School Children Hide in Tree to Escape Pack of Wild Dogs
Video footage taken in Russia shows the dramatic moments when three schoolchildren were left cowering in a tree they had to climb in order to escape from a pack of stray dogs.
In the clip shared on Telegram and shown on Russian media outlets on Thursday, the trio is sitting on the tree's branches while one climbs even higher to get even farther away from the animals below.
The incident took place near a school in the city of Birsk, located around 800 miles east of Moscow in the republic of Bashkortostan, also known as Bashkiria.
Locals had apparently already expressed concerns at the number of stray dogs that have been roaming the city. For four days in a row, parents had come to the school to escort their children home.
An unnamed person who filmed the clip from a nearby building, told the local news outlet Mkset that parents had expressed fears about the presence of the animals, especially near schools and playgrounds.
"Now I always carry fireworks with me. My daughter said that even her teacher has warned the children to be careful," he said.
Russian news outlets did not specify the ages of the schoolchildren nor how long they had been stuck up the tree for.
"They were helped down by a passing teacher who chased the animals away," the regional prosecutor's office said in a statement, according to news agency RIA Novosti.
"The [Bashkortostan] prosecutor's office knows about the incident and has organized an investigation," it added.
The mayor's office in Birsk said that a local company had been tasked with trying to capture the animals, which would be neutered. Six dogs on Mira Street, where the tree incident took place, have already been caught, Mkset reported.
The local affiliate of the Vesti News network said that so far 22 dogs in total had been captured across the city.
This is not the first case of dogs in Bashkortostan posing a threat to children. On April 17, a four-year-old child riding a bicycle was killed after being attacked by stray dogs in the village of Safarovo, in the Uchalinsky district, RIA Novosti reported.
The tragedy followed numerous complaints by villagers to the authorities about the stray animals and prompted regional parliament deputies to submit a bill to the State Duma calling for the compulsory microchipping of cats and dogs.
In February, images went viral of stray dogs with blue coats wandering around a disused factory in Dzerzhinsk, 230 miles east of Moscow.
