Thirsty Raccoons Are Breaking Into Homes in Germany, and Specifically Stealing Beer
They really are little bandits.
Raccoons are not native to Germany, but in less than 100 years, the number of the little masked mammals in the country has grown to several hundred thousand. Some Germans refer to them as waschbären — washing bears — because of their habit of dunking their food before they eat it, while other Germans just call them straight-up annoyances. Especially when beer is involved.
According to The Telegraph, vacationers and locals alike are getting home and discovering that raccoons have raided their kitchens, causing thousands of dollars worth of damage in the process, including killing household pets and stealing any beer they can find. On less frustrating occasions, the raccoons have been seen at city parks, knocking over discarded beer bottles so they could drink whatever booze was left inside. “Raccoons are funny and clever … and they like beer,” Berthold Langenhorst of the German Nature Conservation Association (NABU), said.
Although there’s a widely circulated story that raccoons were introduced to Germany by Nazi leader Hermann Göring, there’s no evidence to support it. Derk Ehlert, the chief wildlife officer for the city of Berlin, has said that two pairs of U.S.-born raccoons were released into the wild by a “forestry official” in 1934, in an attempt to increase wildlife diversity. Those raccoons reproduced, but the fledgling population got a big boost in World War II when a bomb hit a fur farm near Berlin, and another 20-plus raccoons escaped. (Ehlert joked to the Los Angeles Times that Germany’s raccoons were “a present [from] the American people.”)
These 2023 beer-swilling raccoons aren’t the first time that the little critters have been spotted having a drink. In 2019, a visibly drunk raccoon was seen stumbling around the Christmas markets in the city of Erfurt. The animal overserved himself by drinking whatever mulled wine that was left in mostly empty cups, briefly entertained himself with a woman’s shoes, and then passed out on a doorstep.
A spokesperson for the Erfurt police department told a German news outlet that the raccoon was “obviously intoxicated” before adding that “a breathalyzer test on the animal was not carried out.” (If you want to stay in a good mood for the rest of the day, skip to the next sentence ... because we hate to report that, although local officials hoped to take the animal to a shelter, he was instead put down by the “city hunter.”)
While the German Hunting Association says it's culled some 200,000 raccoons over the last year, others say there's another way — just learning to live with these tiny little thieves. “In less than a century, this species has made Germany its home,” one newspaper wrote. “That’s a story of both success and suffering.”
Suffering, and of an occasionally stolen beer bottle.
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