For two weeks, Texas was on the hunt for a fugitive. Not an outlaw, a bandito, a bank robber holding a burlap sack with a big dollar sign on it. But it’s definitely not someone who can blend into a crowd. Authorities were looking for Gracie, a 10-foot-tall giraffe that wandered away from Cedar Hollow Ranch in the Texas Hill Country after accidentally slipping through the wrong side of a gate.
As the AP reports, the search is finally over, as Gracie was spotted Friday during a helicopter search only four miles from the ranch, looking, as Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson described it, “fat and happy.”
As for wild animal escapees go, Gracie was on the milder side. She didn’t pose much of a threat to anyone or anything other than some foliage. As long as nobody annoyed her, no one was going to get whacked with a flailing giraffe neck powered by a 1,200-pound frame.
Gracie the Escaped Giraffe Basically Had a 2-Week Vacation
Luckily, Gracie seems to have been spending the past couple of weeks living in relative luxury, having chilled near a pond and creek with plenty of vegetation to snack on. She ate so much that she even packed on a few extra pounds while on the run. Sounds more like a vacation than a jailbreak.
Veterinarians are now preparing to safely sedate her, place a hood over her eyes to keep her calm, and transport her back to the ranch in a specially designed giraffe trailer. The New York Times reports that Ranch manager Vick Jones said he plans to build a fence in the rocky area where Gracie made her escape, so this doesn’t become an annual tradition.
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