You really can't make this stuff up. Out in the middle of rural Texas, there is a whole-ass giraffe named Gracie just wandering around the hills, and the local sheriff is out here having to shut down internet clout-chasers who are straight-up cap-ing about her being found. For almost two weeks now, the people of Leakey, Texas—a tiny town of only 700 people west of San Antonio—have been looking up at the sky, trying to spot a 12-foot-tall African animal chilling in the brush.

The whole drama started at the Cedar Hollow Ranch when Gracie, a young reticulated giraffe around three or four years old, decided she wanted some fresh leaves. Ranch manager Vick Jones said she reached up to grab a snack from a tree and ended up coming down on the wrong side of the gate. And just like that, Gracie was on the loose. Jones said this particular giraffe always loved to wander, unlike the other ones on the ranch who stayed put. You gotta respect the hustle, though—Gracie saw her chance for freedom and took it.

Now, when a rich ranch owner loses a giraffe, they don't just put up flyers on telephone poles. They went full movie mode. Jones put a $5,000 bounty on Gracie's head and literally hired helicopters and drones to fly over the grasslands trying to spot her. But even with all that money and technology in the air, finding a giraffe in the massive, empty ranch lands of Real County is apparently a lot harder than it looks. It just goes to show that all that bag can't buy you an easy fix when nature decides to do its own thing.

Just when everyone was wondering where the animal was, a local TV station, News4SA, tried to claim they had the scoop. On Tuesday night, they put up a post saying Gracie was found alive and well, just "a little farther out than expected." No receipts, no pictures, nothing. But before the neighborhood could even celebrate, they had to delete the post and backpedal, admitting they couldn't actually confirm if the giraffe was safe. They were just chasing clicks and got caught red-handed.

That’s when Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson decided to keep it 100. He didn't do any of that polite political talk. He flat-out told the public that the giraffe is still missing, and then he went off on the internet trolls. He called the whole "found" story a straight-up hoax, saying, "That’s just idiots in their pajamas in their mother’s basement on the internet with nothing else to do."

You have to respect the sheriff for calling out the fake news. He said it’s "frustrating, and it’s more appalling that there’s people who have no idea what they’re talking about, putting things on the internet as if it was fact." In a world where everybody is chasing clout and views, the sheriff had to step in and set the record straight: Gracie is still out here on her block, doing her own thing, and the media is just talking out the side of their neck.