A Kazakh driver's week got off to a roaring start when he arrived at a car park on Monday morning to find a lion locked in an adjacent car.
The fully grown feline had reportedly been temporarily abandoned by a local businessman and left to sleep in the car park overnight, RIA Novosti reports.
According to the Russian state news agency, upon making his discovery, the driver phoned local authorities in the town of Kostanai, who pieced together the unusual story.
A spokesperson for the local interior ministry confirmed that the businessman in question had left the lion in order to catch forty winks after a long return drive to the city of Karaganda, where he purchased the big cat for his expanding private zoo.
"The lion was left in the parking lot because its owner returned late from his trip," the spokesperson said, helpfully adding that "the cage containing the predator was locked, and the lion was calm".
According to the official, the lion has since been removed from the car park, and has been taken to his new home at the businessman's menagerie.
Kazakhstan has perhaps become best-known in recent years as the Turkic home of fictional rogue television reporter Borat - whose filmic journey across America involved similarly odd scenes of keeping a bear in the back of an ice cream van.
And the Kostanai episode is not the first time this year that an AWOL African jungle animal has caused alarm for unsuspecting motorists.
In February, a skittish Zebra ran amuck on a road in downtown Atlanta after escaping from a travelling circus.
