One (1) unopened 750 mL bottle of Riesling (Item ID 2026-EV-0012), seized during a January 4, 2026 domestic-assistance call (no charges, pending owner claim);

Four (4) additional items unrelated to alcohol (chain-of-custody confidential as of this filing).

The motion Officer Vega observed was, per his own account, four to seven small rodents — the count was difficult to confirm due to what he described as "purposeful motion" on the part of the rodents — moving among the alcohol items.

The response

Officer Vega closed the locker door. He secured the door with the locker's secondary mechanical lock. He called Chief Pritchett, who arrived at the headquarters at 6:47 a.m. Chief Pritchett examined the locker through the door's glass observation window. He confirmed the presence of rodents. He counted, per his own memo filed that afternoon, "at least five, possibly seven, field mice (Mus musculus probable)." He also observed that none of the bottles were, at the moment of observation, broken.

He called White County Pest Control at 7:14 a.m.

White County Pest Control Division Director Marcella Ender arrived at 8:05 a.m. She inspected the locker from the observation window. She asked Chief Pritchett whether any of the bottles were, as of Thursday morning, cracked, chipped, or otherwise compromised in a way that would be releasing volatile ethanol into the locker's interior air. Chief Pritchett said he did not know. Ms. Ender asked him to read back the locker's chain-of-custody log for the fourteenth-from-bottom shelf. He read it back. She listened.

She then said: "Chief, I don't want you to move anything. I want you to leave it exactly as it is. I need to think about this."

Ms. Ender declined, on Thursday, to elaborate on her reasoning. She left the premises at 8:40 a.m. She returned, Friday morning, with two colleagues from White County Pest Control and one colleague from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (Northeast Region wildlife specialist Calvin Wyatt, who is, this publication notes, the same Ranger Calvin Pope referenced in our April 16 piece on the Anna Ruby Falls meteorite — Ranger Pope/Wyatt uses both surnames professionally, per the regional office). The four specialists observed the locker, together, for approximately twenty minutes through the glass. They did not enter the locker. They left.

The hypothesis

Ms. Ender returned my Friday-afternoon call at 4:14 p.m. Her working hypothesis, she explained, is that one or more of the spirits bottles had, at some point in the past, sustained a micro-fracture too small to be visually obvious but sufficient to slowly release ethanol vapor into the locker's static air. Over time — possibly weeks, possibly months — the vapor had accumulated. Mice with an existing access pathway into the locker (which Ms. Ender has not yet identified) had, over successive visits, become acclimated to the elevated ethanol atmosphere. By the time Officer Vega opened the locker Thursday morning, the mice "were doing what they do in that environment."

Asked to clarify what, specifically, the mice were doing, Ms. Ender paused for approximately three seconds. She then said: "They were adjusting."

The locker, as of Saturday, remains sealed. The chain-of-custody on the fourteen-from-bottom shelf has not been, per Chief Pritchett, "administratively compromised." Ms. Ender expects to present a recommended intervention plan to Chief Pritchett on Monday.

The department's Thursday-morning inventory-verification rotation has, for the week of January 18-24, been suspended.