Monday, May 21, 2007

AMSTERDAM - He's huge, hairy and he bit and mauled her

No, I Wasn't In Rotterdam...

"...But Bokito the gorilla is still her "darling."

The 400-pound ape burst out of his enclosure at the Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam on Friday, grabbed a 57-year-old woman and bit her, then went on a rampage in the zoo's cafeteria before being shot with a tranquilizer dart.

The woman, whose name was not released, told the Netherlands' Telegraaf newspaper she was standing in the zoo's Africa section when "I heard a thud behind me. I turned around and there was Bokito."

"He gripped me, sat on me with his full weight and began biting me," the woman said from her hospital bed, where she was being treated for bite wounds and a broken wrist.

"I could only think, 'Oh, God, I'm going to die, I'm going to die.'"

The woman said she and her husband had been coming to the zoo to see 11-year-old Bokito nearly every day for years. And despite the attack, he's still her favorite.

"He is and remains my darling," she said."

Not all that much you can do when a 400 lb. gorilla wants to show you who's boss. Good thing he grabbed a tree-hugger, though. A sentient being would be outraged and not so much in love.

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