OPINION |
I am a Mexican wolf. Call me Carlos.
Carlos Lobo Pokin. I like the sound of that.
I am one of two Mexican wolves who on Tuesday escaped from our enclosure at Dickerson Park Zoo.
My fellow escapee is Lee Hart, who works at the zoo as a keeper and is on the zoo’s safety committee.
Bright orange vest is not going to help
When I agreed to portray a wolf on the run, I did not initially know Hart would be with me as I would try to elude zoo employees as part of their training. I thought I would be a lone wolf. But wolves travel in packs.
Neither did I know I would have to wear a bright orange vest. This obviously will not be to my advantage.
Neither will it be to my advantage that most of the zoo grounds will be off-limits in terms of where I might run or hide. After all, the zoo is open for business on this day, and zoo officials did not want to startle guests.
Instead, Hart, the alpha male, says we must scurry to a wooded area on zoo grounds where there are no exhibits.
This seems like a good idea. Even as a wolf, I would not want to mistakenly venture into the lion enclosure.
I don’t know how a wolf thinks; I know they spray
Notice crackles over employee radios at 2:08 p.m. We have escaped.
My adrenaline spikes. I am fit. I want to compete; I do not want to be captured. I am a wolf.
Yet I do not have the keen vision of a wolf. Nor the insane sense of smell of a wolf. Nor its speed.
Neither do I have a fur that blends like camouflage in the woods on this warm, sunny fall day. Instead, I am a wolf in MoDOT’s clothing.
Not once in this exercise do I try to think like a wolf, as I have been instructed to do.
That’s because I do not know how a wolf thinks. What I do know is that they often spray, to mark territory.
Even should I have the urge to actually do that, not as a wolf but as an older man with what might be an enlarged prostate, I refrain.
Escape training needed for accreditation
I hear on employee radio traffic that someone has checked the Mexican Wolf enclosure and confirmed — for purposes of this training exercise — that two are missing and the other three remain.
This is good, I’m told later. Part of procedure is to check the enclosure quickly after a report of an escaped animal. The objective is to find out how they escaped and prevent further escape.
The zoo does five of these drills a year as part of its Association of Zoos & Aquariums accreditation, which happens every five years.
The drills include the one today of which I am a part — escaped animal — as well as venomous bite, guest/customer health issue (such as a heart attack), severe weather and fire.
I never asked: Will I be tased?
It is my colleague Jackie Rehwald, who visits the zoo often with her son Max, who informed me weeks ago that these drills occur. As a result, here I am, in the woods, tasting freedom.
I hear over radio traffic that an employee has secured a shotgun. This makes me want to run faster.
But I am in the woods and there are branches and, I quickly discover, thorns, that impede me.
In fact, I’m walking, despite the fact my one true human heart is beating like a beast. I do not want to be captured or shot.
It then occurs to me that I never asked what happens when I’m captured.
I assure myself that Joey Powell, zoo spokeswoman, would most certainly have informed me if in the end, I’m tased.
Zoo staff closes in methodically
Already, through trees and brush, I see zoo staff closing in on us slowly and methodically. I hear their radio voices talking about me.
Some carry a long pole with a loop at the end. The woman with the tranquilizer gun (I’m told later) is the zoo’s veterinarian.
Thankfully, the “shotgun” is a broom handle.
My fellow Mexican wolf appears to be slower than I, so I part ways. I head to the tall fence at the zoo’s boundary where there appears to be a narrow grass border.
If I can get there, I can really run. But within seconds, I see a zoo employee walking along the fence with a pole that, I’m guessing, has my name on it.
Animals do escape, but not often
How often do animals like me escape at Dickerson Park Zoo?
Not often, zoo Director Mike Crocker says.
“It is a fact of life in zoos,” he says. “But they do not happen near as often as they did long ago because of better facilities and better training of staff.”
In his 2021 book, “True Tales from Dickerson Park Zoo,” Crocker recounts how in the year 2000 the fire department helped the zoo recapture an escaped hyacinth macaw, a valuable and beautiful bird.
The bird used its powerful beak to snap the welded wire of its enclosure; firefighters, in turn, used hoses to flush it out of various trees.
Escaped wolf tried to bite him in the face
Crocker in 1992 used a broom and a plywood shield to slowly back a maned wolf toward its enclosure, where a gate had been left open.
The wolf repeatedly lunged at him trying to bite his face.
He says he was fighting fatigue when other zoo employees arrived and took over.
“My experience is that animals have a lot more staying power than we do,” he says.
I have the staying power, but I no longer have the space.
Fourteen zoo employees have tightened the web. At the same time, I bet I could escape if I bit one of them in the face.
Instead, after 10 minutes and 34 seconds, I submit. I offer my hands to the loop. I am captured.
This is Pokin Around column No. 70.
