LETCHER COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — When fermented peaches turned a dumpster into danger, longtime Letcher County nurse Misty Combs stepped in to save the day.
“I've had some pretty crazy days on the job, but nothing like this,” Combs told LEX 18.
In her 21 years of nursing, Combs thought she’d seen it all. The RN works at the Letcher County Health Department in Whitesburg.
One day last week, she and her coworkers noticed a panicked raccoon darting through the parking lot. Then, they heard a commotion from a nearby dumpster.
“Our health department is right beside Kentucky Mist Moonshine, a distillery, and they had put some fermented peaches in their dumpster, and I guess the baby raccoons had gotten in the dumpster and they were stuck,” Combs explained.
Drunk as a skunk? Try tipsy as a trash panda.
Combs realized the mother raccoon was frantic to find her babies and get them to safety.
“I was like, 'We have to get them out!' It was the motherly instinct in me because I saw that momma and she was trying so hard to get her babies back and she didn't know what to do.”
Combs grabbed a shovel and scooped out the first raccoon, who ran to be with its mom. The second raccoon, however, was face down in the bottom of the dumpster, which was filled with water and peaches soaked in moonshine.
Without hesitation, she grabbed the raccoon by the tail and pulled him to safety, but quickly realized that he had passed out.
“Everybody around was like ‘It's dead, it's not breathing.’ It had drowned and it was full of water, you could feel the water, so immediately, I just started doing CPR on it.”
Video taken by her coworker shows Combs doing compressions on the animal's chest, and flipping it on its side to slap its back. While she had never performed CPR on an animal, she told LEX 18 that she did what she could in the moment to provide life-saving measures.
Suddenly, the raccoon began breathing, although Combs admits she had some hesitation.
“The entire time, I was afraid it'd come-to and eat me up, and raccoons carry rabies so I was afraid of that.”
Fish and Wildlife responded before the town drunk turned into a mean drunk. They transported the animal to the local veterinarian who administered fluids and got the raccoon sobered up.
Combs and her colleagues named the critter Otis Campbell, named for the infamous Andy Griffith Show character. Eventually, Otis was returned to the Health Department’s parking lot where Combs had the honor of releasing him back into the wild.
