Virginia's 'Trashed Panda' Raccoon Has Raised More Than $290,000 for Its Shelter, 14 Times a Normal Year of Donations
In the early hours of November 29, 2025, a raccoon dropped through a ceiling tile into a state-run ABC liquor store in Ashland, Hanover County, Virginia, sampled rum, Scotch, moonshine and eggnog, broke 14 bottles, and passed out beside the employee toilet, where staff found it the next morning. According to The Washington Post, county animal protection officers took it to the shelter to sober up for several hours before releasing it back into the wild; photos of the animal sprawled on the bathroom floor spread around the world and were even turned into a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Hanover County Animal Protection and Shelter turned the episode into a fundraiser, teaming up with apparel company Bonfire on a merchandise line built around an illustration of the passed-out raccoon and its nickname, 'Trashed Panda': T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, mugs and stickers, plus seasonal designs such as 'Hot Trash Summer' and 'Trick or Trashed.' According to The Washington Post, the line has now brought in more than $290,000, against the shelter's usual annual donations of less than $20,000, so one raccoon's night out raised more than fourteen normal years of giving. 'We never thought a raccoon would do this for us,' Jeffrey Parker, the county's chief of animal protection, told the paper.
The money is already at work: body cameras for the department's eight animal protection officers, a purchase county supervisors unanimously approved on October 28, with about $39,000 of the five-year, $65,000 program coming from raccoon merchandise, according to Dexerto; the rest is funding new animal housing, toys, a temperature-controlled food shed and a community pet pantry. Parker said about $140,000 remains, and he hopes to set aside an emergency fund for injured animals. 'I don't know when we've owed a debt of gratitude to any animal as much as we do to that raccoon,' county supervisor Faye Prichard said at the October 28 meeting.
With the first anniversary approaching, the shelter announced its final Trashed Panda collection on Facebook on November 3, writing that one bad night really did lead to a whole lot of good. According to WWBT, Officer Samantha Martin, who responded that night, counted the raccoon as a repeat offender that had previously gotten into a karate studio and a DMV office. Nobody knows where the raccoon is now, and the department has had no further reports of raccoon break-ins. Parker said he hopes it is living a good life, 'a sober one.'
Source: PEOPLE
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 资料图：一只浣熊（加利福尼亚州水资源部摄，公共领域，经Wikimedia Commons），已裁为16:9，非涉事浣熊。/ File photo: a raccoon (photo by the California Department of Water Resources, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons), cropped to 16:9; not the raccoon in this story.
