Drunk raccoon passes out in bathroom after ransacking United States liquor store

A Virginia state-run liquor store was ransacked by a masked bandit on Friday evening, authorities said, leaving a trail of broken spirit bottles strewn across the shop floor.

The heist began when the raccoon wiggled in through the ceiling of the Ashland store location of the Virginia ABC chain sometime between when the store closed Friday night and early Saturday morning, said Carol Mawyer, a Virginia ABC spokesperson.

The raccoon triggered a motion sensor. That alerted the security company, which notified the store manager. Since no humans were in the store, the manager left it alone until he came in to open up shop in the morning around 10am, Mawyer said.

The furry burglar smashed 14 bottles of liquor totaling less than $250, Mawyer said. Because the raccoon was in a storage room in the back, it had access to a wide sampling. He rooted through the rum, scotch, moonshine, Canadian whiskey, vodka, peanut butter whiskey and selected a festive eggnog as a nightcap.

Security footage taken around 3.30am. Saturday shows the raccoon running through aisles, across shelves and boxes and generally “having a ball,” Mawyer said.

When the manager came to open the store several hours later, he spotted the aftermath of the raccoon’s bender and the intoxicated creature splayed out beside the toilet in the employee bathroom.

An animal control officer “safely secured our masked bandit and transported him back to the shelter to sober up before questioning,” the Hanover County Animal Protection and Shelter said Tuesday.

“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 agency said in a social media post.

Mawyer said the alcohol store chain appreciated the agency offering the thief “a sober ride home.”

Virginia ABC stores have had run-ins with deer and a close call with a cow, but the raccoon is a first for the chain of about 400 stores, Mawyer said.

Raccoons are commonly found in rural and urban environments across the United States. They’re curious and intelligent, wildlife experts say - which can lead to antisocial behavior as the nocturnal animals increasingly strike out into cities in search of food.

Their nimble fingers and agility at climbing enable them to pry open trash cans and find their way into houses, office buildings and even liquor stores. In this case, the raccoon crashed through a ceiling tile, leaving authorities with few clues as to whether the liquor store was deliberately targeted or if the suspect had stumbled into the store and gulped down the spirits for the first time.

In the wild, raccoons have been known to feast on fermented fruit - causing them to stagger around in an apparently drunken stupor.

In 2016, a raccoon came through the ceiling of a liquor store in Bristol, Tennessee, and began ransacking shelves, sending pricey bottles of bourbon crashing to the floor. On another occasion, an intoxicated raccoon was filmed at a beer distribution warehouse in Brooklyn.

In May, police in Springfield Township, Ohio, were carrying out a traffic stop when things took an unusual turn. After the driver was detained, an officer returned to the car and found a pet raccoon named “Chewy” sitting in the driver’s seat with a meth pipe in its mouth. The raccoon was unharmed in the incident, the police department said.