A 70-year-old German shoplifter who tried to bite his way out of the clutches of police might have had more success if he had remembered to put his teeth in.

Police went to arrest the man after he failed to pay a fine for shoplifting. But when the squad arrived, he tried to flee through the back door, a police spokesman in the western German town of Braunschweig said Thursday.

“It looks like he forgot to put his teeth in … One of our police officers got bitten several times, but the man didn’t leave anything but a wet patch,” he said.

Or he could have bored them to sleep with stories from the good old days — and then made his escape.