Enough shoes went missing from a kindergarten in Japan's Fukuoka prefecture that staff at the school set up a video camera to see who was taking them. The culprit was soon revealed: a weasel.
"It's great it turned out not to be a human being," Deputy Police Chief Hiroaki Inada told the AP, which reports teachers and parents are relieved to find out that it wasn't, quote, "a disturbed person with a shoe fetish."
Japanese customarily take their shoes off before entering homes. The vanished shoes were all slip-ons the children wore indoors, stored in cubbyholes near the door.
Weasels are known to stash items and people who keep weasels as pets give them toys so they can hide them.
Note that the weasel was exclusively interested in white canvas indoor shoes. No other kind would do. The weasel has not been located; the shoes have not been recovered.
Previously:
• Rescue weasel likes to play with human at computer
• The sex weasels of classical portraiture
• Letter to twelve rabid weasels
