Lapping up in luxury: Florida opossum threw back some cognac after breaking into liquor store

Chris White
Courier Journal
Photo by David Harpe, SPECIAL TO THE COURIER-JOURNAL_Wednesday, January 25, 2006__An opossum that Mary Jo Schneider has nursed back to health.  The opossum was suffering from a leg injury but has now fully recovered.  As soon as the weather is warmer the opossum will be released.


A volunteer helped nurse this opossum back to health.

Just because you eat trash all week doesn't mean you shouldn't drink like a king once in a while.

It turns out the Florida panhandle opossum that became a social media hit after it broke into a liquor store drank a 750ml bottle of Courvoisier cognac, not bourbon as originally reported, employees at Cash's Liquors told Courier Journal on Monday.

The bottle set the store back $30, hardly a steep price for all the publicity it received when the story went viral over the weekend.

The young female opossum became a social media sensation Saturday when the Northwest Florida Daily News published a story detailing the marsupial's late-night escapades in the Fort Walton Beach liquor store and the nearly week-long stint in a wildlife refuge it spent nursing what must have been a wicked hangover. The opossum's plight was picked up by The Associated Press, Fox News and the New York Daily News among countless other outlets.

Follow along:Opossum breaks into liquor store and gets drunk as a skunk ... on bourbon

“She came in from the outside and was up in the rafters, and when she came through she knocked a bottle of liquor off the shelf,” said store owner Cash Moore, who told the Northwest Florida Daily News the opossum had gotten drunk on bourbon. “When she got down on the floor she drank the whole damn bottle.”

A liquor store employee found the opossum in the store on Nov. 24, the day after Thanksgiving, according to the Northwest Florida Daily News. A Fort Walton Beach Police Department officer took the opossum to the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge, where it was given fluids. The refuge released the animal the following Thursday, presumably at the nearest Waffle House.