Dallas Zoo Receives Hilarious Advice From Fans After Leopard Escapes Enclosure

Devon Forward
·2 min read
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Luckily, the leopard is back home–without injury–and we now have memes from 'the situation.'

On Friday, the Dallas Zoo announced on Twitter that it was dealing with "a situation."

At first, officials didn't specify what the situation was, only noting that it was "serious."

The zoo then said it had "a Code Blue – that is a non-dangerous animal that is out of its habitat. One of our clouded leopards was not in its habitat when the team arrived this morning and is unaccounted for at this time."

Well, the internet took this news and ran with it, leading to plenty of unhelpful–yet hilarious–advice about how to find the missing leopard.

One social media user suggested the zoo "Jiggle the can opener," using their experience with cats as guidance, while another added, "Always works with my cats. That and running the scratch brush against the chair."

Another suggested the classic, "'Here kitty kitty' should do the trick."

One user referenced another common way to get a cat's attention: "Ok, but why are all of the authorities wandering around the grounds going 'Pspspsps...'?"

A Twitter user joked that she wanted to look for the leopard for a slightly different reason than returning it to the zoo, tweeting, "A clouded leopard is missing from its habitat at the Dallas Zoo and my toxic trait is I wanna go give it a lil snuggle."

The great jokes continued.

"My awesome new pet clouded leopard is totally unrelated to yesterdays Dallas Zoo security camera failure," said another user following the story.

While a type of leopard, the clouded leopard tends to be a lot smaller than the general big cat you might initially imagine. According to Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, male clouded leopards can weigh up to 50 pounds, while females are usually within the 25- to 35-pound range.

Luckily, the Leopard, named Nova, was found close to its enclosure and safely returned.

With the leopard safe and sound, people started to speculate about what the cat had been doing all day.

"She had a quick errand to run," said one person.

Or maybe, as a different user suggested, "she was just going for a lil walk."

The Dallas Zoo updated everyone the next day to say that Nova had a typical day in her enclosure with her sister Luna and seemed totally healthy and normal.