Zebra Escapes From Circus And Runs Loose On Highway

Feb 19th 2010

A 12-year-old zebra named Lima ran away from the circus on Thursday afternoon and straight into rush hour traffic on a busy expressway in Atlanta, Ga. "All of a sudden, a freaking zebra comes running down the street like a car," one witness, Daniel Nance, told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. "Five or six police cars were in hot pursuit."

What the heck happened?

"Our zebras were being exercised in an outdoor pen as usual that day when something startled him," Crystal Drake, spokesperson for the Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus, tells Paw Nation. "Some noise or something in a far parking lot startled him and he came out of the exercise pattern."

Lima bumped up against the fence holding him in. "At that particular joint in the fence and at the speed he was going, it created an opening and he was out and he kept running," says Drake. The zebra galloped through the streets of downtown Atlanta, leaving shocked gasps and double takes in his wake.

"It was about five o'clock on Thursday afternoon when we got reports that a zebra was loose," Officer Eric Schwartz of the Atlanta Police Department tells Paw Nation. "Officers were out there holding up traffic to get the zebra re-routed and contain an area for the zebra."

It wasn't easy. According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Lima dashed through the streets, eluding police officers and his zoo handlers. The striking black-and-white creature apparently even contemplated taking public transit when he ended up near a metro train station, but veered away, ran down a street, across railroad tracks, through a tunnel and down more local streets before sprinting onto an on-ramp and ending up on Interstate 75.