People and Events

Four years ago, in the greatest mass escape ever from the Los Angeles Zoo, 11 Persian goats went on the lam.

Nothing more was heard of them until Tuesday when authorities spotted a curved-horn creature of the same species on an embankment about 40 feet above the concrete Los Angeles River near Glendale Boulevard. When they attempted to trap it, the animal leaped--to the horror of the officers.

“He evidently thought he could make it to the other side of the river,” said Michael Burns, an animal shelter supervisor. “There’s no question that it leaped 40 to 50 feet straight out before gravity took control.”

The brown 45-pound male--technically, a Bezoar ibex--landed in a 10-inch trough of water in the river.

“Our guys thought he had killed himself, but he got up and started going downstream,” Burns said. “He went down about 150 feet and was in over his head. He was weak, and we were afraid he was going to drown. Our officers went in and wrestled him out.”

But when the animal was taken to the zoo Wednesday, mammal experts determined it’s only about 1 to 2 years old, too young to be one of the original escape goats. But because of its exotic breed, experts believe that it’s an offspring.

The leaper is temporarily housed in the Los Angeles Zoo, which lacks the facilities to house it and hopes another zoo will adopt it.

Handlers have nicknamed it “Supergoat.”

Like missing goats, missing seals are also in the news.

Only these seals are not animals but three UCLA campus logos that are attached to lecterns for formal speeches at such functions as commencement.

The plastic-and-aluminum seals, valued at $2,000, have been missing from a storage room in Royce Hall for two weeks, said Raoul Pinno of the campus activities service office.

“We don’t know what anyone would do with them,” he added.

Pinno said no one’s ruled out the possibility that the theft is a prank by UCLA students--or perhaps students from a rival school. After all, the USC-UCLA football game is approaching.

Sign in a Long Beach barbershop: “Yes on No!”

A lot of kids’ Halloween goodies are long gone by now, but 7-year-old Sara Manning of Manhattan Beach still has one trick-or-treat item: Half a pound of computer paper. That’s the item that one bachelor in the neighborhood apparently gave out to each visitor, truly a treat of the 1980s.

Whether the man had just thrown away his computer isn’t known, but Manning’s mother, Morri, points out that at least this goody was functional.

“Sara and her friend Hilary are writing stories on it,” she said. “It’s better than junky food. Still I think if everyone gave that out, the kids would run with much less vigor from house to house.”

Another sign in the Long Beach barbershop mentioned above: “No on Yes!”