Gracie the giraffe was located on Friday morning, putting an end to the two-week-long pursuit and a growing barrage of social media posts and memes based on the search.
But questions about exactly what the round-eared giraffe got up to over the last several days, and how she was finally spotted, remain unanswered. Here is what we know so far.
Ranch manager Vick Jones told MySA that Gracie disappeared nearly two weeks ago. Heavy brush, cedar trees and “rough terrain” made early search efforts difficult. After searching for the animal on his own, the Cedar Hollow Ranch official contacted the Real County Sheriff’s Office on Monday, June 22.
The law enforcement agency issued an alert, informing the community that the animal had been seen on game cameras west of Leakey, a rural Hill Country town 90 miles northwest of San Antonio. The Cedar Hollow Ranch is also located in Leakey. She looked healthy, at the time, but there was no word on how she might survive out in the rolling Hill Country on her own.
Jones told the New York Times that Gracie first escaped the private exotic animal ranch, where she arrived only this past May, after extending her body out to reach for some tree leaves in a far corner of the property and “coming down on the other side.”
Gracie’s owners offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to her safe return.
Jones told MySA that he thought the sheriff’s office’s alert of Gracie’s disappearance would only reach his neighbors and fellow ranchers. Then came the memes, muddying the waters of what was true and what wasn’t about the latest search updates.
One particularly realistic-looking, and particularly viral image showed the reticulated giraffe walking across the street in Bandera. Others portray the animal helping out at fire departments, celebrating at World Cup games and even shopping at Buc-ees.
“I told a friend of mine, ‘Now I know what the word ‘viral’ means,'” Jones told MySA earlier this week.
“What gets me is, you know, I just didn’t realize this was gonna happen. That everybody from here to Timbuktu, you know, was gonna have their two minutes in it,” he shared.
On Wednesday, June 24, a British news outlet cited a local reports claiming the missing Texas giraffe had been found. Those reports were debunked, according to Jones, who told MySA the animal still had not been found.
Gracie the giraffe was spotted from a helicopter, on June 26, about four miles south of her home on Cedar Hollow Ranch in Leakey. Jones told MySA he spotted her at around 7:30 a.m., putting to bed rumors that she may have been discovered somewhere outside of Real County.
Real County Sheriff Nathan T. Johnson said in a Facebook post that the ranch official has now contacted the animal’s veterinarian and is putting together a team to safely recover the mammal and bring her home.
The sheriff’s office shared aerial images of Gracie the giraffe.