Ollie the Bobcat Is Found Near Her Zoo’s Birdhouse (Where Else?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/us/ollie-bobcat-found-national-zoo.html

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She had her fun and, it appears, she was ready to come home.

After a brief flirtation with freedom, Ollie, a 6-year-old bobcat living at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, was found on Wednesday near the zoo’s birdhouse, officials said.

Though they could not retrace the 25-pound bobcat’s nearly two-day adventure, officials said she might have left the property but most likely never strayed more than two miles from the zoo.

“We’re just over-the-moon happy,” Craig Saffoe, the zoo’s curator of great cats, said at an evening news conference.

Ollie’s disappearance on Monday morning reportedly led some area schools to cancel recess and inspired a slew of jokes, a Twitter parody account and grand metaphors. (She had become “a symbol of freedom and one of its last hopes in a world gone rotten,” The Washingtonian proclaimed on Wednesday night.)

But for zoo officials, her capture, thanks to a tip from a visitor who spotted her crossing a walkway, offered relief.

After receiving the tip, staff members at the birdhouse notified Mr. Saffoe and his colleagues, who set up live traps in the area of the sighting.

“Within 15 minutes, the birdhouse keepers called us back and told us, ‘We have a bobcat in a trap up here,’” he said.

Ollie was taken to a veterinary hospital, where she was determined to have suffered no harm from the adventure, save a small cut on her front left paw, said Dr. Brandie Smith, the National Zoo’s associate director for animal care sciences.

“There’s no need to treat it,” Dr. Smith said. “We’re just letting her be kind of calm and safe and secure.”

Ollie will receive a full examination on Thursday, and the zoo plans to investigate how she was able to leave her enclosure, Dr. Smith added.

Ollie probably never traveled far, apparently sticking close to Rock Creek, which abuts the zoo, Mr. Saffoe said. Reported sightings of her on a nearby road appeared to be credible, too, he added.

“I think she wanted to go out, have a little bit of fun, see what it was like on the outside,” he said.

Zoo officials said this week that they did not consider Ollie a threat to humans, but that she might pose a threat to cats, dogs and birds. Mr. Saffoe described her on Wednesday as “standoffish.”

“She’s not the cat who’s going to walk right up to you,” he said, adding that he had suspected she was nearby and watching as the zoo staff set up the trap that ultimately ensnared her.

“She was just waiting to see what kind of goodies we left for her,” he said.

The last animal to vanish at the National Zoo was a male agouti — a cat-size rodent — named Macadamia, said Pamela Baker-Masson, a zoo spokeswoman. He escaped for only a half-hour.

The Virginia Zoo in Norfolk has not been as fortunate: It has yet to report any reliable leads in the search for Sunny, a red panda who disappeared early last week.