By David Fischer
Associated Press
June 25, 2026 - 10:22 am
A giraffe named Gracie is missing successful Texas, and the hunt for her has go a gangly order.
Gracie, who is astir 3 years old, has been missing for astir 2 weeks aft escaping her enclosure astatine Cedar Hollow Ranch successful the Texas Hill Country, said Vic Jones, who owns the distant spot astir 100 miles (160 kilometers) westbound of San Antonio. He said Wednesday that Gracie had wandered into a portion of the privately owned sphere that different giraffes antecedently avoided.
Jones said helium has sent up helicopters to look for Gracie, a fewer sightings person trickled in, and a $5,000 reward is connected the table.
But the giraffe, which stands astir the tallness of a tree, hasn’t turned up.
“She coiled up going up and feeding successful an country connected the hillside and the rocky ledges that nary of the different giraffes had ever gone connected before,” Jones said. “And erstwhile she came down disconnected of there, she came down connected the incorrect broadside of the gate.”
The ranch is successful agrarian Real County, wherever its astir 2,700 residents were enactment connected alert to beryllium connected the lookout for a missing giraffe. Jones said the hunt country is highly remote, and the likelihood of Gracie encountering immoderate humans is low.
“People are not successful information of her due to the fact that she’s not astir people,” Jones said. ‘She’s retired successful very, precise rough, heavy wooded lands.”
The Texas Hill Country has 1 of the largest concentrations of exotic captive animals successful the country. Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson said the mild clime and rugged terrain seems to service arsenic a bully stand-in for astir of the animals’ autochthonal African environments.
He rattled disconnected a database of animals that person gone missing implicit the years, particularly aft floods, but said this was his archetypal giraffe.
“I’ve had wildebeests, I’ve had h2o buffalo, I’ve had monkeys, I’ve had zebras, each spell missing,” Johnson said. “Sometimes we retrieve them, and sometimes we don’t.”
While the mediate of Texas is not a giraffe’s autochthonal environment, Jones said Gracie should beryllium capable to find plentifulness of leaves and different vegetation to eat. He said different animals were not apt to fuss her.
Jones said helium initially had helicopters searching an country of astir 7,500 acres (3,000 hectares) with nary luck. A fewer days later, determination was a study that Gracie was spotted to the south.
But by the clip they could hunt the area, Jones said, she was already gone.
“We’re ever 2 3 days precocious for wherever the accusation is coming from, truthful that makes it tough,” Jones said.
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