A liquor store owner found a very serious problem when opening up their Virginia based store — there was a break-in. And after looking around, cautiously and wincefully, all that the owner could find were broken bottles of alcohol on the floor and a passed-out raccoon on the bathroom floor.
Everything about a raccoon is marginally funny. They have little tiny hands, sometimes stand on their hind legs when rummaging through your trash, and perhaps the funniest of all — the evolutionary poetry of an animal known for stealing stuff from your garage having a natural Zorro mask. Well, it turns out raccoons can actually be more ridiculous than they already are.
Internet stories about animals are often dominated by our very adorable feline friends, who we cannot stop loving even when they almost kill us. But there’s something rather eclectic about a raccoon story — they are sort of an antihero who will try by all means to carry out their own little impossible missions.
According to reports, surveillance cameras revealed that when the raccoon finally broke into the store, it reached for the scotch and whisky bottles on the bottom shelf. When the owner found the raccoon on the floor, the animal was clearly inebriated. The owner went on to involve the authorities and eventually the Hanover County Animal Protection and Shelter took the raccoon into their care.
According to ABC, the shelter informed the public on Facebook, “After a few hours of sleep and zero signs of injury (other than maybe a hangover and poor life choices), he was safely released back to the wild, hopefully having learned that breaking and entering is not the answer.”
As you can imagine, the internet has grown to love this raccoon. X is already calling him Cole, and they have even started an entire channel dedicated to jokes about him. People on the channel are already saying this is going to be the new Moo Deng — a famous grumpy pygmy hippopotamus from Thailand. Some people are already predicting that this will turn into a memecoin in real time. At this point, that is more probable than not. Let’s not forget that a random TikTok video of a lady saying “hawk tuah” went so viral that people decided to spend all their life savings on a memecoin about it. So there’s no reason why people would not do the same for “Cole, the raccoon masked bandit.”
One potential Elon Musk tweet co-signing that memecoin and we’re suddenly going to be right back in the silliest era of the internet since the pandemic. But the lesson remains: never trust a raccoon with an unlatched roof window. Raccoons are probably the only other creatures in the animal kingdom that participate in Black Friday discounts. Only, for Cole — this was a five-finger discount.
But when the memecoin eventually goes live — and it will — just make sure you ask an actual accountant before you place all your life savings on it. Better yet, just ignore the memecoin. As for Cole, he’ll just have to tough out that hangover.
