A DRUNK RACCOON? IT REALLY HAPPENS.

Police in W.Va. city solve animal case

Rabid animals are no laughing matter. The virus can infect the central nervous system, resulting in disease and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But that happens after a host of increasingly scary symptoms: partial paralysis, agitation, hallucinations, hydrophobia.

So it was not surprising that when people in the city of Milton, W.Va., saw raccoons behaving weirdly, they involved the local police.

Officers staked out the area where the suspect animals were hanging out, looking for any signs of the masked perpetrators.

But when they caught two of them, they realized they were dealing with a different kind of issue.

The raccoons weren’t rabid. They were drunk. The raccoons, apparently, had been feasting on crab apples that had fermented on the tree, causing the small animals to walk around “staggering and disoriented,” police said.

The apprehended animals were held in custody and allowed to sober up in what can only be deemed a raccoon drunk tank.

Then they were released into the wild, but not before some enterprising officer took a photo of the animal, showing it to be dazed, woozy, more than a little out of it.

They named one drunk raccoon Dallas and released both near the woods.

And with that, Dallas joined a long line of animals that have made headlines for public intoxication.

In Wayne Township, Ind., in the spring, a frantic woman walked into a fire station and told firefighters that her pet raccoon was “lethargic” and possibly severely stoned after getting into someone else’s pot.

High animals are more common as more jurisdictions legalize marijuana and people plop the drug into tasty edibles that also appeal to their pets, who can’t read warning labels and don’t typically have the impulse control to stop at one, The Washington Post reported.