Rokan, a six-year-old tiger at the Wellington zoo, is pictured in its enclosure after it attacked a 30-year-old man February 27, 2003. The unidentified victim, who is thought to have climbed into the tiger‘s enclosure, suffered serious injures to his neck, back and head. PHOTO - REUTERS
s, an outfit that uses the zoo‘s facilities for treating wild animals. The animal had a broken right leg that needed to be pinned.
After the cat had been sedated, the vet and his assistant slid a water dish into the enclosure but then noticed that the dish had slipped. The vet, Matt Hartley, entered the enclosure to move the dish and the leopard launched herself at him. Hartley managed to push the leopard off and sustained minor wounds on his right shoulder, states a record of the incident. The leopard ran out of the big green door and a mayday call was put out. She was chased back into the hospital twice and then finally went into the male toilet area.
Two staff members cowered behind a toilet door while a colleague fetched darting equipment and pried open a window. Eventually he managed to drug the leopard with a dart and she was returned to the hospital. The incident, which took place in late February, is the subject of an internal investigation. The zoo‘s general manager, Eloise Langenhoven, says it would be virtually impossible for any of the zoo‘s wild-life to escape into the surrounding suburbs. „That leopard would first have had to get out of the hospital grounds and then out of the zoo gate, by which time we would have shot it.“ Emergency procedures are in place, though they are being revised and updated, she says. „The leopard incident has sparked us into looking more seriously at these things.“
About 3 000 animals are kept in the confines of the zoo‘s 54ha. Soon after Langenhoven took over as general manager, she reportedly said: „The zoo is a safe place in the middle of a metropolitan jungle. It is one place where parents can let kids run free.“ Yet the leopard outbreak was not the first close encounter with wildlife at the Johannesburg zoo in recent months. Late last year a lion managed to escape from the lion enclosure and make its way to an antelope camp. It managed to finish off two buck before zoo staff darted it the next morning. ROMAN LIPTÁK, Johannesburg
