Washington -
A man-sized rabbit has proved too elusive for Maryland police.
Police in a county outside the nation's capital on Tuesday used social media to seek help from the community in finding a stolen rabbit costume.
“Please keep your eyes peeled for a six-foot grey and white furry bunny with pink ears and a pink nose,” the Prince George's County Police Department wrote on its Facebook page.
Were they joking? The posting - complete with a photo of a bunny matching the description - prompted a question about whether the PGPD pays as much attention to such a seemingly trivial theft as it does to the murders and other serious crimes listed on its Facebook page.
“No crime is too big or too small for us to investigate it,” Corporal Maria McKinney, a police spokeswoman, told reporters on the phone.
She said the Facebook page is meant to solicit tips from the community as well as be both informative and entertaining.
To prove the point, the PGPD Facebook page does a take-off on the popular fable, The Tortoise and the Hare.
The police reminded Facebookers of pictures they had posted the week before of an officer helping a tortoise cross a street.
“Please help us rescue the hare now too,” they said.
On Twitter, they even tweeted twice that there would be a cash reward for help finding the bunny burglar.
The theft took place on June 6, when police were called to the storage site by employees.
Only the rabbit costume was missing. The photo of someone wearing a bunny costume similar to the one stolen, and looking sad, bore the caption: “Unfortunately, we aren't joking.” - Sapa-dpa