A Florida opossum has recovered after having one too many sips of bourbon while celebrating Thanksgiving.
Employees at Cash’s Liquor Store in Fort Walton Beach went back to work the day after Thanksgiving and discovered a strange sight: an opossum next to a broken and empty bottle of bourbon.
Owner Cash Moore told Northwest Florida Daily News this was the first time he’s experienced an opossum break-in at his business.
"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," Moore told Northwest Florida Daily. "When she got down on the floor she drank the whole damn bottle.”
Michelle Pettis, a technician at Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge, said the female opossum, who was brought in by a police officer, appeared pale and disoriented and was salivating excessively.
“A worker there found the opossum up on a shelf next to a cracked open bottle of liquor with nothing in it,” Pettis told the newspaper. “Assuming the opossum drank it all, he brought her to us, and we looked over her and she definitely wasn’t fully acting normal.”
The staff pumped the marsupial with fluids to flush out the alcohol in her system. She sobered up in a few days and was released on Thursday unharmed.
The opossum also appeared to have escaped a dreadful hangover, according to Pettis.
It’s still unclear how the animale broke into Cash’s. Pettis described the animal as “fairly large.”
The refuge center posted on its Facebook page Friday a photo of the opossum with the caption: “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a drunk opossum in a box! This sly, and currently slurred, opossum snuck its way into a liquor store and discovered some holiday cheer of its own. A police officer brought the animal to us for medical treatment and is expected to be released soon.”
The post received hundreds of reactions and shares.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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