HOGLE ZOO — Zoo officials said Wednesday that a rare Amur leopard found napping in a trellis just outside her enclosure Tuesday escaped by slipping through the steel mesh surrounding the habitat.
The 4-year-old leopard, Zeya, climbed the mesh that surrounds the enclosure on all sides in order to reach larger holes at the top of the habitat, zoo community relations coordinator Erica Hansen said.
A guest spotted the big cat napping on a beam of the trellis above the guest viewing area to her habitat about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, shortly after the zoo opened. Visitors and staff throughout the zoo were hurried indoors — into the gift shop, restaurant, bathrooms and other habitats — while the zoo's Dangerous Animal Response Team shot the still-sleeping Zeya with a tranquilizer dart.
Nancy Carpenter, the zoo's director of animal health, said Zeya woke briefly after being shot, then laid back down until the sedative began to take effect and she drowsily lowered herself off the beam into some plants below.
Zeya never became aggressive or attempted to go anywhere else in the zoo, Hansen said. While unquestionably a dangerous scenario, Hansen said the incident ended as positively as it could have, with no visitors or staff injured and Zeya recovering well.
"Little Zeya gave us a run for our money yesterday, for sure, and we're just glad it ended as well as it could have," she said.
While the spaces in the steel mesh along the sides of Zeya's enclosure in the Asian Highlands Exhibit are 3 inches by 3 inches, they are 6 inches by 6 inches across the top, Hansen said. The larger holes were added to three of the five big cat exhibits in order to prevent snow from piling up in the winter, weighing down the structure.
At only 60 pounds, the "petite" Zeya was able to scale the mesh across the front of the exhibit, squeeze through one of the 6-inch holes and climb into the trellis, Hansen said.
Moving forward, Zeya and other cats under 100 pounds will not be allowed in the three enclosures with larger holes in the steel mesh, according to Hansen.
"Our two smallest cats, which would be Zeya and our female snow leopard, they are both under 100 pounds and so they won't be in those specific exhibits," Hansen said. "We still have cats that can be. … Our keepers just need to be really strategic with how they're rotating those cats and that allows us to explore some long-term options for any modifications we may make to the exhibit."
The zoo's big cats rotate between enclosures, Hansen said, and with no other breaches detected in the habitat, larger cats were expected to be returned to the area Zeya escaped from.
Zeya is an Amur leopard and was born May 22, 2012, at the Wildlife Heritage Foundation in England and arrived at Hogle Zoo in October, according to the zoo's website.
Hansen called the big cat "extremely rare" on Tuesday, noting Zeya was brought to the zoo in hopes of breeding her with a male Amur leopard named Dimitri. The zoo's website says it is estimated that there are fewer than 40 Amur leopards left in the wild.
The last time an animal escaped at Hogle Zoo occurred in March of 2011 when four spider monkeys escaped from their cage for several minutes until they were coaxed back with fruit. In May of 2006, a gray wolf jumped over the barbed wire fence around its enclosure at the zoo and was on the run for more than an hour while the zoo was evacuated.
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