Cagey Escapees Causing Trouble at Zoo

First some zebras broke the lock on their gate and sneaked out onto the zoo grounds after hours. A few months later, a chimpanzee scaled the wall of her exhibit. Then a kangaroo hopped out of her holding area, and an antelope dashed out of the zoo altogether, finding her way to a nearby golf course, where she holed up for two days.

In all, at least 35 animals have wriggled, climbed and crawled out of their exhibits at the Los Angeles Zoo in the last five years. That escape rate, documented by officials trying to demonstrate improvements at the zoo, drew the attention of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which enforces the federal Animal Welfare Act. The department first filed a complaint in court and then last week struck a deal with the city, agreeing to back off its threat of legal action in return for assurances that Los Angeles will do a better job of keeping its animals under lock and key.

The deal adds the zoo to the inglorious list of Los Angeles institutions, including the Los Angeles Police Department and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, now operating under agreements struck to remove them from the threat of federal lawsuits.

L.A.’s wayward animals have not caused the public any harm, zoo officials stressed, and half of the escapees never got beyond their main enclosures.

“These weren’t elephants running down the streets of Honolulu,” said zoo consultant David Towne, referring to a well-publicized 1994 incident in which a circus elephant broke out and led authorities on a chase of several blocks.

Still, the animals in the Los Angeles Zoo are a canny bunch, and have demonstrated their wiles again and again.

Take the case of Evelyn, a gorilla who used overgrown vines to pull herself out of her exhibit in October 2000. She wandered around the zoo for about an hour, prompting the evacuation of all patrons and attracting the attention of television news helicopters before she was tranquilized. Gracie, a chimpanzee, showed similar ingenuity in September 1999, when she made a running start and scaled the sheer walls of her enclosure -- for the second time.

Some of the breakouts have been flukes. Last December, a musical group performing in the zoo startled a baby red-flanked duiker, an African antelope, which leaped over a 4-foot wall and darted outside. She was recaptured two days later, on a nearby golf course.

Escapes are part of the life of any zoo, but most zoos do not keep a log that records each time an animal slips away from its keepers.

The Los Angeles Zoo began doing so in the late 1990s, shortly after the zoo almost lost its accreditation because of complaints about facilities so poor that they threatened the health of the animals. Since then, the 80-acre complex on the hilly grounds of Griffith Park has been widely praised for improvements.

Because of its past problems, the Los Angeles Zoo reports every escape, no matter how minor, to the USDA.

Now zoo officials complain that their diligence in reporting escapes has made the problem seem more serious than it is. Half the cases in recent years involved animals that slipped out of a pen for just a few minutes in a back area of an exhibit and were never exposed to the public, said John Lewis, the new zoo director.

“I would have to say a lot of the incidents that were cited were pretty marginal,” said Lewis, the former president of the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn., who has been on the job for less than a week. “What the zoo’s done ... is shown what I would call exceptional due diligence in reporting everything. So in a lot of cases, things are over-reported.”

USDA spokesman Jim Rogers confirmed that the agency does not require zoos to report animal escapes. Members of the public or employees sometimes call about the most egregious ones, but not all trigger a complaint by the department, he added.

“It just depends on how they happened,” Rogers said.

He would not comment on the specifics of the complaint filed against Los Angeles, calling it an ongoing legal procedure, but said that the department takes such action only if investigators believe problems are frequent or severe.

“We don’t file a complaint unless we believe you violated the [Animal Welfare] Act,” he said.

In the complaint that it filed against the zoo in 2001, the USDA cited 13 animal escapes and fined the zoo $25,000. As part of the settlement agreement, which the City Council approved on June 25, the fine will be waived if the zoo provides additional training for its staff and develops a quality assurance program, said Eric Moses, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office.

The zoo hired Towne, former director of the Seattle zoo, to oversee compliance with the agreement.

If the zoo fails to fulfill its obligations under the deal, it could end up in front of a USDA administrative law judge, who could impose fines or suspend the zoo’s license.

Zoo officials are confident that won’t happen. The zoo has posted additional signs reminding keepers to double-check all locks and has altered some exhibits to prevent escapes, Lewis said.

“I don’t want to underplay the escapes, because every one of them is important and we need to address them,” he added. “There is a welfare issue, so we don’t take it lightly.”

City Councilman Tom LaBonge, whose 4th District includes the zoo, said he is confident that the facility will take all necessary measures to prevent future escapes.

“It would concern me more if we weren’t prepared to handle it,” LaBonge said.

