This Week In Zoo Escapees …

It’s been a banner week for zoo escapes.

First up, a young male zebra named Sero busted out of his enclosure at the Children's Grand Park Zoo in Korea. Sero was born at the zoo in 2021 but apparently wondered about the outside world that supplied all the gawking hordes and went on the lam. Three hours of freedom on the streets of Seoul! The cops, fire department, and zoo staff were able to corral and tranquilize the escapee; checked out by vets Sero is now back in bondage. His time on the outside, though brief, gave the people of Seoul plenty of photo ops.

Meanwhile in Missouri, a 4-year-old Andean bear named Ben escaped his steel-mesh enclosure at the St. Louis Zoo – his second escape this month. 

Sweet freedom lasted less than an hour, but it was enough to trigger the zoo’s Animal Emergency Response protocol, requiring all humans to hightail it indoors to safety. The price of his recidivism: Ben is being transferred to the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, the zoo equivalent of a maximum-security lockup, because it has a moat.

In California, an act of God aided and abetted a half dozen jailbirds when a storm-tossed tree crashed through the African Savanna aviary at the Oakland Zoo. The birds didn’t go far but they are still, as of this writing, on the wing, including an endangered African hooded vulture. Zoo organizers are attempting to herd all six back into their habitat, which is closed to the public until repairs to the aviary are made.

Which brings us to Flaco, the celebrity owl escapee from the Central Park Zoo. The only news we have about Flaco this week is that he remains at large, his movements followed daily by birders, tourists, and anyone lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Eurasian eagle owl. Flaco isn’t just a magnificently photogenic nemesis of the park’s rats, upon which he feeds nightly, he’s also the enduring inspiration for all your huddled masses (of zoo animals) yearning to breathe free.

Photo credit: Gwangjin-gu fire station, St. Louis Zoo, Oakland Zoo, and @lotuswinnielee / Twitter