PRPG:
Drunk Hedgehog

Europe’s Wildest Party Animals

August 25, 2015

Many animals will happily drink alcohol whenever they can get their furry mitts on some. Unfortunately, these European critters didn’t know when to say when.

Hungover Hedgehog

Drunk HedgehogAdvocaat means “lawyer” in Dutch but it’s also the name of a popular alcoholic beverage in the Netherlands made from eggs, sugar and brandy. In June, a hedgehog in the city of Arnhem found an open bottle of advocaat and proceeded to get very, very drunk. He was unconscious when he was discovered curled up in the middle of a street by someone who rushed him to a nearby animal hospital. According to a vet at the hospital, the liquor caused the hedgehog to snore loudly and made him very “windy.” After sleeping off a presumably nasty hangover, the two-year-old hedgehog made a full recovery.

Blitzed Badger

Last July, a female badger wound up in a Polish animal hospital after downing lots of beer. According to vets, she was found passed out while surrounded by seven empty bottles on a local beach. They nicknamed her “Wandzia” and later theorized that she stole the beer from some human beachgoers and opened each bottle with her teeth. The badger remained unconscious for two days but she seemed to be recovering well when The Guardian investigated her adventure a few days later. This isn’t the first time a European badger has required medical attention due to extreme inebriation. In 2009, one in Germany was discovered “drunk as a skunk” after ingesting tons of fermented cherries. The belligerent badger was spotted blocking traffic on a highway and police eventually had to intervene.

Sloshed Squirrel

Sam Boulter, the secretary of a private club outside the small UK town of Evesham, assumed a vandal was responsible for hundreds of pounds worth of damage to the property. One morning, he found the bar’s floor completely covered in broken glass and beer after someone left a tap on. He encountered the real culprit a short time later when a rodent staggered out from behind a box filled with potato chips. “I’ve never seen a drunk squirrel before,” Boulter later told the BBC. “He was sozzled and looked a bit worse for wear, shall we say.” He eventually captured the critter in a trash can and released it out a window.