WATERVILLE — Police have issued an all points bulletin for a blue hippopotamus and an orange lion thought to be within the city limits.

“There out there roaming the streets of Waterville,” Waterville Police Sgt. Cecil Cates Sunday. “We’ve issued an all points, but we haven’t found them yet.

“I think they’ll be pretty easy to spot once they hit the streets. Once they do, we’ll capture them and return them to Rummel’s Ice Cream where they belong,” Cates added.

The animals are huge fiberglass creatures resembling the heads of a hippo and a lion. They are used as lids for 55 gallon trash cans and were stolen from the ice cream shop Saturday night, Cates said.

Cates said he thought the animals would turn up soon.

“It was probably a college prank, but they ought to realize how serious a prank it was. It’s a felony,” said Eariel Matte, the ice cream shop’s owner.

Matte said the creatures, which he valued at $500 apiece, are so big that they couldn’t fit in a car.

“They’d have to take them away in a pickup truck,” he said.