Police thought a shoe thief was on the loose at a preschool in southwest Japan, until a security camera caught the furry culprit in action.
A weasel with a small shoe in its mouth was spotted in the video footage after police installed three cameras at the school in Fukuoka Prefecture.
“It’s great that it’s not a human being,” Deputy Police Chief Hiroaki Inada told The Associated Press on Sunday. Teachers and parents feared he was a disturbed person with a shoe fetish.
Kasuya Police via AP
Japanese people generally take off their shoes before entering homes. The missing shoes were all slip-on shoes that the children wore inside, stored in lockers near the door.
Weasels are known to hide objects and people who keep them as pets give them toys so they can hide them.
The weasel scattered shoes and took 15 before police were called. Six more were captured the next day. The weasel returned on November 11 to steal another shoe. Camera footage revealed that the weasel came out from behind a wall and approached the compartments filled with children’s shoes. The creature then runs away with a white shoe in its mouth.
It is believed that the weasel may have been using the shoes to line its nest in preparation for winter hibernation, according to the BBC. reported.
The shoe-loving weasel only took the white canvas indoor shoes, probably because they are light to carry.
“We were so relieved,” Yoshihide Saito, director of Gosho Kodomo-en preschool, told Japanese broadcaster RKB Mainichi Broadcasting.
The children laughed a lot when they saw the weasel in the video.
Although the stolen shoes were never recovered, the remaining shoes are now safe at the kindergarten thanks to nets installed above the compartments.
The weasel, believed to be wild, is still at large.
“We are relieved that the incident was not caused by a human being, but this is the first case of its kind,” police said. said to the Mainichi.