Florida opossum threw back some cognac after breaking into liquor store

LOUISVILLE — Just because you eat trash all week doesn't mean you shouldn't drink like a king once in a while.

It turns out the Florida panhandle opossum that became a social media hit after it broke into a liquor store drank a 750ml bottle of Courvoisier cognac, not bourbon as originally reported, employees at Cash's Liquors said Monday.

The bottle set the store back $30, hardly a steep price for all the publicity it received when the story went viral over the weekend.

The young female opossum became a social media hit Saturday when the Northwest Florida Daily News published a story detailing the marsupial's late-night escapades in the Fort Walton Beach, Fla., liquor store and the nearly weeklong stint in a wildlife refuge it spent nursing what must have been a wicked hangover. 

“She came in from the outside and was up in the rafters, and when she came through she knocked a bottle of liquor off the shelf,” said store owner Cash Moore, who told the Northwest Florida Daily News the opossum had gotten drunk on bourbon. “When she got down on the floor she drank the whole damn bottle.”

A liquor store employee found the opossum in the store Nov. 24, the day after Thanksgiving, according to the Northwest Florida Daily News. A Fort Walton Beach Police Department officer took the opossum to the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge, where it was given fluids. The refuge released the animal the following Thursday.

Follow Chris White on Twitter: @chriswhite_lcj