Status: Hoax
Ananova reports that an elephant is on the loose in St. Petersburg:
The animal, which was being transported through Russia by an unnamed Finnish company, escaped from its container by smashing through its walls. There have been a number of sightings around the city but no one has tried to catch the elephant yet.
But it appears that Ananova has done its usual thorough job of fact-checking, because the
Moscow Times reports that the elephant was probably a hoax:
St. Petersburg police were looking for a mystery phone caller on Thursday after spending much of the night looking for an elephant. A man called the emergency services early Thursday on a cell phone and said an elephant he was transporting for a Finn had vanished, RIA-Novosti reported... Police turned up to investigate, but they could find no sign of the man or trailer, let alone the elephant, an animal that can grow up to 4 meters high and weigh up to 10 tons... Interfax reported that the man had called and said he had caught the elephant himself near 16 Ulitsa Obreli, the street in the city named after a famous Russian biologist. One witness was even reported as saying that he had seen an elephant heading down a street with a man running after it. Police eventually came to the conclusion that the call was a hoax.
Reminds me of the
Central Park Zoo Escape of 1874.
Comments
Remember when they were going to be the next hot thing? Didn't they have a "virtual newsreader" thingie that was supposed to be the shiznit?
What does you say?