Staff at a Virginia liquor store got a shock on Saturday when they came into work to find the store had been broken into by a very intoxicated raccoon.<\/p>\n
The “masked bandit” was found passed out in the bathroom between the toilet and bin having helped itself to some bottom shelf spirits.<\/p>\n
Animal control officer Samantha Martin transported the “suspect” for questioning at Hanover County Animal Protection and Shelter but not before it had a chance to sober up.<\/p>\n
After a few hours of sleep and zero signs of injury (other than maybe a hangover), the animal was safely released back into the wild.<\/p>\n
The Ashland ABC store had been closed for Thanksgiving when it suffered its “Black Friday break-in”.<\/p>\n
When staff arrived on Saturday they found smashed bottles and liquor pooling on the floor, including its apparent tipple of choice, scotch. <\/p>\n
Officer Martin said the animal had fallen through one of the ceiling tiles before going “on a full-blown rampage, drinking everything”. <\/p>\n
Only one blurry CCTV image of the boozy break-in exists, so it’s unknown just how much alcohol the thirsty creature consumed before passing out in the bathroom.<\/p>\n
In a social media post, the store thanked Hanover County Animal Protection and Shelter for its professionalism and providing its visitor with a “sober ride home”.<\/p>\n
Officer Martin said it was “just another day in the life of an animal control officer”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Staff at a Virginia liquor store got a shock on Saturday when they came into work to find…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-325110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}