When cops are being trained at the academy, it’s generally safe to assume that the instructor never has to warn them about ferrets. But last week police detained both a ferret and a man following a bungled robbery attempt.

Last Wednesday at a hardware store on Aurora, security guards confronted two men they witnessed trying to steal power tool battery packs, which, you know, can be expensive. After they were approached and realized you totally can’t do that, the two men attacked security; one used his elbows, and the other decided it was an opportune time to throw his backpack with a live ferret inside, according to the SPD Blotter.

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Who throws a ferret? This guy did. There’s no word on whether the ferret wound up hitting anyone or how it felt about being abandoned by an owner it thought it was cool with.

In the midst of the fracas, the suspects dropped some of the merchandise and hightailed it out of the store. Officers caught up with one of them, a 29 year-old man who claimed he did not know the ferret-wielding suspect nor his flying ferret. He told police they only met a few hours earlier.

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The police did not interrogate the ferret with any kind of a good cop / bad cop routine in a dark room with a bright light or anything. Instead, they simply turned it over to the Seattle Animal Shelter where it’s being rehabilitated from its brief life of crime as a projectile.