Calls about escaped tigers put neighborhood on edge. Blame robocallers, zoo says

Residents and businesses of a Seattle neighborhood recently had a scare after they were peppered with calls about an escaped tiger from the Woodland Park Zoo.

Except the robocaller wasn’t from the zoo. And there were no escaped tigers.

The calls hit phones Sept. 16, Q13 Fox reported on its website.

Meghan Sawyer, the zoo’s public relations coordinator, told McClatchy in a statement that the phone call told people that a tiger had escaped the zoo.

“The prank seemed very real because the caller used the same phone number as the Woodland Park Zoo, officials said,” Q13 reported.

The TV station used the word “prank” multiple times in its story, but the zoo didn’t go that far in its statement.

“Our staff immediately determined that our tigers were secure and the report to be false,” Sawyer told McClatchy.

The zoo has a comprehensive plan for emergencies, Sawyer told McClatchy. It includes a trained response team that’s ready to deploy if there’s an incident.

It doesn’t include robocalling residents, zoo officials told Q13 Fox, who added that they reported the robocall to Seattle police.

Such robocalls are the latest panic-inducing moment for anyone with a cellphone.

Scams in the past have ranged from the run-of-the-mill IRS call to being told local cops are going to bust down your door and arrest you.

It also was the first of two such fake “escaped zoo animal” stories this week.

In Michigan, pranksters used to push out a story on social media about lions escaping the Binder Park Zoo, WNEM 5 reported.

The Emmett Township Department of Public Safety confirmed in a Facebook post that no lions had escaped the zoo.

“This was just a malicious rumor and bogus story,” the department wrote on its Facebook page. There is no cause for alarm.”

The original poster of the fake lion escape story’s response:

This story was originally published September 19, 2018 at 2:28 PM.