Stolen shoe mystery solved at Japanese kindergarten when security camera catches weasel in the act

TOKYO (AP) — Police thought a shoe thief was on the loose at a kindergarten in southwestern Japan until a security camera caught the hairy perpetrator in action.

A weasel with a small shoe in its mouth was spotted on video after police installed three cameras at the school in Fukuoka Prefecture.

“It’s great that it turned out not to be human,” Deputy Police Chief Hiroaki Inada told the Associated Press on Sunday. Teachers and parents feared it could be a disturbed person with a shoe fetish.

Japanese people usually take off their shoes before entering houses. The missing shoes were all loafers that the children wore indoors, stored in cubbies near the door.

Weasels are known to stash things, and people who keep weasels as pets give them toys so they can hide them.

The weasel scattered shoes around and took fifteen before the police were called. Six more were taken the next day. The weasel returned on November 12 to steal another shoe. Then it was caught on camera.

The shoe-loving weasel only took the white canvas indoor shoes, probably because they are light to wear.

“We were so relieved,” Gosho Kodomo and kindergarten director Yoshihide Saito told Japanese broadcaster RKB Mainichi Broadcasting.

The children laughed heartily when they saw the weasel in the video.

Although the stolen shoes were never found, the remaining shoes are now safely stored in the kindergarten, with nets over the cubicles.

The weasel, believed to be in the wild, is still around.

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Yuri Kageyama is on Topics: