27 July 2010, 12:00 p.m.

Runaway tiger has South Africa on the edge of their seats.

Despite a highly sensational murder trial of a controversial mining magnate in the one part of the country and a bitter political battle in the other, the imaginations of South Africans were, this morning, captured by a runaway tiger named Panjo.

 

That is tiger in the true Bengal sense of the word, and not in the Paris Hilton twitter sense of the word (she really meant leopard).

 

Panjo escaped from his owner’s bakkie between 9 and 11 pm last night. The tiger normally lives on a game farm, but was taken to his owner’s home to get a shot from the vet.

 

Now he is missing somewhere between Groblersdal and Delmas in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province. The province is renowned for its game farms – but visitors might get a bit more than they bargained for.

 

The Times newspaper reports that authorities have about three days to capture the beast before it is likely to start hunting or die of hunger.

 

Its owner Goosey Fernandes told The Times he is lost without his cat. He was quoted to have said: "Panjo sleeps on my bed and he's like a kitten in the house".

 

"I don't know how the tiger opened the canopy and he jumped out and only when we got to Delmas, we realized that the canopy was opened and there was no sign of the tiger," Fernandes told The Times.

 

Wild Life South Africa spokesperson Johan Van der Walt told The Times that people should not approach the tiger or run away from it. “If you run you are dead,” he reportedly said.

 

According to the Mpumalanga Wildlife Management Unit said it appeared that the tiger was in the province illegally because no permit for such an animal has been issued. 

 

Follow us on Twitter for regular updates on the Hunt for Panjo.