Wild lynx is caught in a furniture showroom after demolishing the contents of a chicken coup and nearly gets away with it by a whisker.
At first, passers-by in Kelkit, Turkey, thought it must be a cuddly toy until it began to climb all over the furniture.
Earlier, a neighbour had chased off the big cat after finding it had eaten the contents of his hen house.
The Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx) is the largest wild cat found in Turkey and this one had apparently wandered into the centre of town in search of food, where it then discovered the chickens.
Locals were stumped searching for the cat until they found it on the bed in the nearby furniture store.
The alarm was raised by managers who noticed the stuffed toy was not all it seemed.
The animal is usually only seen when captured in special wildlife traps, but on this occasion, it provided an opportunity for people with mobile phones also get a snap.
Local police who turned up together with experts from the Nature Conservation and National Parks (DKMP) then helped capture the feline.
It was then checked by a vet who said that the big cat was starving, and it will therefore be held for a few days and fed to build up its strength before being released back into the wild.
During the summer, it has a reddish-brown coat but in the winter, it changes to silver grey.
Its favourite prey is deer, but it is also an opportunist predator, and therefore when something else presents itself, such as domestic chickens, it will also eat those.
It is relatively widely distributed in the country but nevertheless threatened by habitat loss, fragmentation, poaching and shortage of prey.
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Story By: Michael Leidig, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Central European News
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