Police and staff were initially flummoxed when shoes started disappearing from a kindergarten in south-west Japan, not least because the “thefts” were of single shoes, not pairs.
Unable to get to the bottom of two incidents reported earlier this month, police installed three security cameras in the hope the thief would strike again, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.
Then, when a single shoe went missing from Gosho Kodomo-en kindergarten in Koga, Fukuoka prefecture, on the night of 11 November, investigators sifted through camera footage, believing they had finally caught their footwear-filching suspect in the act.
The culprit, however, turned out to have four legs, a coat of orangey-brown fur and sharp claws.
Camera footage revealed that a weasel had appeared from behind a wall the previous evening before approaching cubbyholes storing children’s indoor shoes and making off with a single white shoe in its mouth – all in the space of about 10 seconds.
The kindergarten’s head had contacted police in early November after 15 shoes belonging to 10 children had vanished. The following day, another three had gone, while other shoes, which the children wear only inside, were found scattered on the floor.
“We were very worried, but we’re relieved now that we know it was an animal,” a member of staff told the Mainichi.
The newspaper quoted a local police officer as saying that, to his knowledge, the mystery of the missing shoes was the first of its kind.
Prof Hiroshi Sasaki at Chikushi Jogakuen University said the shoe-stealing weasel had probably just given birth and, given the animal’s sensitivity to the cold, was using the shoes to line its nest for the winter.
The shoes’ whereabouts remain unknown, however, and the childcare centre is hoping to prevent a repeat of the incidents by covering the cubbyholes with nets at night in what it described as a “crime prevention measure”.
Japanese-language references to the weasel have similarly negative connotations to those found in English. According to the late Japan-based naturalist CW Nicol, the musky scent of the Japanese weasel gave rise to the saying itachi no saigo-pei. That literally translates as “the weasel’s final fart”, but is used to refer to the last word or act of an unpopular or dislikable person.
