That was … unexpected.
Earlier this month, a young visitor to the Meadows Family Fun Center in Pennsylvania was browsing the facility’s arcade when something unusual caught her eye.
Stepping up to play on a claw machine game, the girl noticed that among the plush animal figurine prizes within it, there was one unlike all the rest.
This one was moving.
A closer look revealed a live animal inside the machine among all the stuffed ones — a fluffy, young groundhog.
Evidently, he’d wandered into the arcade unnoticed from outside before finding his way to that cozy spot.
Fearing that the groundhog wouldn’t be able to escape the claw machine game on his own, staff at the fun center called the Pennsylvania Game Commission for help.
Soon, Warden Salvadore Zaffuto was on the scene to assist.
“When [Zaffuto] responded and approached the machine, he saw a wave of stuffed animals move as the groundhog scurried around underneath, then it popped its head out to assess the situation,” the game commission wrote.
Fortunately, though Zaffuto appears to have contemplated testing his claw-machine skills to liberate the groundhog as one would a prize, he ultimately used a more surefire approach.
(Winning on the claw machine game can be tricky, after all.)
“The vending machine company was contacted to unlock the machine, allowing Warden Zaffuto to safely capture the groundhog and release it nearby,” the game commission wrote.