Ollie, a Standoffish Bobcat, Is Missing From the National Zoo
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Version 0 of 1. On a snowy Monday morning in the nation’s capital, Ollie the bobcat apparently just needed some space. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington announced that Ollie, a 6-year-old, 25-pound female cat, had gone missing sometime between 7:30 a.m., when handlers check in on the enclosure she shares with two male bobcats, and feeding time at 10:40 a.m. “She’s very standoffish,” Craig Saffoe, the zoo’s curator of great cats, said of Ollie at an afternoon news conference, calling her “not super friendly.” He added: “It would be extremely easy on us if she were a cat who would come when called, but that’s not who this individual is.” Brandie Smith, the National Zoo’s associate director of animal care, said zookeepers believed the bobcat escaped through a small hole in the mesh fence intended to keep her in. When the animal did not turn up during a search of the area around the bobcat enclosure, the zoo changed tactics, Ms. Smith said, creating a larger perimeter so as not to scare the animal away. “We very much believe she will want to come back to her exhibit,” she said. “There’s shelter, there’s food, there’s warmth.” But Mr. Saffoe stressed that while Ollie is probably nearby, she is a “capable hunter” and the D.C. area is a natural habitat for bobcats. (In fact, a feline believed to be a bobcat was spotted in a residential neighborhood on Sunday in nearby Fairfax County, Va., The Washington Post reported.) “Cats are survivors,” Mr. Saffoe said. “I’d be lying to you if I said we were definitely going to get her back.” Only a small section of the zoo was closed on Monday after the escape, the representatives said, and the lion and tiger circle remained open to visitors. Ollie is not believed to be a threat to humans — she should be treated like a stray dog, the zoo representatives said — but she is a carnivore, meaning small birds, cats or dogs could be at risk. The National Zoo has set up a hotline at (202) 633-7362 for anyone with information on Ollie’s whereabouts. She is not alone among animal escapees in the area. In 2013, a red panda named Rusty briefly got free before being captured on the streets of the Adams Morgan neighborhood after a few hours. Proving more elusive is yet another red panda, Sunny, from the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk, who was last seen on the night of Jan. 23 and is now thought to have possibly escaped the zoo altogether. The last animal to go missing at the National Zoo, according to the director of communications, Pamela Baker-Masson, was a male agouti, a cat-size rodent, named Macadamia. He escaped for only half-an-hour before being herded home. |