A possum broke into a liquor store in Fort Walton Beach, Florida and downed an entire bottle of bourbon – drinking herself into a state of complete and utter inebriation. Was she getting into the spirit of Christmas?
Store owner, Cash Moore, told the Panama City News Herald, “She came in from the outside and was up in the rafters, and when she came through she knocked a bottle of liquor off the shelf. When she got down on the floor she drank the whole damn bottle.”
The possum, who was completely wasted, was taken in to the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge by a police officer after a liquor store employee found her next to a broken and empty bourbon bottle.
Refuge staff administered plenty of fluids and cared for her as she sobered up. They report that she didn’t even have a hangover, although on arrival she had not been well at all – appearing disoriented, pale and excessively salivating.
The Refuge shared their unusual tale on their Facebook page, saying, “This sly, and currently slurred, opossum snuck its way into a liquor store and discovered some holiday cheer of its own.”
“He needs a Waffle House breakfast. Trust me on this one,” one Facebook follower quipped.
But while liquor store break-ins by animals out of the ordinary, stories about our furry and feathered friends getting drunk are not.
In Africa, animals get wasted by eating ripe Marula fruit – and the New Zealand kereru, or native wood pigeon, is renowned for getting smashed and falling out of trees in the summer.
NZ Forest & Bird explain that when kereru gorge themselves on summer fruit they sit in the sun for long periods to digest their food. If the fruit is ripe and the weather warm, the fruit can ferment in their crop – an internal pouch that’s part of their digestive system – and turn into alcohol.
The kereru, or New Zealand native wood pigeon, gets smashed on summer fruit.
The pen-tailed tree shrew hits the “bars” of the rainforest every night in their native Malaysia. They stuff their faces on fermented palm nectar, which has an alcohol strength similar to beer.
Bees can get drunk off fermented nectar, causing flying accidents. Monkeys are renowned for stealing tourists’ alcohol – and Siberian reindeer are known to partake in magic mushrooms.
Not as pure and innocent as they seem, are they.