The zoo records show that some of the escapes were the result of mere lapses of attention, as animals scampered past their keepers, usually just into a secondary area still well away from the public.

In other instances, however, the breaks involved cunning and agility.

Gracie, the chimpanzee, was able to find a handhold in the sheer gray rock that surrounds her exhibit; she used it to shimmy over the wall. A year later, she made a similar breakout by getting a running start and scrambling up the embankment.

Since then, the zoo has smoothed out the jutting rocks and spent $35,000 building a large overhang above the wall to discourage future attempts, according to papers filed with the USDA. Gracie has stayed put recently, but zookeepers now know to resist overconfidence.

“Sometimes, no matter how much you think you’ve gone over everything, chimps are smart,” said the zoo’s curator of mammals, Jennie McNary, on a recent morning as she pointed out Gracie’s method of escape. “This particular chimp is very, very smart.”

The most frequent culprits have been the primates. Jim, a western lowland gorilla, busted out of his night stall once when it was not secured.

Another time, he jumped across a moat wall into a waterfall area between the two gorilla exhibits, apparently to investigate noises the nearby gorillas were making. Keepers used a water hose to get him back into the enclosure.

Although the primates are leading offenders, some of their less-heralded colleagues also have slipped away.

One Nubian ibex -- a type of goat -- slipped past its keeper out of a holding area, not once but twice. One of those times, the ibex spent the night in a service area before she was discovered.

Warthogs and flamingos also have escaped from their enclosures, though none of those creatures has gotten very far.

In 18 of the animal escapes, keepers simply forgot to latch the gates or lock them properly.

“A lot of what the staff does is the same thing every day,” Lewis said. “So if you’re rushed or get overconfident, you forget to take those steps and double-check the lock. You just need to have adequate staffing and remind people to do the work.”

Peter Shannon, an associate curator at the San Francisco Zoo, said that his facility does not keep a record of escapes, and that he does not recall any as colorful as some of the Los Angeles breakouts.

But he said the incidents do not surprise him. Some zoo animals, he noted, are ingenious beasts; a few are even handy with tools.

“When the adrenaline is really pumping,” Shannon said, “they do things you can never imagine they would do.”

Once, an orangutan in Seattle’s zoo used a crescent wrench left by a workman to try to unscrew the bolts of his cage, said Towne, who ran that zoo for nearly 20 years.

“Fortunately, he was caught before he got too far,” Towne said. “But the night keeper was flabbergasted.”

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Zoo Escapes

In the last five years, at least 35 animals at the Los Angeles Zoo have escaped from their enclosures. In half of those cases, the animals got into a public area, but rarely when the zoo was open. Some of the more memorable breakouts:

April 21, 1998: Two zebras snap the hasp of their gate and get out into the zoo after hours. One is herded back in after 45 minutes; another has to be anesthetized.

Aug. 2, 1998: Gracie, a chimpanzee, scales the wall of her enclosure into a planted area. She jumps back in after five minutes.

Aug. 10, 1998: A gray kangaroo hops out of her enclosure for six minutes after a keeper leaves a gate open. She is herded back in.

Oct. 30, 1998: A flamingo walks out of its exhibit and roams around a public area for about three minutes before the zoo opens.

Sept. 1, 1999: Gracie makes a running leap and scales the back wall of her enclosure again. This time, she is out for 20 minutes before keepers herd her back in.

Sept. 14, 1999: Two warthogs wander out to a perimeter road after a keeper leaves a gate open. After 12 minutes, they are herded back into a barn.

Nov. 1, 1999: A koala climbs out of its yard and is found in a nearby tree after a few minutes. A keeper coaxes it out and carries it back to the exhibit.

Oct. 11, 2000: Evelyn, a gorilla, uses overgrown honeysuckle vines to pull herself out of her exhibit. She wanders around the zoo for about an hour before being tranquilized.

April 10, 2001: A kookaburra flies out of its cage before being recaptured a day later.

June 7, 2001: A crested capuchin monkey squeezes through a small opening in its cage and is in a public area for about an hour. All patrons are removed from the area until it is recaptured.

Dec. 7, 2002: A baby red-flanked duiker -- a type of African antelope -- jumps its nursery fence after being startled by a musical group. It runs out of the zoo and is recaptured two days later on a nearby golf course.

June 1, 2003: A goral goat antelope discovers a hole in the fence of its exhibit and gets out before the zoo opens.

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Sources: Los Angeles Zoo, Los Angeles city attorney’s office