Everybody gets confused sometimes. Just the other day, coming downstairs for breakfast, I nearly blew my stack thinking the cats had suddenly refused to use the litterbox and left me a present in the middle of the hallway.
I will say, that’s better than coffee to get your heart going in the morning, but not what anybody wants to find. So after I turned on the lights, I felt only relief when I discovered it was actually a hair scrunchie on the floor, not a stink nugget.
However, it’s hard to say whether some residents in the Polish city of Krakow feel relief after their confusion was cleared up, or just embarrassment.
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Animal welfare officers in Krakow were recently called out to investigate reports of a mysterious tree beast terrifying some residents.
As The Krakow Animal Welfare Society shared on Facebook , the desperate caller couldn’t quite pinpoint what sort of animal had been threatening the area, but she was certainly in need of some help.
“Come and pick him up! – desperation sounds in the voice of a woman calling,” the post read.
“- But who, ma’am? – I ask”
“- This creature!!! He’s been sitting in a tree across the block for two days! People don’t open windows because they’re afraid it’s going to enter their house!”
Attempts by the officer to guide the woman toward identifying the beast in question were not fruitful, either.
Although it was in a tree, the woman was sure it wasn’t a bird.
“It’s brown, it’s sitting in a tree and this is the… yeah, this.. lagoon! – the lady shouts glad she finally remembered the right word,” the post reads.
“I struggle to maintain seriousness. Lagoon? What could it be…? Maybe a legwan? Taking a look at the calendar but today is not April first.”
Legwan is the word for iguana.
“- Yes, legwanese! He’s been sitting here for two days and everyone is scared of him! So when are you coming for him?”
Iguanas are, of course, unlikely to show up in a climate like Poland’s.
And the animal welfare officer knew that. However, animal welfare officers often have to deal with animal that have been abandoned by their owners, or that escape their homes, and figuring it might be a case like that — and given that this thing had scared the residents for two days — the officer decided to go check it out.
“Maybe someone threw out a legwan, I wonder how this creature feels after two nights at minus temperature?” the post reads. “Maybe he’s sitting in that tree and not moving because he just died?”
Unsurprisingly, the officer and his partner were unable to locate an iguana in any of the trees where the residents had spotted the beast in question.
But they did make a surprising discovery in their search:
“The brown creature is sitting on a lilac branch, without growing about halfway through the length of the block, the creature sits and doesn’t move – exactly as the notifier described us. His brown skin will shine in the sun, although there is some sort of collapse anywhere. We are looking more closely – poor guy has no legs or head.”
And, as the officer shared, it was well beyond any help they could provide. Because it was a croissant.
“Probably flew out of a window (let me guess: for birds, probably thrown, out of the kindness of heart not supported, unfortunately, with any thought) and the poor guy got stuck in the fork of lilac twigs.”
And although the animal welfare officers had been called out over a pastry, they weren’t even mad, and in fact they had a good laugh about it.
“[It’s] always worth reporting if something concerns you,” the post reads. “It’s better to check and be pleasantly disappointed, sometimes (unfortunately very rarely) laugh, than not react, which can sometimes lead to a tragedy.”
h/t: Facebook | KTOZ Krakowskie Towarzystwo Opieki nad Zwierzętami
