an altercation with a cow.
These animals don’t drink responsibly.
In Turkey, an obviously intoxicated brown bear cub was rescued from a forest by people after eating “mad honey”, or deli bal in Turkish – a substance produced in small quantities by beekeepers in the Kaçkar mountains above the Black Sea, where rhododendrons produce a potent neurotoxin and the honey that bees produce from it can induce a mildly hallucinogenic or euphoric state.
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