A railway worker had to intervene to help out a poor raccoon that found himself in a compromising position with his testicles stuck to a frozen railway line. You can see the unfortunate thing’s predicament in the video below.
As you can see, the raccoon looks pretty sheepish about the mess that he found himself in, but – we promise – this story does actually have a happy ending.
That’s because some helpful workers discovered him and set him free before either the cold or a passing train made everything a whole lot worse for the poor little critter.
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It seems as if the raccoon just lingered a little too long on the metal railway line, long enough for the icy temperatures to freeze his little balls straight to it.
It’s just like those cartoons in which someone foolishly licks an icy pole and ends up with their tongue stuck to it, but so much worse.
Anyway, 35-year-old Neil Mullis ended up coming to the rescue and saving the little fella, pouring some warm water across him to unfreeze his knackers and allow him to make a hasty escape, leaving only a bit of hair behind on the railway.
When all was said and done, the raccoon might be a little bit traumatised, but ultimately, he lives to fight another day.
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Neil, from the US state of Georgia, said: "I poured the warm water under his bottom while a co-worker worked the shovel under his butt to try and break him loose.
“After about five minutes of slowly working him loose, he was free.
“He jumped off the rail and ran in the woods, never looking back."
Still, this doesn’t really answer the question of how he managed to get himself stuck like that in the first place, does it?
Neil and his colleagues certainly don’t have any idea how it happened.
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Well, outside of the fact that it was really cold, anyway.
Neil added: "I’m guessing because it was -12 degrees outside somehow, he was crossing over the rail and sat too long and got stuck!"
In the video, as the raccoon became free Neil could be heard saying: “Operation well performed. Little fella is safe now.”
The video was filmed on 19 December 2022, and it’s fair to say that it was very cold around that time.
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In fact, with much of the USA underneath incredibly cold temperatures, this poor raccoon probably wasn’t the only creature out there that was nearly freezing its balls off.
Tom Wood