Hospitalized Costco ‘cake bandit’ opossum steals hearts online
The opossum has been put on a chocolate-free diet while it has been recovering
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Your support makes all the difference.A hungry opossum is going viral this week after eating an entire Costco chocolate cake in Nebraska.
The “cake bandit” was found outside Kim Doggett’s Omaha home earlier this month. It was a cold February day, and she had stored a Costco chocolate mousse cake on her back porch when she ran out of room in her fridge, Nebraska Wildlife Rehab’s Executive Director Laura Stastny said in a statement to The Independent.
But when Kim sent her son outside to place more food near the cake, he found a mostly-eaten cake, chocolate paw prints and an opossum lounging on their back porch.
“I really thought he was messing with me, so I went over and I turned the light on, I opened the door, and I was like, ‘Oh my,’” Kim later told CNN. “And then I was like, ‘Oh, it ate the Costco cake.’ The whole thing almost was sitting on the ground next to the couch.”
She tried to get the opossum to leave, but it wouldn’t budge. That’s when the Doggett family realized chocolate could be harmful to the animal, and they called animal control to retrieve it.
From there, the opossum was admitted to the Nebraska Wildlife Rehab with a note attached: “Opossum was brought in due to having eaten an entire costco chocolate cake. He was panting a lot however mobile and alert.”
The rehabilitation center posted the opossum’s story on Facebook, garnering some 13,000 likes and 14,000 comments.
“With some time in rehab (and a diet reset), this choco-holic should be stabilized enough to return to the wild but until then, she is definitely a little cranky about our strict "zero chocolate" policy,” the rehabilitation center said in a Facebook post. “Same, opossum.... same.”
“I relate to this opossum on a spiritual level,” one user commented.
“STOP SHAMING HER,” antoher joked. “An entire Costco cake in one sitting is totally normal. Nothing to see here.”
Vets at the Nebraska Wildlife Rehab said the animal was suffering from lead toxicity. While they’re not sure if chocolate is toxic to opossums, they administered a common treatment for poison just to be safe.
“We assume that chocolate would be toxic to opossums and other wildlife, but we don’t know of any published studies confirming that,” Stastny said. “For that reason, the opossum was given activated charcoal and fluids on intake, and we did a full work up, including blood pressure, x-rays, and bloodwork.”
But, eating the cake might’ve actually saved the opossum’s life.
“Perhaps she was lucky she stole that cake (I’m sure it was tasty) because she was caught and is now getting the critical treatment she needs for lead,” Stastny said.
Now, the opossum is “doing well” and she’ll likely be healthy enough to be released in roughly six weeks.
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