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- Seven zebras remain on the loose in Maryland.
- It has been one month since their escape and local authorities are baffled.
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One month and one day after they escaped from a farm in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, five zebras are still roaming free. They continue to ramble across suburban Prince George’s County and nobody has any idea on how to capture them.
The five zebras got loose from a larger group of 39 zebras that had been brought to the farm from Florida in mid-August. There have been multiple attempts to wrangle them in, but all efforts have failed.
Both local police and the farm have worked together to set up feeding stations throughout the area. The corrals are baited with grain and rigged with a gate that will swing shut to capture the zebras when they enter.
But the zebras have foiled the effort week after week.
They have also escaped plans to tranquilize them and bring them home.
“I can say we haven’t caught them yet,” chief of the Prince George’s County Animal Services Division Rodney Taylor said on Thursday. “They’re still loose. They still have the feeding station out to catch them.”
Taylor declined to offer any further details and is clearly frustrated by the continued failed efforts. It’s pretty funny.
Meanwhile, the locals are loving the zebras and have quickly made them something of internet celebrities.
-Today August (6) asks me to go fishing before sunset. On the way home he calmly says “dad I saw the zebras”
-Something tells me he actually thinks he saw them. So I do a U on Croom Road, pull into some guy’s driveway and…BAM. WILD MARYLAND ZEBRAS 🤣 🦓 🦓 @fox5dc @Robert7News pic.twitter.com/uISFfuPOpS— Joshua DuBois (@joshuadubois) September 20, 2021
Others have denied letting them loose without being asked, which is awfully suspicious, no?
It is pretty impressive that the zebras continue to thrive in the area. And, according to a professor of zoology at Princeton, they could continue to adapt.
Daniel Rubenstein told TheIndianExpress that although they “won’t like the snow,” the zebras should be able to survive colder weather. He says that many zebras live on the slops of Mount Kenya, where temperatures dip into the 30s.
“They should be able to thrive quite nicely,” Rubinstein said. “They will be able to sustain themselves naturally on that landscape.”
I love these zebras. I hope they never get caught.