第2502期:Mysterious Shoe Thief Identified

Police suspected someone was stealing shoes from a children’s school in southwestern Japan. But a security camera caught the thief in action. It was a weasel! 警方怀疑有人从日本西南部的一所儿童学校偷鞋子。但监控摄像头捕捉到了小偷的行动。那是一只黄鼠狼！ The small animal with a long body and short legs usually hunts for rats and rabbits. But this one was hunting for children’s shoes. 这种身体长、腿短的小动物通常捕食老鼠和兔子。但这是在寻找童鞋。 After the children’s shoes began disappearing, police put in place three security cameras in the school in Fukuoka in southern Japan. Soon after, recorded video showed a weasel with a small shoe in its mouth. 童鞋开始失踪后，警方在日本南部福冈的学校安装了三个安全摄像头。不久之后，录制的视频显示一只黄鼠狼嘴里叼着一只小鞋子。 “It’s great it turned out not to be a human being,” Deputy Police Chief Hiroaki Inada told The Associated Press recently. Teachers and parents had feared the thief could be a person with mental health problems. “很高兴它不是人类，”副警察局长稻田弘明最近告诉美联社。老师和家长担心小偷可能是一个有心理健康问题的人。 Japanese often take their shoes off before entering homes. The shoes that disappeared were all slip-ons the children wore indoors, stored in special spaces near the door. 日本人进屋前经常脱鞋。消失的鞋子都是孩子们在室内穿的懒人鞋，存放在靠近门的特殊空间里。 Weasels are known to hide items. People who keep weasels as pets give them toys so they can hide them. 黄鼠狼以隐藏物品而闻名。饲养黄鼠狼作为宠物的人会给它们玩具，这样它们就可以隐藏它们。 The weasel moved shoes around and took 15 of them before police were called. Six more were taken the following day. The weasel returned to steal one more shoe. The video of that theft was seen the next day. 黄鼠狼四处移动鞋子，并在报警之前拿走了其中的 15 只鞋子。第二天，又有六人被带走。黄鼠狼又回来偷了一只鞋子。第二天就看到了那次盗窃的视频。 The shoe-loving weasel only took the white indoor shoes made of canvas, likely because they are light to carry. 喜欢穿鞋的黄鼠狼只穿了白色的帆布室内鞋，可能是因为它们携带起来很轻。 “We were so relieved,” the school’s kindergarten director Yoshihide Saito told Japanese broadcaster RKB Mainichi Broadcasting. “我们松了一口气，”该校幼儿园园长斋藤义秀 (Yoshihide Saito) 告诉日本广播公司 RKB Mainichi Broadcasting。 The children got a good laugh when they saw the weasel in the video. 当孩子们看到视频中的黄鼠狼时，哈哈大笑。 Although the stolen shoes were never found, the remaining shoes are now safely behind netting that covers the storage spaces. 尽管被盗的鞋子从未被发现，但剩余的鞋子现在安全地位于覆盖存储空间的网后面。 The weasel, which is believed to be wild, is still on the loose. 这只黄鼠狼被认为是野生的，但仍然逍遥法外。