Watch: How police officers aided and abetted a hedgehog found ‘stealing’ cherries

When officers in a police station in China found a hedgehog trying to grab a few cherries on the ground, they decided to pack him a takeaway.

The spiky animal was “stealing” fruit in the courtyard of the station in the city of Xuancheng, when they “caught the suspected thief.” The hedgehog had brazenly ignored the officers’ “warning” to stop eating the cherries off the ground, so they picked more fruit from a tree and gave them to the animal, Daily Mail reported.

According to officer Lin Yang, it was too scared to eat with the officers standing around. They put the cherries on its back so it could leave, but all of them rolled off before the hedgehog could get out of the station.

A video of the animal’s attempts was shared on Chinese social media site Weibo and has gone viral.