I was hoping to have an update on this one before posting the account, this morning, but there doesn’t seem to be any followup in the last 24 hours.

The San Diego Union reported that on Wednesday, September 4th, 2008, Tijuana, Mexico, police are on the alert for an “African lion” sighted in a rural eastern area of the city near La Presa Dam.

The city dispatched its Pegasus helicopter to the area Wednesday after a resident called in a sighting to the police command center, said Ernesto Alvarez, a police spokesman. Police and wildlife inspectors were attempting to track the animal on Thursday, September 5th.

“We’re trying to determine if it’s a lion or if it’s a native species such as a puma or a mountain lion,” said Marco Antonio Campoy, who heads the Baja California natural resources branch of Mexico’s environmental watchdog agency, known as Profepa.

The city zoo in Morelos Park does not have lions.

A lion — the African type — might have come from a clandestine zoo (unspoken but as sometimes kept by drug dealers) in the city. Or perhaps it was from a traveling circus, officials said, bringing up that old chestnut. “We’re not ruling out either possibility,” Campoy told San Diego Union reporter Sandra Dibble on Thursday afternoon.

At least, there was not a circus train wreck mentioned as an explanation.