2nd Time’s a Charm for Chimps’ New Habitat

A clever chimpanzee that made monkeys out of her zookeepers by escaping from her new $5-million habitat was finally boxed in Tuesday at the Los Angeles Zoo.

But it cost an additional $12,000 to modify the zoo’s showpiece primate exhibit to corral Gracie, a feisty 11-year-old who tried to lead other chimps to freedom over the exhibit’s back wall.

Workers installed an outcropping of phony boulders along the top of the 16-foot wall and used a grinding machine to smooth out its rough concrete side.

The heavily promoted “Chimpanzees of Mahale Mountains” exhibit--which attracted large crowds after its Aug. 13 opening--was shut down for two weeks for the emergency remodeling.

For opening day, embarrassed zoo officials had been forced to hastily string an electric wire along the top of the habitat wall to jolt climbing chimpanzees back inside the enclosure.

During the repair project, the chimps were locked in their cage-topped sleeping quarters outside the habitat.

Animal handlers said Gracie headed straight for her escape route Tuesday morning when she and the zoo’s dozen other chimpanzees were reintroduced to the habitat.

To officials’ relief, the fake rock outcropping prevented her from climbing out.

All 13 chimps were sitting idly in the canyon-like exhibit and placidly eating acacia when Tuesday’s first visitors arrived to gawk at the primates over a moat and through triple-pane glass windows.

“We’re glad it’s open again,” said Adrienne Wilde, who brought her 2-year-old son, Harry, to see the chimps.

“We were waiting for it to reopen before we came back. They seem to be as happy as animals can be in a zoo.”

Vicki Bingaman, the chimpanzees’ chief keeper, said Gracie had also escaped from the chimps’ old habitat. Because of that, she was viewed as the primate group’s worst flight risk.

“We weren’t surprised that she would try to climb out. Gracie is incredibly feisty, incredibly strong, incredibly intelligent,” Bingaman said.

Gracie escaped twice the second day the chimps were introduced to the new habitat. Both times, Bingaman scared her back inside with a spurting water hose. Later, Gracie’s 8-year-old brother, Jerrard, and 7-year-old cousin, Yoshi, tried without success to duplicate the escape, Bingaman said.

After the temporary electric fence was installed, Gracie tried twice more to scale the wall but was thwarted by low-voltage shocks, she added.

Although the new habitat came with a one-year warranty, the city is picking up the repair bill, officials said.

That’s because the habitat’s designer warned that the wall--a leftover from an abandoned baboon exhibit--was too low.

“We were under a tight timeline to open,” said zoo projects chief Richard Klink. “We just took a chance it would not be a problem.”

In fact, he said, a test of the wall using trained chimpanzees suggested that it was tall enough.

“We brought in three movie chimpanzees and an orangutan. One trainer stood at the bottom and boosted a chimpanzee on his shoulders, and another stood on top and called out, ‘Come on, you’ll get ice cream!’ and it still couldn’t get out,” Klink said.

Officials said the new habitat will be shown off Oct. 4 when its designer, Jon Coe of Philadelphia, and famed chimp expert Jane Goodall discuss chimpanzee housing concepts with 200 professional zookeepers and other experts.

In the meantime, zoo officials hope to touch up streaks on the enclosure’s painted walls and fix a malfunctioning sump pump in its artificial waterfall.

They’re determined that the chimps aren’t going to make them chumps again.