A wild boar enters a Berlin shopping center and the police respond with a blowgun and riot shields

A wild boar entered a home decoration store in a Berlin shopping center on Friday, prompting a police response that attracted officers and veterinarians equipped with a tranquilizer gun, shields and even a blowgun, but which ended peacefully.

Police said they were alerted to the porcine intruder around 9am when he slipped through the sliding glass doors into the shopping center and began rummaging through the aisles, as staff quickly left the store.

Berlin’s Tierpark zoo told News that it deployed a team to the scene in the southeastern district of Koepenick, but quickly assessed “that it was not possible to sedate the animal due to the layout of the premises.”

Berlin police posted an image on social media showing the wild boar wandering around a store.

Officers used paddles and riot shields to divert the animal outside after cordoning off the shopping center, a police spokesman told the German news agency dpa.

Police said “the wild boar returned to the forest, where we assume it came from.”

It is not the first time that a wild boar wanders through urbanized areas of the German capital, surrounded by forests. In July 2023, a wild boar prowling the streets southwestern Berlin sparked panic after it was briefly mistaken for a lioness.

Germans have been told over the years to be on the lookout for other wild animals.

In May 2023, residents of the central city of Erfurt were surprised to see a kangaroo crossing a busy street after escaping from private property.

In 2019, it took several days to recapture a deadly cobra in the western town of Herne, where residents had been told to keep their windows closed and stay out of tall grass.

In 2016, zookeepers shot a lion to death after it escaped from its enclosure in the eastern city of Leipzig and a tranquilizer failed to stop it.