Apes Of Wrath On View To Public
"Three years after the gorilla known as Little Joe broke out of the Franklin Park Zoo and mauled a 2-year-old girl, the facility announced plans yesterday for a glass-walled cage that will let him see his public again -- but prevent another escape.
The zoo's two adolescent male gorillas, Little Joe and Okpara, known as ``Okie," have been kept away from the public since Joe's leap out of the gorilla exhibit in September 2003, an incident that sparked national debate about the caging of wild animals.
Joe, now 13 years old, spends his days snacking on popcorn and raisins, playing with toys, including a red plastic airplane, and learning new voice commands from trainers, all out of sight of the public. As he grows older and more mature, he is less interested in watching ``Teletubbies," though zookeepers said he still enjoys the occasional ``Nova" documentary.
He has grown bigger, weighing in at close to 400 pounds, according to the exhibit's assistant curator, and is calm and obedient.
At 300 pounds, Joe made his first brief escape over the wall around the indoor gorilla enclosure in August 2003. Six weeks later, he climbed over the wall and barreled out of the pavilion, attacking two terrified girls. Courtney Roberson , 18, an off-duty zoo employee, and her 2-year-old family friend, Nia Scott , were visiting the zoo together; both were thrown on the ground and dragged, and they suffered cuts and bruises. For more than two hours, Joe terrorized the neighborhood before police fired tranquilizer darts to corral him."
*In all fairness and full disclosure, I lost the original story and frantically googled for the information. "Irate Gorilla's" returned the above pictures, and I do believe that one of them IS the mad ape in question.
Post Shot: Little Joe didn't "maul" anyone. Seems the worse he did was push aside Ms Roberson who was holding the little girl, and both fell to the ground. Being the suing type that better be gettin' what they needs be gettin', the family's have turned down fair cash offers of restitution because it is after all Boston, that is, after all so very liberal, and they feel that perhaps owning the zoo might be just the ticket. But not a chance. Plenty of people witnessed the going's on and they weren't seriously harmed. Their ambulance chasers will continue to push though, because that's what ambulance chasers do.
No comments:
Post a Comment