Kyogle bottle shop worker, Brian Watson-Bell arrived at work to find someone had beaten him there – and left a big mess for him to clean up.
Brian says he figured there had been a four-legged intruder in the Northern NSW store overnight – such was the carnage – but didn’t imagine a rat could have done so much damage.
“I thought there had to be a critter in here somewhere — there was just too much damage for a rat,” Mr Watson-Bell told the ABC.
“But there he was, an echidna, and he wasn’t little.”
Mr Watson-Bell said he was surprised by the sheer amount of damage the prickly character had either broken or consumed.
“He had gone through a couple of bottles of vodka and a bottle of chocolate Baileys, he was sleeping it off for sure,” he said.
“I think if he had gone for a crawl he would have been stumbling a bit, I don’t think he was fit to drive.”
Thankfully, a WIRESÂ volunteer was available to help retrieve the echidna, that was later released into bushland.
