It was obvious Saturday morning that someone or something had gone on a bit of a bender at Ashland ABC, a Virginia liquor store, on Black Friday. What was surprising the lush’s species: raccoon.
The little liquor thief was found passed out near the toilet (a scene that might seem a bit familiar those who celebrated Blackout Wednesday this year ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday), according to a Facebook post from Hanover County Animal Protection. Officer Samantha Martin was called to the scene Saturday morning, and she saw that the raccoon has ransacked several shelves.
She “safely secured our masked bandit and transported him back to the shelter to sober up before questioning,” said the post. After monitoring the raccoon for a few hours, the team determined that it wasn’t injured, apart from its hangover, and it was released back into the wild, “hopefully having learned that breaking and entering is not the answer.”
“I personally like raccoons,” said Martin, according to the Associated Press. “They are funny little critters. He fell through one of the ceiling tiles and went on a full-blown rampage, drinking everything.”
While this raccoon’s wild night at the liquor store was not the typical call for Hanover Animal Control, research published last year in the Cell Press journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution found that alcohol consumption among non-human animals might not be as rare as we previously thought. This research found that “ethanol is naturally present in nearly every ecosystem, it is likely consumed on a regular basis by most fruit- and nectar-eating animals.”
Fleshy fruits are a big part of raccoon diets, according to the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection Bureau of National Resources’ Wildlife Division. Now, whether animals intentionally consume ethanol for ethanol’s sake like humans is a bit unclear, said the University of Exeter of the study.
“Ideas have been put forward that ethanol can trigger the endorphin and dopamine system, which leads to feelings of relaxation that could have benefits in terms of sociality,” explained first author Anna Bowland.
Other research has also indicated that humans aren’t the only beings on the planet regularly hitting the sauce. Here are just a few examples: certain birds have shown signs of ethanol toxicosis after gorging on over-ripe berries, “seven mammalian species in a West Malaysian rainforest consume alcoholic nectar daily from flower buds of the bertam palm,” and some fruit-eating bats might regularly have exposure to ethanol. The Smithsonian also noted accounts of moose intoxication in Sweden, including one unlucky case that resulted in a moose getting stuck in a tree.
Hopefully, no more animals get the bright idea to start breaking into liquor stores.