Recently, an employee of a Virginia liquor store arrived to open the business one morning and found bottles of scotch and whiskey smashed on the floor. Puddles of booze were all around, The Associated Press reported.
Police were summoned, and the suspect was eventually apprehended while passed out near a toilet in the store’s restroom.
The culprit?
A very intoxicated raccoon. The epitome of “one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor …”
“The raccoon showed no signs of being hurt, “other than maybe a hangover and poor life choices,” the animal shelter that was called to remove it reported.
Lest we think this is an isolated incident of wildlife shenanigans, it is absolutely not. There have been cases of raccoons breaking into liquor stores before. They appear to be habitual drinkers.
A Tennessee raccoon broke into a store and broke expensive bottles of bourbon while in Brooklyn, one broke into a beer distributor and had its own private party.
Earlier this year, in Springfield Township, Ohio, a pet raccoon was found in a car’s driver’s seat with what looked like a meth pipe in its mouth after the car’s driver was taken into custody.
Bender
No word on what is driving all these raccoons to go on benders. I think we need to make a motion to update our language terms from “drunk as a skunk” to “drunk as a raccoon!” The skunks are apparently teetotalers and clearly not pulling their weight.
I don’t really make resolutions. I don’t want to be tied down to anything I might have said in a fit of unbridled optimism. Rather than proclamations of changed behavior, I like to pick a code phrase. A mantra of sorts, if I may.
In this case I feel somewhat inspired by this plucky little guy (or gal).
2026 may be the year we say that we are going to try really hard — no matter what happens — to enjoy the crazy moments. Even better, if we can, we’ll get a little extra mileage out of it. Making lemonade out of lemons — or whiskey — the local Animal shelter raised more than $156,000 with merchandise that displayed a dazed raccoon passed out beside a spilled bottle of alcohol. If you’re going to deal with a raccoon drinking what he could get his paws on and then passing out in the bathroom during Thanksgiving weekend, you definitely need to capitalize on that. The raccoon has also inspired three cocktails: a Rye Rascal Sour, Midnight Masked Gin Fizz, and Trash Panda Old Fashioned.
If not an entire merchandising line and fundraising then, at the very least, a great story? Looking at it this way, that’s been my resolution for over two decades now! Take life as it happens, enjoy the moments when you can and wring all you can out of them after the fact. It’s a good gig.
In 2026, let’s make our mantra “seize the day!’ At the very least, perhaps we should all grab what we can from our 365 days and live a little more like a raccoon on a rampage in a liquor store.
