Only in Kentucky: Nurse Revives Drunk Raccoon With CPR

If you live in Kentucky, this headline may not surprise you. It feels very "on-brand" for news stories in the Bluegrass state these days. Earlier this week, a nurse at the Health Department in Letcher County gave CPR to a patient.

Letcher County Health Department Loves All God's Creatures

Now, that doesn't sound TOO out of the norm until you consider the patient. A passed-out raccoon.  Folks had been complaining about some raccoons running around a parking lot by the Letcher County Health Department.

Rescued Raccoons

Nurse Misty Combs went out to investigate and found two little fellers in the dumpster. One was on top of some bags, and she was able to get him out using a shovel. The other was down in water that had collected at the bottom, where she couldn't reach.

Raccoon CPR is Risky

After asking for help, Nurse Combs found a janitor who was able to pluck the raccoon out and plop him down on the asphalt. Everyone thought he was dead, but Misty thought maybe she could help. “I started doing compression-only CPR, the best thing I could do on it,” she said in an interview with Eyewitness News 3. “I was sort of afraid it might come back to life and bite me because rabies is real with raccoons.”

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As you can see in the video below, this critter just gradually started coming back to life with each set of compressions. Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources came to pick it up, and after a veterinarian's stamp of approval, he was released to his brother and mother again.

The Lexington Herald-Leader shared in that post that the raccoon had become drunk on fermented peaches for moonshine. Also pretty on-brand for Kentucky. If only it had been bourbon! The comments are pretty great, too:

"Just needs some Taco Bell and a few Gatorades"

"Take Otis to Waffle House!"

"It's drunk as a skunk. Err, I mean raccoon."

"Only in Kentucky."