A black bear cub scaled a 12-foot fence in its new enclosure at an Ohio zoo and escaped for about 15 minutes before being corralled and sedated.
The Columbus Zoo was put on lockdown Saturday morning for a few minutes until workers could contain the 7-month-old black cub named Joan, said zoo spokeswoman Patty Peters.
No one was hurt.
Two rescue cubs that had been abandoned in the wild and arrived at the zoo just a few months ago were being moved into a new habitat Saturday. The one named after rocker Joan Jett climbed the fence and managed to evade a “hot wire” that would have given her a jolt, Peters said.
The cub stayed between her habitat and a wolverine exhibit before going over a wooden fence, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
Animal-care specialists were standing near the area when the cub started up the fence but were unable to stop her. “She went a lot quicker than anyone anticipated,” Carrie Pratt, curator of the North America exhibit, told the newspaper.
Employees then trapped her inside a building where she was sedated.
The bears’ new enclosure had recently been renovated and had been home to adult bears, Peters said. The enclosure will need modifications for the cubs, she said.
Just a month ago, a response team at another Ohio zoo in Cincinnati shot and killed a 400-poound gorilla after a boy got inside its enclosure and was dragged by the animal.
The boy apparently climbed over a barrier and made his way through some bushes and fell into a shallow moat.
