The Peppermint Bandit: How One Raccoon Turned an Ashland Store Into the Year’s Wildest Holiday Heist
It was supposed to be a quiet Friday night at the Ashland ABC store. Shelves were stocked, holiday displays were set, and the soft hum of overhead lights filled the room—until a sudden thud shattered the calm. Employees froze. Another thump followed. Then chaos.
With zero warning, a raccoon burst through the ceiling tiles like a furry missile, raining insulation and drywall dust onto the liquor aisles. For a moment, no one could move. The stunned employees stared at the intruder; the intruder stared back—wide-eyed, whiskers twitching, clearly a creature with a plan.
Within seconds, the raccoon launched himself into a full-blown holiday caper.
He scrambled across shelves, knocking down bottles with reckless enthusiasm. Glass shattered like festive fireworks. A display of holiday spirits tumbled to the floor. And in one particularly bold swipe, he managed to take out the store’s security system entirely, plunging part of the shop into darkness.
By the time employees regrouped and called for help, the bandit had vanished.
A search began—careful, cautious, and with a fair amount of nervous laughter. No one knew if the raccoon was hostile, terrified, or simply on a misguided shopping spree. Minutes passed before someone spotted a trail of peppermint-scented liquid leading toward the back.
And there he was.
In the bathroom, sprawled flat on the floor like a holiday reveler who’d partied too hard, lay the culprit—out cold beside the shattered remains of a peppermint schnapps bottle. Eyes closed. Belly rising and falling in slow, dramatic breaths. A scene so absurd it seemed staged.
Animal Control arrived, shaking their heads in disbelief. After confirming he was just “very relaxed” rather than injured, they scooped up the peppermint-perfumed offender and escorted him back to the woods “sober and in good spirits,” as one officer joked. Employees, meanwhile, began the long task of cleaning up the chaos left in his wake.
But something had changed.
The raccoon—now dubbed The Peppermint Bandit—had become an instant local legend.
By the next morning, residents were already spinning theories. Was he a thrill-seeking daredevil? A misunderstood connoisseur of holiday beverages? Or simply a raccoon with incredibly poor timing and excellent luck?
As the story spread across Hanover County, laughter became the dominant reaction—an unexpected gift during a season often weighed down by stress. People needed something joyful, something silly, something that reminded them of the unpredictability and absurdity of life.
Yet a final question lingers in the air, half-serious and half in jest:
Will this boozy raccoon inspire a wave of critter-led holiday mischief, or is he truly one of a kind?
For now, the shelves are restocked, the ceiling repaired, and the Peppermint Bandit is presumably sleeping off his adventure under a quiet canopy of trees—forever immortalized as the raccoon who partied a little too hard.
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