Escape Drills

Did you know, a requirement of the zoo licence is to carry out regular ‘escaped animal drills’. 



The purpose of the drill is to make sure the team know exactly what to do to ensure the safety of the visitors, the staff and the animals if an escape occurs.

JOHN'S BEST COATIMUNDI IMPRESSION

Obviously, it wouldn’t be right to let a real animal loose, so for our drill we used John in his reindeer suit but was pretending to be a coati (it’s all we had at short notice!).

Initially John hung about the Coatimundi enclosure doing his best coati impression.

As he skulked towards some customers Keeper Denise spotted him! She quickly legged into the hatchery to raise the alert before returning to spot the renegade!

Backup promptly arrived with an assortment of nets, harnesses, bucket of food and a noose! Goodness gracious - that’s my child! I hope they don’t use the noose!

John the coati was having non of it! He legged it to the duck enclosure and hopped over one fence and climbed another.

‘Stand back - escaped animal on the loose’ called Denise as our customers looked on in puzzled amusement.

John the coati sat on top of the fence not wishing to be caught and returned to the enclosure. As the keepers slowly circled towards him he leapt of the fence and dashed towards the top end of the park.

Nicole was at the ready with a large net and in one swift swoop she brought it down over his head! Woohoo! A successful capture!

Admittedly, it wasn’t a perfect capture or model drill but what was important was that the whole team were engaged, they learnt how to carry out a drill and had fun at the same time. I’m sure we will see big improvements on our next drill.

Anyone know where I can find a meerkat costume?