'Drunk' squirrel caused hundreds of pounds of damage at private members' club

A 'drunk' squirrel flooded a bar at a private members' club with ale and ransacked the room when it held an unofficial lock in which caused over £300 worth of damage. Sam Boulter, branch secretary of Honeybourne Railway Club near Evesham in Worcestershire, thought it had been ransacked by burglars when he opened up on Sunday evening.
Beer was spilled on the floor, money and straws were scattered about and glasses and bottles had been knocked off the shelves of the club. But the real culprit soon made an appearance when the squirrel finally came out of its hiding place, albeit a little more sluggish than expected. Mr Boulter said: "When I opened the door it was absolutely ransacked. At first I thought we'd been burgled but I realized it was all still locked up and that's when we saw the squirrel.
"I'd never seen anything like it before, he had ran around the shelves and across the bar. There were bottles scattered around, money scattered around and he had obviously run across the bar's pumps and managed to turn on the Caffrey's and also managed to ruin some barrels too. He must have flung himself on the handle. I think we lost about £300 worth of stock but it is just one of those once in a lifetime things, I hope!"
It took an hour for Mr Boulter and two customers to capture the rodent who was returned to its more usual environment and a further hour to clean up the mess it had left behind. Mr Boulter added: "I saw a squirrel in the club on Saturday morning and I chased him through the bar, he jumped over the counter and I thought he'd gone through the door but obviously he was still in there. He was a bit slow moving when we found him on Sunday evening so he may have drank a bit of the beer. But he had completely ransacked the place."