Police scrambled helicopters and ordered tranquilizers to hunt what they feared was an escaped wild animal in southern England - but found that the tiger was a toy.

Hampshire Police say they responded after several residents called in to say they'd seen a white tiger in a field near a golf course in Hedge End, near the English coastal city of Southampton.

A tongue-in-cheek recorded message posted to the force's media line said that after "a brief stalk through the Hedge End savannah... it became obvious that the tiger was a stuffed, lifesized toy."

A second message posted emphasized police had a duty to take such sightings seriously. As for the renegade tiger, "it's being treated as lost property."

When I ran across this article, it occurred to me that something very similar had just recently happened right here near Knoxville. I believe it was around January this year when police got calls about tigers on a guard rail on I-75.

Motorists were calling 911 thinking maybe the animals had escaped from the zoo or from a circus passing through. When the authorities got there, they found two toy (stuffed) tigers that had been firmly wrapped around the guard rail.

Obviously it was a prank (that worked!), but there is still no word on who would have put the toy animals there in the first place. Now, I'm wondering, how much of a coincidence does that activity have to do with what just happened somewhere in England?

It just seems too much to me like this stunt is a "copy cat" of what had been planted here. Apparently, someone has taken it upon themselves to strategically place these toy animals in places that would cause the startled passersby to call police to respond.

I doubt that pranksters consider that law officers have much better things to do than to waste (their) taxpayer's money on bogus wild animal hunts. So is it a harmless prank? Not in my book.

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