Police in Yekaterinburg are searching for a runaway crocodile after it was spotted Wednesday near a circus on the bank of the river Iset.
A local resident reported having seen the crocodile and said that it was heading toward the water, the local police department said.
The witness said that there were no people within striking distance of the crocodile at the time.
Traffic police also saw the crocodile while patrolling the area, but were unable to catch the reptile
Police didn't sound overly confident about their prospects of trapping the animal. "It's not our job to catch animals. We have no instructions about what we should do when we find it," a police spokesperson said.
It is still unclear where the crocodile escaped from. At first it was assumed that it came from the circus, but all of the troupe's crocodiles have been accounted for, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported.
The police have not ruled out the possibility that it is owned by a local resident or that it escaped from a pet store.
Police have asked local residents, especially those living in the Leninsky district, to be careful and not try to catch the crocodile by themselves.
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