Squirrel gets drunk after eating fermented pears outside Minnesota woman's home

INVER GROVE HEIGHTS, Minn. (FOX 9) - A woman in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota got a video of a squirrel outside her home who accidentally got a little tipsy from eating fermented pears. 

In the video, the squirrel starts to tip over, then balances itself before getting dazed again. 

It happened last Friday. Katy Morlok said feeding the squirrels has become her hobby because it gives her something to watch out the window while she’s working from home, but she didn’t intend to get the squirrel drunk. 

Morlok told FOX 9 she was cleaning out her refrigerator and came across some old pears. She looked up whether they were ok for squirrels to eat and put one outside in the bowl she keeps on her deck for the animals. One of her frequent visitors, a squirrel she calls “Lil Red” grabbed the pear and ran away up the tree. 

About an hour later, the squirrel returned. Morlok said she noticed it was acting funny and tipping back a little bit. 

“And then it kind of dawned on me…oh no, those pears were so old I bet they fermented,” Morlok said. “And then he got drunk and I did not mean to do that so I went out and I grabbed all the pears.” She had put out the rest of the pears after the squirrel took the first one because she thought he liked them. 

Morlok said she was worried about the squirrel all night, but it seemed fine the next day. 

“In the morning, he came back for his little hangover breakfast and he’s been fine ever since,” she said. 

The video of the tipsy squirrel already has more than 5,000 views and caught the attention of the DailyMail. 

This is not the first time a video Morlok has posted has gone viral. She also has a pet pig named Hamlet. A video she took of Hamlet as a piglet trying to go down the stairs went viral about nine years ago.