One winter day when I was 12, our family’s arthritic cat brought three waxwings into our home in rapid succession before being detained in the bathroom. Stepping outside to investigate, my mother and I were stunned to see dozens of inebriated waxwings staggering on the frozen driveway. Several birds leaned forward on outstretched wings before slowly tipping over sideways. One waxwing fell from a clothesline and landed in several feet of snow. Using its wings as oars, the bird rowed to the crest of a snow bank and then body surfed to the driveway.

The colorful fruit-eating birds were drunk from eating fermented honeysuckle berries. Heavy snowstorms that winter had encased berries and apples in ice, making it difficult for birds to eat them. As temperatures rose above freezing, the fermenting sugars in rotting honeysuckle berries produced toxic levels of ethanol. Half of the honeysuckle berries on the ground may have also harbored yeast that would have expedited alcohol production.  My mother’s honeysuckle became known as the drunken bird pub shrub.

My close friends Pat and Greg Drummond recently shared a funny story about a drunken rooster.  The Drummonds donated one of their two roosters to Pat’s aunt Marge whose chicken flock lacked a rooster.  One early spring afternoon Greg stopped at Marge’s farmhouse to say hello and check on the rooster she’d had for two weeks.

According to Greg: “It was about 2 p.m. and as soon as I started walking up the long driveway to Marge’s home I heard the rooster crowing. It was odd because he never called in the afternoon at our place.” 

When Greg knocked on the door, an indignant Aunt Marge greeted him, saying, “That damned rooster of yours is drunk everyday.” 

Marge had lived with an alcoholic husband before her divorce so she had little tolerance of drunks. 

Taken aback, Greg offered to take the rooster off her hands.

“No,” Marge responded, “that rooster is almost finished eating the old Concord grapes on the vine and once they’re gone, maybe he’ll sober up and make something of himself.” 

Greg left Marge’s farmhouse and returned home.  Two weeks later, Greg checked on Marge and the rooster again. Greg found Marge in a much better frame of mind.

“So, how’s that old rooster working out?” Greg reluctantly asked. 

“Oh, him,” Marge replied, as if she’d forgotten the rooster, “he’s in a much better place now.” 

Puzzled by her answer, Greg asked, “What do you mean?” 

Marge explained: “Well, one day last week he was drunk again and staggered off down through the pasture. He was crowing at the top of his lungs when a fox jumped out from behind a bush and killed him. Serves him right for being drunk all the time!”    

Even if alcohol isn't physically harmful to waxwings or a rooster, it does make them vulnerable in other ways. When birds are drunk they lose mobility, making them helpless in the presence of predators like house cats and foxes. And if they can manage to fly while under the influence, their lack of coordination may have devastating consequences, much like those affecting humans who drink and drive.

Humans are not the only animals who like getting drunk or tipsy.

Unlike humans though, birds aren't experienced drinkers nor do they drink to get drunk. However, that may not be true of all animals. Orangutans, apes, and elephants have been known to wander for miles to seek the pleasures of overripe, fermented fruits. They basically like to get drunk too. The saving grace for these mammalian drinkers is that consuming alcohol only comes around at certain times of the year. A wild animal’s opportunity to get rip-roaring drunk is limited by the calendar’s natural fermenting processes. In short, happy hour in the wild is confined to one or two weeks a year.

Bats in Central and South America regularly eat fermenting fruits (with up to 4.5 per cent ethanol) without apparent ill effects. Most animals slur, sway and stagger when drunk, but a 2009 study by Canadian biologists concluded that inebriated Belize bats could fly unimpaired using their built-in sonar. Scientists tested blood-alcohol levels of 106 bats, including a few sober ones.  Their findings were amazing:  blood-alcohol levels that would exceed legal limits for human drivers made little difference in bat aerial performance. 

In 1988, a game warden and I investigated a report of an odd-behaving young moose in an apple orchard in Shirley, 10 miles south of Moosehead Lake. Suspecting that it was suffering from brainworm — a lethal disease that causes animals to stagger and walk in circles — we were prepared to have to dispatch the moose. After observing the animal and concluding that it was not a danger to itself or people, we opted to check on the moose 24 hours later.  The following morning we concluded that the yearling moose had gotten drunk eating fermented apples. The animal was resting at the base of an apple tree in fine health — other than looking as though he were nursing a hangover.

Ron Joseph is a retired Maine wildlife biologist.  He lives in Camden.

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