A nurse in Kentucky recently demonstrated remarkable compassion when she intervened to save a raccoon that appeared to be intoxicated. Misty Combs, who works at the Letcher County Health Department in Whitesburg, encountered the distressed animal in the parking lot upon her arrival at work.

Combs and her colleagues heard a commotion coming from a nearby dumpster. They soon realized that the raccoon was trying to rescue two of her young raccoons trapped inside. The health department is located next to a distillery, and Combs suspected that the raccoon pups had consumed fermented peaches from the dumpster.

Feeling a strong urge to help, Combs said, "I was like, ‘We have to get them out!’ It was the motherly instinct in me because I saw that momma, and she was trying so hard to get her babies back, and she didn’t know what to do.”

Using a shovel, Combs managed to free one of the pups, which quickly ran back to its mother. However, the second pup was submerged in water at the bottom of the dumpster and was unresponsive.

"Everybody around was like, ‘It’s dead, it’s not breathing,’" Combs recalled. "It had drowned, and it was full of water. You could feel the water, so immediately, I just started doing CPR on it.”

Video footage shows Combs patting the raccoon's back before turning it over to perform chest compressions. "I started doing compression-only CPR, the best thing I could do on it," she explained. "I was sort of afraid it might come back to life and bite me because rabies is real with raccoons.”

After several tense moments, the raccoon began to breathe again. Combs and her colleagues contacted the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, which took the revived raccoon to a local veterinarian. The vet determined that the pup could be safely returned to the wild the next day.

The raccoon was released back into the Health Department’s parking lot, where Combs helped reunite it with its family. "I was surprised it lived, and so it was amazing to see something that I helped bring back to life," she said.