Animal Escapes Add to L.A. Zoo Woes

File this one under Call of the Wild.

In the past year, a dozen animals at the Los Angeles Zoo have escaped from their cages, according to federal inspection and zoo reports.

Those on the lam were a gorilla, a snow leopard, a howler monkey, four spider monkeys and, most recently, five colobus monkeys that fled their confines in mid-May.

While all of the missing mammals were caught and none of the incidents proved to be a threat to visitors, the escapes--several of which have been attributed to zookeeper error--seem to be happening more frequently than at many other zoos, according to zoo officials elsewhere.

“I guess I would have to say that it is highly suspicious to have that many errors,” said William Amand, executive director of the American Assn. of Zoo Veterinarians.

L.A. Zoo Director Manuel Mollinedo said he is concerned about the incidents. “I take an escape very, very seriously,” he said. “It not only endangers the animals but our keepers.”

In addition, an L.A. Zoo elephant tested positive recently for tuberculosis, as has a second elephant that was transferred out of the L.A. Zoo in October.

Another L.A. Zoo elephant, which died of salmonella infection in March, also had tested positive for tuberculosis, and active tuberculosis was found in a lymph node during the necropsy.

Zoo officials said they are not worried that people visiting the zoo could become infected because the facility’s four remaining pachyderms are separated from spectators by a moat. Also, a positive tuberculosis test does not necessarily mean the animals actually have tuberculosis, because the tests, medical officials said, can show false results.

Moreover, they point out, it is impossible to X-ray elephants to determine whether they indeed have the disease.

The zoo’s longtime elephant trainer, George French, who retired in May, has tested negative for tuberculosis. And so have two other elephants, Ruby and Gita. Billy, a 12-year-old Asian elephant, has not been tested because handlers can’t get close enough to draw blood from him for a test.

David Blasko, executive director of the Elephant Managers’ Assn., an international group of 400 elephant handlers, said he hasn’t heard of other zoo elephants testing positive for tuberculosis.

The unusual series of incidents at the L.A. Zoo--which will become a separate city department as a result of a 12-0 City Council vote Friday--have been documented in U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection reports and in zoo staff meeting notes.

None of the escaped animals got beyond the zoo’s boundaries, Mollinedo said.

In July, a teenage male gorilla named Jim escaped from his holding area by bending a faulty steel door and slipping into an enclosed yard behind the building. Instead of climbing out of the yard, the gorilla lingered for a couple of hours and returned to his holding area. The steel door has been reinforced, Mollinedo said.

In August, a snow leopard escaped when a zookeeper did not secure the door to its holding area. The leopard went into a food preparation area within the building for at least two hours. Employees had to tranquilize the leopard with a dart gun to return it to its cage, the zoo director said.

A howler monkey fled its confines last fall when a zookeeper opened a cage door and the primate immediately scrambled out and made a beeline for a nearby acacia tree, remaining in the tree until a blow dart was used to tranquilize it. The cage, which Mollinedo said was poorly designed, has been repaired to prevent future escapes.

In October, four spider monkeys fled their cage when two zookeepers did not latch a door. The simians eventually were coaxed to return to their abode.

Most recently, five colobus monkeys slipped out of their holding area when a zookeeper didn’t latch a door. The monkeys ambled over to some nearby trees. Four returned to their holding area. A fifth eluded zookeepers until it was tranquilized, general curator Judy Ball said.

Ball, who recently came to the L.A. Zoo from the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, said escapes are known to happen in the zoo world. She remembers when 23 squirrel monkeys escaped from the Seattle zoo years ago when she was the general curator. It took days to trap the monkeys. One was run over by a car. Another was never found.

At the Denver Zoo in December, an 8-foot 2-inch king cobra slithered out of its box through a crack near a sliding door. After morsels of rat meat failed to lure it back to its habitat, the snake was shot and killed.

But at the Los Angeles Zoo, the escapes seem to be happening more frequently.

“It happens,” said David Robinette, general curator at the San Francisco Zoo, which has 730 animals, about half the number at the L.A. Zoo. “But I wouldn’t say it is common here.” He noted that in December five patas monkeys scrambled from their exhibit when a tree branch fell into their area. They were quickly shooed back in.

“We haven’t had a problem with that,” said Charles Doyle, curator of mammals at the Burnet Park Zoo in Syracuse, N.Y., which has about 900 animals.

Zoo Atlanta, which has nearly 1,000 animals, hasn’t had any escapes in the past year. Neither has the Metro Washington Park Zoo in Portland, Ore., which has 1,200 animals.

In the past two years, the L.A. Zoo’s staff has been working hard to improve the facility’s image, which was tarnished in 1995 when inspectors from the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. postponed accrediting the facility for one year.

At that time, association inspectors cited a number of problems, including some conditions so bad that the health of certain animals was in jeopardy. Also cited were overcrowded conditions, enclosures with inadequate drainage systems and areas infected by vermin and termites.

After changing directors and pumping $1.7 million into an emergency maintenance program, the zoo’s accreditation was renewed in 1996.

But problems continue to occur at the 220-acre Griffith Park facility.

Last summer, two small monkeys called cotton-topped marmosets died after a keeper mistakenly left a heat lamp on over their nesting box on a hot July day, according to USDA inspection documents. Mollinedo confirmed the incident and blamed it on zookeeper error.

And in March, a 29-year-old elephant, Annie, died from salmonella infection. A necropsy showed her lungs contained tuberculosis encapsulated in old calcified fibrous tissue. It was not believed to be contagious, said Charles Sedgwick, the zoo’s director of animal health services.

Tara, a 31-year-old African elephant that tested positive in May for TB, has lost more than 1,000 pounds in seven months, zoo officials confirmed. They attribute the weight loss, however, to a massive boil on Tara’s rectum that employees have been treating for several months. Tara has lived at the L.A. Zoo since shortly after her birth in Africa in 1965.

Calle, a 30-year-old female Asian elephant that tested positive for TB, is on loan to the San Francisco Zoo.

Gary Johnson, who owns the Perris elephant compound, is waiting for test results on four of his elephants to see if they might have been exposed to tuberculosis. His elephants are sometimes used for elephant rides at fairs and events, posing a potential health risk to riders.

The news of elephants testing positive for tuberculosis is a reminder of an incident last summer in which two Circus Vargas elephants in the Los Angeles area died of the infectious disease, which can be transmitted to humans.

Until 1990, one of those circus elephants, Hattie, was owned by the Los Angeles Zoo before being sold to an elephant trainer in Illinois, who then leased her to Circus Vargas.

Animal rights activists, upon hearing of the elephants possibly having TB, have begun to question how the hulking mammals are handled at the L.A. Zoo.

“I don’t think this zoo is set up for elephants,” said Gretchen Wyler, president of the Ark Trust Inc., an animal rights group. Wyler also sits on the Los Angeles Zoo Directors Advisory Committee.

Three years ago, the L.A. Zoo’s elephant barn went through a $1.4-million renovation to improve care for the animals and make it safer for elephant keepers. Added were individual stalls for the animals and remote-controlled doors and video cameras.

The zoo plans to build a $24-million Pachyderm Forest.