Boozy Raccoon

A shopkeeper in Krasnodar was bewildered to find a masked bandit in their liquor store hiding in a box of wine. Luckily for the store owner, the criminal in question was not armed with weapons of any sort, but two pairs of claws and a puffy ringed tail; It was a raccoon, and the only product it was interested in stealing was the wafer cookies.  

Like any good citizen of the twenty-first century, the shopkeeper immediately documented the event on his phone and created an adorable video.  Then, he contacted animal authorities and with permission captured the tiny alcoholic in a box and released it in an open field. Of course, for the raccoon, this was a rather unappreciated turn of events (I mean, who doesn't want fine wine from Krasnodar?), but surely it will find more tasty things to eat (and not drink) in other locations. 

For those readers that are following our coverage of raccoon-related events in Russia, you'll know that raccoons themselves are not endemic to Russia. So, why was this raccoon released into the Russian wilderness? The Soviet Union introduced raccoons in an effort to increase the fur trade. So, this was a wild raccoon, not a domesticated pet raccoon as seen in previous (adorable) stories.