A weasel with a tiny shoe in its mouth was spotted on the video footage after police installed three cameras in the school in the prefecture of Fukuoka.

Enough shoes went missing from a kindergarten in Japan's Fukuoka prefecture that staff at the school set up a video camera to see who was taking them. The culprit was soon revealed: a weasel. LIKE BOING BOING BUT NOT THE ADS?

Teachers and parents had feared it could be a disturbed person with a shoe fetish. Japanese customarily take their shoes off before entering homes. The vanished shoes were all slip-ons the children wore indoors, stored in cubbyholes near the door.

Police set up security cameras at a Japanese school after students' shoes started disappearing and the culprit was ultimately identified as a furry footwear fan -- a weasel.

Police in southwestern Japan were initially puzzled after shoes of children started disappearing at a kindergarten in Japan and suspected that a shoe thief was on the loose targeting a kindergarten. However,

In recent weeks, a string of brazen thefts had been occurring at kindergarten in Koga, Japan. The culprit, inexplicably, had been targeting children’s shoes that were left in cubbies at the facility.

Police thought a shoe thief was on the loose at a kindergarten in southwestern Japan, until a security camera caught the furry culprit in action. A weasel with a tiny shoe in its mouth was spotted on the video footage after police installed three cameras in the school in Fukuoka prefecture.

Teachers and parents had feared the thief could be a disturbed person with a shoe fetish. The weasel stole 15 shoes before police were called.