Young cheetah escapes and is returned
By Diane Toroian Keaggy
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
11/21/2007
ST. LOUIS — St. Louis Zoo officials are still unsure how a year old cheetah escaped from her yard in the River's Edge on Monday morning.
The Zoo's 10 cheetahs are off display while keepers study their enclosure and add more fencing, said Jack Grisham, Zoo vice president of animal collections. He expects the cheetahs to return to their yard this weekend.
"We have no idea how she got out," said Grisham. "We're looking at everything."
Grisham said Zuri, a 40-pound cheetah, is doing fine after her brief brush with freedom. She escaped from her yard about 10:40 a.m. Monday and was shot with a tranquilizer dart a half-hour later. She was about 30 feet from her exhibit. Visitors were evacuated from the River's Edge and herded into nearby buildings.
"She was probably just as nervous to be separated from her siblings," said Grisham. "She was looking for a way back into her exhibit."
Zuri is the third cheetah to escape from her yard this decade. In 2003, 4-year-old Halala scaled a wall as she fled a frisky male cheetah. And in 2000, 8-year-old Akili cleared a moat to avoid her suitor.
After those escapes, the Zoo deepened the exhibit's moat and strung electrified wires, which deliver a mild shock. Grisham said cheetahs do not require wire canopies and wide moats like lions, tigers and other dangerous cats.
Grisham is unsure what motivated Zuri, but said, "Cheetahs are very inquisitive."
Other than the penguin who popped over the Plexiglas in during the opening months of Penguin & Puffin coast, the Zoo has had no other escapes, Grisham said.
Grisham said keepers run emergency drills three for times a year. "It pays off in situations like this."
dkeaggy@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8343
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