Every great comeback story needs a rock bottom, and for one Virginia raccoon, rock bottom was the floor of a liquor store bathroom.
VICE covered the original incident last December, when a raccoon crashed through a ceiling tile at an ABC store in Ashland, Virginia, and helped himself to the liquor selection. According to The Washington Post, his evening involved rum, moonshine, scotch, vodka, peanut butter whiskey, and eggnog. He was eventually discovered passed out on the bathroom floor.
Nearly a year later, that spectacularly bad night has raised more than $290,000 for the Hanover County Animal Protection and Shelter.
The Raccoon Who Passed Out in a Liquor Store Bathroom Is Now an Animal Shelter Hero
The department teamed up with an apparel company to sell merchandise featuring the unconscious raccoon and the slogan “Trashed Panda.” What started with shirts, hats, mugs, and stickers eventually expanded into seasonal collections, including “Hot Trash Summer” and “Trick or Trashed.” There’s even an anniversary design that reads “One Bad Night. A Whole Lot of Good.”
And people are buying this stuff. Chief of animal protection Jeffrey Parker told the Post that the shelter normally receives less than $20,000 in annual donations, so having a drunken raccoon bring in nearly 15 times that amount is quite an accomplishment.
The money is already going toward something the department has wanted for years: body cameras for its eight animal protection officers. They’ve been borrowing equipment from the sheriff’s office, but the new cameras will help document animal abuse investigations and provide footage when complaints arise. County supervisors unanimously approved the purchase in late October.
Parker also wants to put the approximate $140,000 remaining toward an emergency fund for injured animals. All thanks to a raccoon with terrible judgment and a taste for the bottom shelf.
Strangely, the animal kingdom has its share of questionable drinking habits. There’s the Swedish moose that got stuck in an apple tree, reportedly after eating fermented fruit, and the monkeys in St. Kitts known for stealing tourists’ cocktails. A 2020 study published in Biology Letters examined an alcohol-processing gene in 85 mammals and found that humans metabolize ethanol roughly 40 times faster than most other primates.
Raccoons weren’t included in the study, so we can only imagine how the little guy felt when he woke up.
After recovering, he was released into the wild about a mile from the liquor store. The shelter hasn’t received another raccoon break-in call since, although Parker still wonders what became of its most successful fundraiser.
“Hopefully he’s living a good life somewhere,” Parker told the Post, “and is being sober.”
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