Mystery of Gracie the giraffe deepens as sheriff calls recapture claims a tall story | Texas
For almost two weeks, residents of a rural Texas county have been searching for a missing giraffe named Gracie, who disappeared from a private hunting ranch.
On Wednesday, the mystery of the free-roaming mammal’s journey deepened further when a local sheriff disputed an explanation that it was a thing. reportedly found He said it was safe “a little further than expected” from his hilltop home and that the search was certainly continuing.
Nathan Johnson, sheriff of Real County, said, “The giraffe has not been located. It is still wandering around.”
“It’s frustrating and even more appalling when people who have no idea what they’re talking about put things online as if they were real,” he added.
During the nearly week and a half he was missing, Gracie, a reticulated giraffe native to several east African countries, became a celebrity in the area around Cedar Hollow Ranch in Leakey, a town of about 700 people about a two-hour drive west of San Antonio.
The news spread quickly online, and Johnson’s office issued a news release urging citizens to be wary of the wandering giraffe. He even offered a detailed list of the animal’s distinguishing features in his “be careful” advice, presumably to avoid confusion with stray, long-necked, non-native prey animals humans might encounter.
“They made a statement: ‘Gracie’s ears are round,'” one observer said. Published on X. “So if you see a giraffe in the Texas backcountry, check its ears before calling it. I don’t want to flood the hotline with false identification.”
Vick Jones, the farm’s manager, said: New York Times He said Gracie was between three-and-a-half and four years old and was walking towards the mountain pastures when she “landed on the wrong side of the gate” after reaching to eat a leaf from a tree.
“This giraffe was moving around like no other had ever done,” he said.
According to San Antonio’s CBS News affiliate, Jones posted a $5,000 reward and rented helicopters and drones for the search. KENS.
Johnson said he chuckled when he first received the report of a missing giraffe, but he took the incident seriously and was confident the giraffe would be found.
“All the neighboring landowners are aware of this,” he said. “It’s a big area, very rural, not many people live in that area, just farms.
“We’ve had antelopes, monkeys, zebras and other things disappear from game farms and they end up turning up in the feed or somewhere, or you know they often are. We’ve never had giraffes.”
Hopes briefly rose late Tuesday, the Guardian reported: website An official from News4SA, San Antonio’s CBS News affiliate, released happy news that Gracie was safe.
“A giraffe missing from a farm in Leakey has been found alive,” the report said, giving no details about the location or circumstances of the animal’s discovery other than the farm being “slightly further away than expected.”
He later backtracked on the claim, stating that his original report “could not be verified.”
According to Johnson, the story was a hoax: “These are idiots in their mom’s basement surfing the Internet in their pajamas with nothing else to do.”
