Police thought a shoe thief was on the loose at a kindergarten in Fukuoka prefecture, until a security camera caught a furry culprit in action.
A weasel with a tiny shoe in its mouth was spotted in the video footage after police installed three cameras in the school.
“It’s great it turned out not to be a human being,” Deputy Police Chief Hiroaki Inada said yesterday.
Teachers and parents had feared it could be a disturbed person with a shoe fetish.
The vanished shoes were all slip-ons the children wore indoors, stored in cubbyholes near the door.The weasel scattered shoes around and took 15 of them before police were called. Six more were taken the following day. The weasel returned on Nov 12 to steal one more shoe. That was when it got caught on camera.
The weasel only took the white indoor shoes made of canvas, likely because they’re light to carry.“We were so relieved,” Gosho Kodomo-en kindergarten director Yoshihide Saito told Japanese broadcaster RKB Mainichi Broadcasting.
The weasel, which is believed to be wild, is still on the loose. — AP
