Crews are still baffled at how a small kitten became stuck inside a vending machine in Tennessee.
Walmart employee Lindsey Russell was on her lunch break on Wednesday in Morristown, a city located about 50 miles northeast of Knoxville, when she says she began to hear quiet meowing coming from inside the store’s vending machines, she told WVLT.
“I tried all through my lunch and my last break to get her,” Ms Russell, who says she’s taken in strays off the street before, told the local news outlet. “I tried recruiting my coworkers to help me get her, and none of us could do it.”
It wasn’t long after that the team decided they needed to get a leg up from some professional assistance, and so a call was placed to the Morristown Fire Department.
“We could hear it meowing as soon as we came up. We knew it was in there and kind of stressed out,” Doug Allison, a firefighter with the city’s Station 1, told WVLT.
A Facebook post shared on the City of Morristown Government page then describes how the firefighters set out to figure out how they’d rescue the small feline from inside a machine which, to this day, they still aren’t sure what her point of entry was.
By unplugging the vending machine, they were able to remove the back panelling and get a better look at what they were dealing with. After doing this, they were able to find another opening where the kitten could wrangle herself out through and were able to lure the frightened creature out to safety.
“If we can help save a life, animal or human, we’ll do what we can do,” Mr Allison told WVLT.
In all, the rescue mission by the Station 1 crew took 10 minutes and as a result, Ms Russell gained a new member of her family who she has aptly named Pepsi.
“This is Pepper, Pepsi, Pep,” she joked to the news outlet after the ordeal, noting that her newly adopted pet has been “wiggly and in good spirits” since finding herself outside the glass wall of the Walmart vending machine.
