Updated

A newborn boy has survived being stuffed in a handbag and abandoned near a Central Texas home on a night when temperatures dipped into the 40s.

Corsicana police on Monday appealed for the public's help in identifying the infant and locating his mother.

Chief Randy Bratton says a man called police around 9 p.m. Sunday to say his wife found the baby on the doorstep of their carport. The baby was wrapped in a towel that was in a pillowcase and inside a handbag.

Bratton says the baby, with umbilical cord still attached, was taken to a hospital and is stable. Child Protective Services has been contacted.

Forecasters say temperatures were in the upper 40s around the time the baby was found in Corsicana, about 50 miles southeast of Dallas.

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The Athens Daily Review reported that the baby was discovered by Mihoko and Phillip Brown on their doorstep after their cat drew attention to the door.

"I put my ear to the door and heard something, and I barely opened the door and saw the bag," Phillip Brown told the paper. "I said, 'somebody's left us a puppy in this bag.' Then it started crying, and I said 'this is a baby.'"

Texas reportedly has a Baby Moses law that allows a mother to drop a baby off at precincts and hospitals across the state.

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