March 6 (UPI) — Residents of a Tennessee neighborhood have been tracking the movements of an unusual visitor — an escaped African antelope.
Lance Carter captured photos of the oryx, an antelope species native to Africa, when it ran into morning traffic earlier this week near Old Marrowbone Road in the Joelton neighborhood of Nashville.
“It was on the right side of the road sticking out of the woods — was the back end of an animal, at the time I thought was a really big goat,” Carter told WSMV-TV. “But I didn’t know what it was. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Joelton resident Gigi de Lugo, who nicknamed the antelope Leonard, said the animal has been spotted all over the neighborhood, turning up in yards, farms and roads.
Leonard’s presence in the area evoked memories of Ed the zebra, who spent eight days on the loose in Rutherford County in 2025.
“It just seems that whenever we have a lot going on in the world, some exotic animal is loose around Nashville, and a great distraction and adorable,” de Lugo told WKRN-TV. “We’re hoping he … can get caught, so that he doesn’t hurt or cause anything as far as a car accident as well.”
Leonard’s origins remain unclear, although some residents speculated he may have escaped from a local exotic animal farm. Tennessee does not have any laws prohibiting oryx ownership.