It is not easy to hide a giraffe. Gracie, who stands 10 feet tall and weighs at least 1,200 pounds, managed it for nearly two weeks in the Texas Hill Country.
According to the Associated Press, the roughly 3-year-old giraffe wandered off Cedar Hollow Ranch near Leakey on June 12 after climbing a rock slab and slipping out on the wrong side of an eight-foot gate. Her owner posted a missing alert on a local lost-and-found app, and within a day, he said, the story was all over the world.
The search leaned on trail cameras and, eventually, a helicopter. The internet, meanwhile, had fun, generating images of Gracie as a pool lifeguard, a firefighter who needs no ladder, and a tuber drifting down a lazy river.
Two weeks in, a pilot spotted her about four miles south of the ranch, near a pond and creek with plenty to eat. Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson pronounced her “fat and happy.” Crews trailered her home, where a taller fence is now going up.
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