By: Joshua Dong
On Friday, July 21st, a search that included an armada of police armored with riot gear and thermal imaging cameras plus a few tranquilizer guns to find a perceived lioness on the outskirts of Berlin commenced. The following day, Saturday, July 22nd, the movement to find the lioness terminated.
Two men submitted to the police a short and blurry video at midnight on Thursday of what they thought was a lioness chasing a wild boar. The search began and escalated rapidly when, as Catie Edmondson writes in a New York Times article, “…officials sent more than 100 police officers — equipped with riot gear, thermal imaging cameras and at least one armored vehicle — thrashing through a trio of heavily wooded towns.” The police also immediately contacted a local circus to figure out where exactly the reported lioness came from.
While alerts sounded on social media and news coverage for all residents to stay inside and cancel any outdoor activities, police combed through the nearby forests for any indication of a wildcat. A team from a local zoo also drove to a stakeout with high ground and clear visibility with intention of using a tranquilizer gun to take out the lion if spotted. “The atmosphere was quite tense,” Uda Bastians, a resident of Kleinmachnow, said in an interview.
“There weren’t many people in the street, and the people you met, everyone was a bit afraid.”
The next day, on Friday morning, a resident reported sightings of the lion to the police; however, all the police could find by flying a drone through the reported area was a family of wild boars. Michael Grubert, the mayor of Kleinmachnow, reports, “After experts were called in to analyze grainy cellphone footage that prompted a two-day search, they independently came to the same conclusion: ‘We think that this photo probably shows a wild boar.” Their conclusions effectively ended the search. Certain characteristics of the boar mirror those of a wildcat which, when combined with the darkness of the night at the time of the “wildcat” sighting, resulted in a convincing wildcat-esq look. However, the long tail of the animal in question and a young boar running into frame gave the beast’s true identity away.
The police are used to animal related hoaxes, as crocodile sightings in lakes are reported every year and always turn out to be large ducks or geese being viewed under peculiar lighting. However, the police know strange animals are out there, either naturally or because people release their pets across various species, acquired especially when COVID-19 hit and people were forced indoors.
Source:
How the Hunt for a Lioness Near Berlin Turned Into a Wild Boar Chase – The New York Times