Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Zebras #4


!cid_X_MA1_1266949336@aol, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Posted by Buckles at 2/24/2010 05:47:00 AM

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The two motorcycle police officers were probably trying to feed him donuts to get him to stop.

24 February, 2010 06:53
Richard Reynolds said...

This is only the seventh wild animal to have been loose on the streets of Atlanta, as far as I can recall. The others were:

ASIAN ELEPHANT - - RBBB's Judy ran away from the old Highland Ave Circus Grounds on Sunday evening October 17, 1943. More about this in following messages.

AFRICAN LION - - This was the most exciting wild animal escape in Atlanta history. Prince, the lion, got loose from the backstage of the Bijou Theater on Saturday evening May 18, 1907. He belonged to an illusionist, The Great Lafayette (real name - -Sigmund Neuberger, 1872-1911).

His act was to make Prince disappear. He did, right out the back door. Prince roamed through streets in the heart of the downtown. Along the way he took a look in the doorway of a crowded drugstore and attacked a horse hitched to a cab.

At this juncture the Great Lafayette and attaches arrived shoving Prince's cage. Lafayette fired a blank into Prince's face whereupon the big cat wheeled and ran into another drugstore causing panic inside. He was finally subdued and put back in his cage.

Ironically my Great Uncle Joe Reynolds was a witness to Prince’s escapade. He was in one of the drugtores visited by the big cat.

SPOTTED LEOPARD - - Jumped out of his cage at Atlanta zoo on Christmas Day, 1912. The door was being held open so a movie maker could get some good footage. The leopard bounded down by the lake into which two park visitors fell trying to get away. The escapee was found a short time later in a culvert at the park.

BABOOON - - Escaped from Asa Candler's zoo on fashionable Briarcliff Rd. That was in 1933.

BEAR AND CUBS - - Another escape from the Atlanta Zoo in May 1914.

AFRICAN CROWNED CRANE - - This one also got away from the Atlanta zoo in the early 1970s. Its wings were supposed to be pinioned to prevent flight, but he managed to lift-off in a wind and sailed out of the zoo landing in front of a nearby corner grocery store.

A large black lady carrying sacks of groceries in both arms came out onto the sidewalk just as the crane landed. The crane squawked and she shrieked. She dropped the groceries and pulled her dress up over her head calling on the Lord for help. Zoo Director Steve Dobbs and keepers got to the scene right as the crane landed, and I heard the story from Steve.

24 February, 2010 19:38
jerry digney said...

...and, of course, Atlanta was the famous site of the multiple elephant deaths, perhaps 11, that took place in one day on RBBB in the 1940s (?) as a result of arsenic poisoning---or so it is believed. The zebra escapade seems like a lot of media noise about a relatively small incident. More worrisome would be an incident like what happened with an elephant years ago in Hawaii or an escaped adult lion or tiger. The guys who are really under the microscope now are the Sea World team and their unfortunate incident. In 10 years with major circuses in the 70s, I can't recall one animal escape and no major accidents and for the most part we were touring many more animals than they do today.

26 February, 2010 00:31

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