John O’Reilly, a forest manager in western Ireland, could hardly believe his eyes when he saw the grainy video on his phone, sent to him by a truck driver. There, slinking through the woodlands of County Clare, was the impossible: a stocky, tan-coloured animal with a shaggy mane and tufted tail, lumbering into the trees and then out of view.
“You’re saying, ‘Christ, that couldn’t be what it looks like?’” O’Reilly recalled.
A photograph released by Ireland’s police force, known as An Garda Síochána, showing Mouse, the dog who was mistaken for a lion.Credit: Garda Síochána
A lion? Here?
The video began spreading on news sites and social media in Ireland, prompting both speculation and scepticism.
After nearly a week, Ireland’s police force, known as An Garda Siochana, solved the confounding case. The creature was no apex predator. It was a shaggy Newfoundland dog. Its name: Mouse.
“Gardai from Killaloe have concluded that the recent video of a ‘lion-like’ animal roaming around the woods in East Clare is in fact the very friendly dog named Mouse,” police said in a post on social platform X, along with photos of a calm, docile dog, whose shaved fur resembled a lion’s mane and tail.
(Despite the proximity to Halloween, it’s still unclear why Mouse had been groomed to look like a lion. Vets do not recommend shaving water dogs like Newfoundlands, whose coats protect them from the elements).
It is the amusing end to a saga that O’Reilly said began weeks ago, when construction crews and workers in the east Clare area noticed a large animal moving among the trees. They assumed it was a deer or a trick of the light, he said.
