Staff at a Virginia liquor store turned up for work on Saturday to find the aftermath of what looked like a small riot: smashed whisky bottles, liquor pooling across the floor and one very drunk raccoon passed out in the bathroom. The Ashland ABC store had been closed for Thanksgiving when it suffered what staff later dubbed a “Black Friday break-in”. When they opened up the next morning, they followed a trail of broken glass and spilled spirits to the lavatory, where the “masked bandit” was found spread-eagled between the toilet and the bin, having apparently helped itself to the bottom shelf. “He fell through one of the ceiling tiles and went on a full-blown rampage, drinking everything,” Samantha Martin, an animal control officer in Hanover County, told the Daily Mail. BBC News reported that among the wreckage was the animal’s apparent drink of choice: scotch. Only one blurry CCTV still exists of the boozy intruder, so no one knows exactly how much it managed to knock back before losing consciousness. Staff called Hanover County Animal Protection and Shelter, and Martin collected the “suspect” for what the shelter jokingly described as questioning. In a Facebook post about the incident, the shelter wrote: “On Saturday morning, Officer Martin responded to an unusual call at the Ashland ABC Store. Upon arrival, she discovered the ‘suspect’ had broken in, ransacked several shelves, and then… passed out in the bathroom. The suspect? A very intoxicated raccoon.” The shelter confirmed the animal was, indeed, drunk, but otherwise unharmed. “After a few hours of sleep and zero signs of injury (other than maybe a hangover and poor life choices), he was safely released back to the wild, hopefully having learned that breaking and entering is not the answer,” the post added. Martin later deadpanned that it was “just another day in the life of an animal control officer”. The Ashland ABC store thanked Hanover County Animal Protection and Shelter on social media for its professionalism and for giving the visitor “a sober ride home”. The Hanover shelter, which looks after rescued and unwanted animals, says on its website: “The shelter provides veterinarian care for homeless or unwanted animals until they are adopted or placed with an animal rescue organization.” Raccoons are, in many ways, built for this kind of misadventure. They’ve adapted so successfully to human environments that researchers are starting to see physical changes associated with early domestication. “Wherever humans go, there is trash,” Dr Raffaela Lesch, a biologist 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 Ashland, Virginia, one raccoon appears to have taken that principle a step further: skip the bin, go straight for the bar.
