Police thought a shoe thief was on the loose at a kindergarten in southwestern Japan, until a security camera caught the lovable criminal in action.
A mongoose was seen carrying a small shoe in its mouth in video footage after police installed three cameras at a school in Fukuoka Prefecture.
“It’s great that it turned out not to be a human being,” Deputy Police Chief Hiroki Inada told The Associated Press on Sunday. Teachers and parents feared that it might be someone suffering from shoe addiction.
It is customary to take off your shoes before entering Japanese homes.
missing shoes Were all the slip-ons that children wore indoors kept in the cubbyhole by the door?
Mongoose are known to hide objects and people who keep mongoose as pets give them toys so that they can hide them.
Before the police could be called, the mongoose scattered the shoes around and took away 15 of them.
Six more were taken the next day.
The mongoose returned on 11 November to steal another shoe. Camera footage of that theft was seen the next day.
Nevel, fond of shoes, took only white indoor shoes made of canvas, perhaps because they were lighter to carry.
“We are very relieved,” Yoshihide Saito, director of Gosho Kodomo-en Kindergarten, told Japanese broadcaster RKB Mainichi Broadcasting.
The children laughed a lot after seeing the mongoose in the video.
Although the stolen shoes were never found, the remaining shoes are now protected with nets placed over cubbyholes in the kindergarten.
The mongoose, considered wild, is still on the loose.
