A Kentucky nurse came to the rescue of an unlikely patient—a raccoon apparently passed out drunk at the bottom of a dumpster.
On August 14, Misty Combs, a nurse with the Letcher County Health Department, heard reports of a raccoon behaving strangely in a Whitesburg parking lot. When she went to investigate, she found a mother raccoon lingering near a dumpster and discovered two juveniles inside—one alert, the other unresponsive and lying in rainwater.
According to The Mountain Eagle, the unconscious raccoon had likely overindulged on fermented peaches discarded by the nearby Kentucky Mist Moonshine Distillery. The peaches are used in the distillery’s peach-infused moonshine, which means the critter may have had a bit too much to drink.
“I would say that he ate the fermented peaches and fell over drunk into the water,” Combs told the Lexington Herald-Leader.
With help from a colleague, Combs pulled the raccoon out of the dumpster by its tail and immediately began administering compression-only CPR—no mouth-to-mouth, she clarified. Video footage from LEX 18 shows her urging the raccoon to hang on, saying, “Come on, baby, come on!” as she performed chest compressions. Eventually, water began to spurt from its mouth, and the raccoon regained consciousness.
Combs admitted to WYMT that she briefly feared the raccoon might be rabid and could bite her once revived. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife later transported the raccoon to a local veterinarian, where it recovered overnight. The next day, Combs helped release the animal safely back into the wild.
The story has gone viral—and so has the distillery’s unexpected role. Capitalizing on the attention, Kentucky Mist is now selling T-shirts featuring the raccoon—dubbed “Otis Campbell,” after the beloved town drunk from The Andy Griffith Show—sitting in a dumpster, sipping booze, with slogans like “Gettin’ trashed.”