South River High evacuated due to tiger?

EDGEWATER, Md. - Students evacuated South River High School in Edgewater Thursday, and reports soon followed that the reason was due to a tiger loose on school grounds.

The news broke on a Tumblr site and Facebook Page created by students at the school, both titled Anne Arundel News and Alerts. It was later picked up by a popular “Generation-Y” news website, Elite Daily.

According to the fake news article, what was said to be a false fire alarm was actually an evacuation due to a tiger stalking the hallways.

"They were trying to lock it in the science room," said student Alston Stalsberg. "It was all over Twitter and Facebook."

School administrators later discredited the claim, confident it was nothing more than a prank. Students tell ABC2 News the same thing – nothing more than a senior prank.

 “This is the social media age that we live in, and people can and do post all kinds of outlandish things," said Anne Arundel County Public Schools spokesman Bob Mosier. "I would just hope that our record of communication with parents will help them understand that if we actually had a tiger loose in the classroom, we would have actually told them."

Mosier said the prank is one of the wilder stories to come out of the district, but it had no disruptive effect on the school day.