Everybody loves a good escaped animate being story ( and the subspecies to give it aTwitter handle ) . Today ’s comes in the mannikin of a flamingo that has been on the run ever since its daring escape over a decade ago , that has been find living it up in Texas .
It began back in 2005 when the timeserving escapee – known as no . 492 thanks to the band on its leg – and an accomplice flee Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita , Kansas . They had been fetch over from Tanzania in 2004 , along with 38 other flamingos , for the menagerie ’s raw Africa exhibit .
You ’re probably question how such a florid wight – flamingos are not aboriginal to the US , only from time to time become up in Florida , so should rather stand out – has evaded capture for over a decade . And also likely how it escaped the zoo in the first place .
It ’s not as ingenious as the baboons thatbroke out of a enquiry centerA - Team - style using just themselves , a rampart , and some barrels , or the orangutan that managed to open its own cage and escape a zoo in South Carolina ( the TV of which you canwatch here ) .
“ It is a black eye , to be honest , ” Scott Newland , the zoo ’s bird curator , say theKansas City Star , back in 2013 and after a previous sighting . “ It was fundamentally an error . We are not adoring of this tale . ”
Newland told theNew York Timesthe birds were already grownup when they were brought over . If they had been chicks , their wings would have been curtail – which is painless for young bird as they have n’t get sensation in their wings as the os have n’t organise properly yet – but the zoological garden matt-up clipping them as grownup would be cruel .
rather , they trimmed their wing feathers , similar to a haircut , to undercoat them . This require to be replicate every twelvemonth as they exuviate . However , on a windy June day in 2005 , no . 492 and no . 347 took advantage of the fact keeper had n’t seemed to discover they were at the stage where their plumage needed crop again , and made a break for it .
The pair stay local for a few days , and attempt were made to recapture them , but a storm brought barbarian weather and on July 4 , Independence Day ( this story just gets better and near ) , the bird were gone .
Sadly , it is suspected 347 become flat , but 492 made it all the way to Texas , over 1,000 km ( 630 mile ) by , to start afresh , and has apparently been living its good life ever since .
The flamingo , whose sex is unidentified as it escaped before that could be watch , has even found a companion in the shape of a Caribbean flamingo with a leg tag reading HDNT . Whether they are BFFs or lovers no one knows , but as flamingos can dwell in the wild for 40 year , and 492 is retrieve to be around 23 , our flamingo - get it on nub hope the two have a long and happy future in the lead of them .
