After realizing she had left one of her 10 children at a restaurant the prior evening, a Texas woman dialed 911 and calmly told a police operator about the missing member of her brood.

“I think I left my child at Chuck E. Cheese last night. She's five,” the woman reported.

A tape of the brief 911 call (see above) was released yesterday by cops in Pearland, a city outside Houston. An operator directed the woman to contact the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office for additional help (which she did).

According to cops, the 32-year-old woman, who has not been identified, had gone to Chuck E. Cheese last Thursday evening to celebrate the five-year-old girl’s birthday. Along with her 10 children, nine other kids attended the celebration.

At the party’s conclusion, the woman somehow left the birthday girl behind at the restaurant. After the child was discovered by restaurant employees around 11 PM, she was unable to provide any details that allowed cops to figure out the identities of her parents (or how to contact them). As a result, the girl was placed in emergency custody.

It wasn’t until Friday at about 8 AM--nine hours after she departed Chuck E. Cheese--that the mother called 911 to report that her daughter was missing. The girl’s MIA status was discovered as the woman was preparing her children for school. 

The incident has prompted two separate investigations of the woman--one by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, and the other by sheriff’s deputies who are probing the matter as a possible case of child endangerment or abandonment.

The girl remains in the custody of child welfare officials.