French police, firefighters and a helicopter with geothermal equipment were called out on Thursday on an unusual mission after local officials said a young tiger had been spotted in a village outside Paris.

A resident in Montévrain photographed an animal prowling around a supermarket car park, thinking at first that it was a large cat. It was only when she took a closer look at the image and showed it to authorities that they deduced that it was a tiger, she told France2 television.

Police and firefighters, who were armed with stun guns, sealed off an area after locating the animal, which was still on the loose at lunchtime. A spokesman for the mayor’s office said the teams followed paw prints into a wood close to the village tennis court, where it was hiding. The police and fire services were trying to lure it out to capture it.

The animal was first spotted at about 8.30am by the wife of the Intermarché supermarket director, who called police. “She didn’t get out of the car and rang me to say, ‘I think I’ve seen a lynx,’” he said.

It was not known where the presumed tiger, believed to be about one and a half years old and weighing 150 pounds, came from. The village of 10,000 people is close to Disneyland Paris but it was not believed to have escaped from the resort.

Authorities also ruled out the possibility that it had escaped from a circus which left the town on Saturday. A spokesman for the mayor’s office told Le Parisien newspaper that a check of the circus had shown that its animals did not include any tigers.

Local residents were urged to be extremely careful and remain indoors, or drive if they had to leave home. Children were confined to school classrooms and residents were told to listen to the radio for further updates.