Remember you saw it first here – a photo of the Lion of Ruokolahti (Ruokolahden leijona) published for the very first time.
During summer 1992 Finland was talking about the sighting of a lion at Ruokolahti in Eastern Finland near the Russian border. Naturally there are no lions in Finland so the explanation was that it had escaped from a Russian circus. Except that there were no reports of missing lions. Well, it took a long time for the Soviets to report about Chernobyl and lions are a minor nuisance compared to blown up nuclear reactors.
In July nothing happens in Finland when people are having their vacations but news organizations still have to publish news. And if something even slightly interesting has happened or might have happened, it will get a lot of coverage. The Lion of Ruokolahti has became a term for such news.
Surprisingly the lion was never found. It was also a bit surprising to read now that there are some credible people who think that there actually was a lion. Some of the theories were also pretty wild: the lion returned to Russia where the locals, suffering from the collapse of the Soviet Union, ate it.
I’m surprised to see a lion! I wouldn’t be surprised to see a polar bear – ha !
hahaha, seriously; in 2008 we had a similar story going round in these quiet news months; a cougar would be on the loose in the woods (ha as if we have proper woods) of the middle Netherlands.
i think in the end someone caught a slightly over sized wild cat.