16 June 2009
A Western Lowland gorilla escaped from its enclosure at Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, Friday morning, and was loose inside the zoo for five minutes. It attacked one food service employee, and then returned to its exhibit on its own.
Zoo executive director Satch Krantz wouldn't release the employee's name because he hadn't had a chance to talk to him yet, but said the worker was at home with cuts and bruises after being checked out at a local hospital.
Krantz says no one is sure which of the three male gorillasescaped, but handlers think it was Mike.
Michelle Benton, of Greenville, was at the zoo with her husband and their two daughters. Her husband and their 5-year-old daughter were in another part of the zoo while Michelle had their 2-year-old. They were walking near another woman who also had a small child when they heard her scream, looked up, and saw the gorilla right in front of the woman. The gorilla roared, but Michelle says the woman shook her stroller and the gorilla ran off.
Her thoughts when she saw a gorilla in front of her? "Very scared, just because I had a baby with me and she did. I mean, what do you do if that happens? I'd never had anything like that happen and I never, when you come to the zoo that's the last thing you think that would ever happen at the zoo. So I was pretty shaken up," she says.
Krantz says a food service employee at the zoo's pizza restaurant, which is across from the gorilla's outdoor exhibit, heard the commotion and came out to see what was happening. When he saw the gorilla, he tried to run back into the restaurant. The gorilla then took off after him, covering about 30 feet quickly.
“The gorilla did what gorillas do; he pushed him to the ground," Krantz says. "The young man had enough presence of mind, and I want to commend him for this, to roll up in a fetal position and, the words that I got indirectly from him were, he acted dead. The gorilla pushed him around a little bit and then left and, at that point, jumped back into the exhibit.”
A "Code E", for escape, had been radioed to all zoo employees, who quickly put into place the procedures they practice four times a year. An animal handling team responded with capture gear, tranquilizer guns and rifles, but by that time the gorilla was back in its enclosure.
Two of the gorillas, Mike and Kimya, went into the indoor exhibit area on their own. The third gorilla, Chaka, was still in the outdoor part of the enclosure. The zoo had been locked down, with all visitors being put inside buildings or locked out of the zoo. After all three gorillas were safely locked in the "barn", the zoo was reopened. It had been locked down for about 45 minutes.
As for how the gorilla escaped in the first place, Krantz says handlers found a piece of bamboo growing on the outside of the exhibit, near the 10-foot-high concrete wall. The bamboo had drooped down far enough into the exhibit that the gorilla was able to grab it and climb the wall. There are gorilla footprints on the wall leading up, right beside the piece of bamboo hanging down.
Keepers inspect each exhibit every day, and a gorilla handler had inspected the exhibit between 8:30 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., Krantz says. The bamboo was not there then. It was 9:25 a.m. when the gorilla escaped.
“We think that that piece of bamboo, from the time she walked the exhibit, over that 30 to 40 minute period of time, drooped, continued to droop. He grabbed it and he climbed out," Krantz says, blaming all the recent rain for the drooping bamboo.
He says employees will spend the next few days inspecting the entire zoo, looking for other plants growing outside of exhibits that could cause a problem like this one did. He says the gorillas will stay locked in their indoor exhibit for the next few days while the outdoor enclosure is thoroughly inspected.
This is only the second escape of a dangerous animal in Riverbanks' history. Just a few months after it opened in 1974, a polar bear got out of its enclosure. Krantz says that was human error.
