A beloved pet lion was reunited with its owner within hours of being lost thanks to the power of social media.
Kirsty Yates’s son Edmund, 3, left Raa Raa at The Level yesterday afternoon – and when bedtime came and the lion could not be found, he was inconsolable.
Kirsty immediately set the jungle drums beating on the Hanover Community Noticeboard on Facebook, and with a little extra help from Twitter, it was located in just over three hours, at the Velo Café.
She said: “I thought it was a long shot putting it on Facebook but I was holding my breath and crossing my fingers that Brighton did its ‘thing’ and he found his way home.
“It turns out it wasn’t such a long shot after all. I bloody love Brighton!”
One of the most prolific tweeters was Hanover and Elm Grove councillor Emma Daniel, who even managed to get the message out to street cleaners via the local GMB.
And it was one of her tweets which chef Sam Ireland replied to with the news that the lion was at the Velo.
After it was found, Emma tweeted:
@BrightonSuz stand down –
#brightonmagic
worked and social media did it’s thing 🙂 pic.twitter.com/jjyJOWRZrz—
Emma Daniel (@huxley06) September
3, 2014
The flurry of tweets caught the imagination of scores of Brighton people who retweeted the appeal, and thousands more who saw them. And there was relief all round when Raa Raa was at last reunited with Edmund.
Thank goodness that lion is home
— Martha Gunn (@SkidRowOn_Sea) September 2, 2014
This isn’t the first time the Hanover Community Notice Board has reunited lost toys with their owners since being set up just a few months ago.
Group founder Charlotte Bray said: “It’s so brilliant Raa Raa has been reunited with his keeper – seeing how quickly it escalated to a full-scale lion-hunt on social media was amazing and actually really representative of the kind of community spirit I’ve seen since launching the notice board.
“I’m really happy the group has been so successful and that people are finding it useful – it’s all of their wonderful contributions that make it so meaningful.”
