OTTAWA, Ontario – Residents in one Canadian community say they’ve noticed the local raccoons staggering drunkenly and passing out on the ground in the middle of the day.
Emily Rodgers told CBC News she called the city after seeing one apparently inebriated raccoon in her backyard.
“He couldn’t really move. He was dragging his legs, he was wobbling, having a hard time standing up,” Rodgers said. “You could tell something was wrong with him for sure.”
An Ottawa naturalist told the station that raccoons are likely consuming more alcohol than they can handle from fruit fermenting on the ground.
Another resident, Julie Fong, said her husband saw another one of the plastered animals: “He said it was sort of stumbling along, just looking completely off as sort of somebody who may have had a few extra libations would be walking along as.”
Fong thinks it was the same animal her husband spotted lying on the round beam of a fence near their house, its paws dangling. She thinks it later stumbled under their porch to sleep off the bender.
Michael Runtz, a biology professor at Carleton University, told CBC News the best thing residents can do is to leave the animals alone. Anyone concerned for the raccoon’s health should call animal control.
