Misbaken Identity: Mysterious Beast Reported in Poland Turns Out to Be a Croissant in a Tree

In mid-April, a rogue pastry terrorized citizens of a neighborhood in Kraków, Poland.

The incident started when a menacing, brown object appeared in a tree near the home of an anonymous citizen. It remained for two days. The concerned woman called the Kraków Animal Welfare Society to report the unidentifiable animal on Tuesday, April 13, saying that residents were afraid to open their windows.

The team on the other end of the call struggled to identify the so-called "tree beast." When they asked if it might have been a sick bird of prey, the woman responded by saying it looked more like an iguana.

This spurred suspicion among the society. A tropical reptile wouldn't survive long in Kraków's chilly spring weather, but they decided to follow up on the call anyway. Domesticated animals sometimes end up on the street after being abandoned by their owners, and the alleged iguana may have been an exotic pet.

When animal welfare officers arrived on the scene, the source of panic became clear. It didn't take long for them to discover that the invader wasn't an iguana—or an animal, for that matter.

Locals had confused a croissant stuck in a tree for a mysterious animal on the loose, the BBC reports.

The croissant had been lodged in the branches of the tree, apparently too high for citizens to recognize what it was. The story of how it got there in the first place remains a mystery. The Kraków Animal Welfare Society's spokesperson on Facebook theorizes it was dropped from a window or tossed by someone trying to feed birds. Though this report turned out to be a false alarm, the organization still encourages people to err on the side of caution when they see something unusual.

[h/t BBC]