A Kentucky woman has become a local hero after saving a raccoon found nearly dead in a dumpster of fermented peaches.
Misty Combs and her office colleagues knew something was wrong when they observed a large raccoon pacing in a nearby parking lot one morning, a report from The Washington Post stated. After looking into a dumpster filled with rainwater and fermented peaches from a local distillery, they located two small raccoons.
They successfully used a shovel to lift one raccoon out of the dumpster, and it quickly ran away with the larger one, The Washington Post reported. The second small raccoon, however, was in critical condition: It was soaking wet, smelled of moonshine, and was barely breathing. The colleagues of Combs thought it was deceased.
Video: The heroic CPR efforts on the racoon / Social media
"Not on my watch," Combs, a nurse, recalled herself thinking, according to The Washington Post. "I'm going to try to do whatever I can do to save it." Combs, who is trained in CPR for humans but not animals, bent over the raccoon and started giving it animated stomach compressions while repeatedly yelling, "Come on, baby! Come on."
After one or two minutes, the raccoon began spitting up water, kicking its legs, and sticking its tongue out. Combs continued to pat its back until its breathing appeared normal. Since the Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Kentucky, first reported the story, Combs, 43, has become a local hero.
"I couldn't leave that baby in the dumpster knowing it was drowning, you know?" Combs told The Washington Post. "That's just a part of me: to save lives and to help wherever I can."
Employees at the Letcher County Health Department in Whitesburg sometimes notice an adult raccoon and two smaller raccoons under a nearby bridge. On Aug. 14, however, the adult raccoon was alone and seemed to be in distress near the dumpster.
The employees heard chittering sounds from inside the dumpster and saw the two animals. The neighboring Kentucky Mist Distillery had thrown large bags of fermented peaches inside. The distillery creates an infused peach moonshine that it advertises as "a golden blend of the freshest peaches grown in the southern region of Appalachia."
Combs noted that the first raccoon was on top of the peach bags, so it was easy to scoop out with the shovel. The other raccoon, though, was stuck further down in the rainwater.
Combs pulled the cold, unconscious mammal out by its tail. As a mother to Ford, 22, and Farrah, 19, Combs said her maternal instincts took over. She laid the raccoon on its back in the parking lot and started to compress its stomach with her bare hands.
Combs was careful about getting too close; she worried the raccoon–an animal that frequently carries rabies–might bite her if it awoke. Once it started spitting out water, someone off-camera said, "Oh, it's puking."
Then Combs turned the raccoon onto its right side and patted its back for about five minutes to help clear water from its lungs. Her colleagues wrapped it in a beige towel.
The coworkers of Combs called local animal control, which put the raccoon in a cage. Combs took the caged animal to a mechanical room in the back of her office building, where it remained until the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources arrived.
The colleagues and Combs named the raccoon Otis Campbell, based on the fictional character known as the "town drunk" in the 1960s television show "The Andy Griffith Show."
Colin Fultz, the owner of the Kentucky Mist Distillery, said he had "a scary few hours" after learning about the intoxicated raccoon but was relieved the mammal survived. He mentioned that he requested a lidded dumpster from the city so other animals do not jump in and drink from it.
After a veterinarian aided the raccoon's recovery, a wildlife official returned the animal to the parking lot the next morning. There, Combs took a photograph with the raccoon and opened its cage. "Don't bite me," she said before the raccoon ran by her, into the grass, and toward the base of the bridge.
Combs and her colleagues called out their goodbyes to Otis.
