After being missing for nearly two weeks, Gracie the Giraffe has been found. Gracie disappeared from Cedar Hollow Ranch and was last seen on a game camera roaming in an area west of Leakey, a small city about 100 miles northwest of San Antonio, according to the Real County Animal Shelter-Rescue. According to Vick Jones, the giraffe’s owner, Gracie was spotted shortly before 7 a.m. during an aerial search of an area roughly 4 miles from the ranch, near the game camera where she had been seen several days ago. Jones told NBC DFW that Gracie was on private ranch land in an area with plenty of food and water. He said she appeared to be happy and healthy. Jones said finding Gracie was the easy part, and that the real work starts now. Jones told NBC DFW that he will now need to assemble a team to corral Gracie, tranquilize her, and put her on a transport trailer to bring her back to the ranch. Gracie vanished after feeding on a rocky hillside where the ranch’s other giraffes don’t typically frequent, Jones told NBC DFW. She wandered to an unfenced area on the other side of an 8-foot-tall gate and escaped the ranch, Jones said. Shortly after Gracie’s disappearance, Jones said he believed she was roaming in an area made up of private ranches and had helicopters searching an area of about 7,500 acres (3,000 hectares) with no luck. A few days later, there was a report that Gracie was spotted to the south. But by the time they could search the area, Jones said, she was already gone. The ranch offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to Gracie’s capture and safe return. Jones told NBC DFW that Gracie is estimated to be about 3 or 4 years old, 10-11 feet tall, and has been at the property since May. The ranch is home to hundreds of animals, including impalas, Nubian ibexes, and an antelope found in Central Africa. There are only two other giraffes on the property. The Texas Hill Country has one of the largest concentrations of exotic captive animals in the country. Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson said the mild climate and rugged terrain seem to serve as a good stand-in for most of the animals’ native African environments. He rattled off a list of animals that have gone missing over the years, especially after floods, but said this was his first giraffe. “I’ve had wildebeests, I’ve had water buffalo, I’ve had monkeys, I’ve had zebras, all go missing,” Johnson said. “Sometimes we recover them, and sometimes we don’t.” ...read more read less