26 February, 2017: Push to Close
We’ve been getting a lot of asks and comments about escaped animals. Truth be told, we haven’t had much happen during our open sessions. During the zoo’s construction, we’d get the occasional slip-up. Nothing major. A kulinda here, a dodo here, a plesiosaur pup in the duck pond... All things considered, we’ve done a pretty good job of keeping all the animals where they’re supposed to be. This morning, however, was the first time that I actually felt...scared.
I was running some routine maintenance with some other handlers at the raptor complex -- camera adjustments, making sure the locking mechanisms on the doors worked, vending machine restocking, food chute cleaning -- that kind of stuff. We reconvened in the control room to talk about changes made and yadayadayada, employee stuff. Someplace, somewhere, one of the main power lines had a little bit of a problem. And, well, by a little bit, I mean we were left in pitch darkness inside the compound control room.
“What was that?”
“Power’s gone. We’re...uncomfortably close to the raptors, too.”
“I could’ve sworn I’ve seen this before.”
“Nova?”
“Yeah, I’ll check it out.”
I was intending on leaving the building to see if this was a facility-wide power issue. My phone was out.
I made a perfect 180 right back into the control room. As the kids say, “Nope.”
Clearly, we all made it out. The auxiliary power came back on within the next few minutes, and we had an ops team coerce the domaeosaur (it was a Deinonychus, I think) back into its enclosure. The power surge left one of the food dispensers open, which let the animal scurry up the chute into the animal maintenance/security compound. I’ll have a word with management soon.
In the meantime, I’m thinking of taking up martial arts. Maybe firearm training. Joining the military?
- Erick