South River High students duped part of the community and a national news website by convincing them that a fully grown tiger was loose inside the school on Thursday.

When students evacuated the school on Thursday due to a fire alarm—the second evacuation of the week—students speculated why they were once again being taken out of class. Earlier in the week, an unidentified odor caused administrators to pull the fire alarm. Thursday's alarm was pulled after a dryer malfunction. However, this time, the students decided to have some fun with it later that night. Using Tumblr, students created a fake news website called "Anne Arundel County News and Alerts," similar to the popular Facebook page "Anne Arundel County Breaking News and Events." On the site, they created a completely false report, describing the circumstances surrounding the "tiger incident" on Thursday, including quotes from students.

Some of the quotes included "I saw the tiger with my own two eyes," and "I never expected to see something like this at the school," according to the Tumblr site. Following its publication, students and the community flocked to Twitter and Facebook in response to the bizarre but ultimately fabricated "news."

Dozens tweeted out their disbelief while concerned parents contacted Edgewater-Davidsonville Patch, asking for clarity on the "developing story." The report looked so authentic that even Elite Daily, a national pop culture website, picked up the story and ran it as a true event. Ultimately, students not in on the prank served as whistle blowers, discrediting the report and laying rest to any hysteria the "news" may have caused. Some people thought seniors at the school brought in a tiger as a prank, but it appears the real prank was the fake news in and of itself.

Anne Arundel County Public Schools spokesman Bob Mosier said he only got two calls regarding the "tiger scare," one from a reporter and one from a parent.

"I was pretty confident that we did not have a tiger loose in any of our schools. This is one of the side effects of social media," Mosier said. "You'd like to hope folks would trust the school system to know we would let them know there was a tiger loose in the high school."

Students at South River told Patch via text messaging about the incident after the news report broke. "Yea it was all a fake. They made up that news report thing. They got a few people to get in on the joke and everyone believed it," said one student.