{"id":656428,"date":"2026-06-24T22:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T22:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/656428\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T22:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T22:05:09","slug":"mystery-of-gracie-the-giraffe-deepens-as-sheriff-calls-recapture-claims-a-tall-story-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/656428\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery of Gracie the giraffe deepens as sheriff calls recapture claims a tall story | Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

For almost two weeks, residents of a rural Texas<\/a> county have been looking, mostly up, for a missing giraffe called Gracie that wandered off from a private game ranch.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the mystery of the free-roaming mammal\u2019s odyssey deepened further, when a local sheriff disputed an account that it was reportedly found<\/a> safe a \u201clittle farther out than expected\u201d from its hill country home, and said the search was most definitely still on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe giraffe has not been located. It\u2019s still at large,\u201d said Nathan Johnson, sheriff of Real county.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating, and it\u2019s more appalling that there\u2019s people who have no idea what they\u2019re talking about, putting things on the internet as if it was fact,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

During the almost week and half she has been missing, Gracie, a reticulated giraffe native to several eastern African countries, has become something of a celebrity in the region around Cedar Hollow Ranch in Leakey, a town of about 700 residents a two-hour drive west of San Antonio.<\/p>\n

Word spread quickly on the internet, and Johnson\u2019s office appealed in a news release for citizens to keep their eye out for the roving giraffe. It even provided a detail-heavy list of the animal\u2019s distinguishing features in its \u201cbe on the lookout\u201d advisory, presumably to avoid confusion with any wandering long-necked, non-native game animals people might encounter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey gave a description, \u2018Gracie has rounded ears,\u2019\u201d one observer posted on X<\/a>. \u201cSo if you spot a giraffe out and about in the Texas hill country, check its ears first before calling it in. Wouldn\u2019t want to flood the hotline with mistaken identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vick Jones, the ranch\u2019s manager, told the New York Times<\/a> that Gracie was between three and a half and four years old, and had wandered off into hilly grassland when she \u201ccame down on the wrong side of the gate\u201d after reaching up to eat leaves from a tree.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis giraffe, like none of the others ever did, she would walk around,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Jones put up a $5,000 reward, and hired helicopters and drones in the search, according to San Antonio\u2019s CBS News affiliate KENS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Johnson said he chuckled when he received his first missing giraffe report, but had taken the case seriously, and was confident the giraffe would be found.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the adjacent landowners are aware,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a big area, it\u2019s very rural, not very many people living in that area, just ranches.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had wildebeests and monkeys and zebras and other things go missing off game ranches, and eventually they show up at feed or somewhere, or you know for the most part they do. We just never had had a giraffe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopes were raised briefly late on Tuesday when the website<\/a> of San Antonio\u2019s CBS News affiliate News4SA posted happy news that Gracie was found safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe giraffe that disappeared from a ranch in Leakey has been found alive,\u201d the report said, offering no details of the location or circumstances of the animal\u2019s discovery other than it was a \u201clittle farther out than expected\u201d from the ranch.<\/p>\n

It later backed away from the claim, stating that its original report \u201ccouldn\u2019t be confirmed\u201d.<\/p>\n

According to Johnson, the story was a hoax: \u201cThat\u2019s just idiots in their pajamas in their mother\u2019s basement on the internet with nothing else to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For almost two weeks, residents of a rural Texas county have been looking, mostly up, for a missing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-656428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}