2003-06-19

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Guardian Unlimited | Life | Furry logic

It was an ordinary day at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC. Five orang utans were milling about the yard of the exhibit called the think tank, playing intermittently with a barrel that a keeper had rolled out for them. By the time staff had realised that the power to the electric fence on top of the wall had failed, orang utan Bonnie had up-ended the barrel, scaled it and escaped. Mingling with the zoo's visitors, her baby son Kiko clinging to her body, she headed for lunch. "We did a double take," says Lisa Stevens, the zoo's curator of primates and pandas. "There she was, sitting in the flowerbed outside the compound with Kiko on her lap, her back against the glass, a drumstick in one hand and an icebox in the other." With the zoo crowded with visitors, the situation was potentially dangerous. Like most animals, orang utan mothers will attack if they feel their young are threatened. But when the vet arrived to dart Bonnie with a sedative, she calmly watched him climb out of his car, dropped the bottle of Coke with which she had washed down her chicken leg and sloped back into the compound.