Nurse Gives Drunken Raccoon CPR: See Video

A nurse in Kentucky was recently confronted with an unlikely patient: a drunken raccoon. 

Misty Combs of Letcher County was heading into work at her job with the Letcher County Health Department in Whitesburg when she and her co-workers noticed a panicked raccoon in the parking lot, per local news outlet Lex18.

Combs said they then heard a commotion in a nearby dumpster and realized that the raccoon was attempting to rescue two of her pups that had become trapped inside it.

She explained that she believed the pups had consumed fermented peaches that were in the dumpster from a nearby distillery, adding, “I guess the baby raccoons had gotten in the dumpster and they were stuck.”

Combs said that her maternal instincts immediately kicked in.

“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,” she said.

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Combs removed one of the pups with a shovel, and it immediately ran to its mother. However, the second pup had been submerged in a puddle of water at the base of the dumpster and was unresponsive. 

“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,” she told Lex18.

A now-viral video of the incident shared by multiple outlets shows Combs vigorously patting the raccoon on the back. She then turns the raccoon onto its back and begins chest compressions. The animal eventually takes several breaths and slowly regains consciousness. 

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While relieved, Combs admitted that she had some concerns about her personal safety while performing the life-saving measures.

“The entire time, I was afraid it’d come to and eat me up, and raccoons carry rabies, so I was afraid of that,” she told Lex 18.

Combs and her colleagues ultimately called the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, which took the baby raccoon to a local veterinarian. The vet deemed that the pup could be safely released back into the wild the following day, per WSAZ 3. The raccoon was returned to the Health Department’s parking lot, where Combs helped release it.

“I was surprised it lived, and so it was amazing to see something that I helped bring back to life,” she told WSAZ 3.

PEOPLE reached out to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources for comment on Friday, Sept. 5, but did not receive an immediate response.