Mystery of serial shoe robber at school in Japan solved when security camera catches unlikely culprit

Police thought a shoe thief was on the unfastened at a kindergarten in southwestern Japan, till a safety digicam caught the furry perpetrator in motion.

A weasel with a tiny shoe in its mouth was noticed on the video footage after police put in three cameras within the college within the prefecture of Fukuoka.

“It’s nice it turned out to not be a human being,” Deputy Police Chief Hiroaki Inada informed The Related Press Sunday. Lecturers and fogeys had feared it may very well be a disturbed individual with a shoe fetish.

Japanese usually take their footwear off earlier than getting into houses. The vanished footwear had been all slip-ons the kids wore indoors, saved in cubbyholes close to the door.

Weasels are identified to stash objects and individuals who maintain weasels as pets give them toys to allow them to conceal them.

The weasel scattered footwear round and took 15 of them earlier than police had been referred to as. Six extra had been taken the next day. The weasel returned Nov. 11 to steal another shoe. Camera footage revealed that the weasel emerged from behind a wall and approaching cubbyholes full of youngsters’s footwear. The critter then races away with a white shoe in its mouth.

It’s thought the weasel could have been utilizing the footwear to line its nest in preparation for winter hibernation, the BBC reported.

The shoe-loving weasel solely took the white indoor footwear manufactured from canvas, seemingly as a result of they’re mild to hold.

“We had been so relieved,” Gosho Kodomo-en kindergarten director Yoshihide Saito informed Japanese broadcaster RKB Mainichi Broadcasting.

The kids acquired a superb snort once they noticed the weasel within the video.

Though the stolen footwear had been by no means discovered, the remaining footwear at the moment are secure on the kindergarten with nets put in over the cubbyholes.

The weasel, which is believed to be wild, continues to be on the unfastened.

“We’re relieved that the incident was not attributable to a human, however that is the primary case of its variety,” police told the Mainichi.

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