‘Neigh’ further assistance was required by the fire crews (Picture: North News & Pictures Ltd)

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink, the old proverb goes.

That’s certainly the case when the horse in question is a statue.

Firefighters in North Yorkshire enjoyed an equine-based error when they were called out to a flood in North Road, Ripon in the morning on January 11.

A concerned member of the public had spotted a horse stranded in the high water.

They’d raised the alarm with a fire officer scrambling to the scene.

He soon worked out that the horse in question was a statue – made to commemorate the First World War.

The fire service was then stood down.

The North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service issued a statement on the unusual call-out which said: ‘An officer attended a report of a horse seen in flood water.

‘This was found to be a false alarm, the horse seen was actually a statue that had been surrounded by flood water.

‘No action was required by the fire service.’

A similar misidentified animal caused short-lived chaos in Oldham, Manchester last year.

A concerned resident said they spotted a ‘tiger’ in the garden of a home in the town.

Officers rushed to the scene to find very terrifyingly – it was just a stuffed animal.

Over in Kenya, a farm worker saw a lion’s ‘face’ in some bushes and feared the big cat was ready to pounce.

Three armed wildlife officers rushed to the village of Kinyana to trap the creature.

They found nothing but a carrier bag, which featured a picture of a lion’s face, and discovered it had been placed in the bushes by a nearby homeowner.

She had avocado tree seedlings in the bag, and hadn’t wanted them to dry out in the sun, so placed them among the thick hedge branches.

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‘Neigh’ further assistance was required.