UK - 'Escaped white tiger' off M27 turns out to be funfair cuddle toy

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night....
--Wm Blake

White tiger toy scare causes Hampshire police alert

"Typical tiger country has three main features," reads an entry on Tigerpedia.com, online authority on all things tiger-related. "It will always have good cover, it will always be close to water and plenty of prey." So perhaps it should have come as no surprise to Hampshire police when they were alerted to the presence of a white tiger in a field in Hedge End, near Southampton on the south coast.

The force quickly liaised with a local zoo to arrange a tranquilliser dart, before scrambling a helicopter and team of police officers to pursue the beast - only to later discover that the tiger was a life-sized soft toy.
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more at Observer link above

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Trevor Haywood, who was watching his son James play cricket, said: 'A police car screeched up to the ground, and a minute later a woman came running out of the pavilion saying there was a tiger on the loose.

'All the players were rounded up and put in the Pavilion, and we were all told to go back to our cars and stay there with the windows wound up.

'Three other police cars arrived and I saw two officers go off on the back of a golf buggy armed with a rifle.

'It looked like they were going on safari.'

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Acting Chief Inspector Steve Wakeford said: 'We received a call from passers-by who were convinced that there was a real tiger in the field.

'I was on the ground myself and it did look very realistic.
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'Officers in the helicopter told us the tiger appeared to be real - but when they couldn't detect any heat, they moved the helicopter closer to the ground.

'We started to suspect that the tiger might not be real when it didn't run away from the helicopter - and as it got closer to the ground, the wind from the blades actually blew the tiger over onto its back.

'It was at that point we were sure that it wasn't real.'
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more at Sunday Mail link below

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Armed police and helicopter scrambled to hunt for escaped white tiger off M27 ... but find a cuddly toy

Surreal...