When lioness takes a village stroll
Staff Correspondent
She took a swim in the lake, a walk through the village and then sat under a tree to enjoy her just-earned freedom.She might have wondered why people are shutting down doors on her in frenzied fear. But then she did not have much time to think. Zip. And a tranquillising dart shot her to unconsciousness. Lioness Monisha's brief one-and-a-half-hour morning sojourn ended at 7:30am yesterday. Monisha sent a chill down the spines of the people at Mirpur when she succeeded in an escape breaking her cage in the zoo at 6:00am. Alarm spread through Mirpur when zoo officials told residents about the lioness' escape and warned them to be on guard. People were relieved, as the lioness could not sustain her freedom for long. She got scared seeing the people trying to catch her and swam the lake behind the zoo to the village on the other side. There she was seen sitting under a tree in a garden of a house. Soon with the help of police and tranquilliser the zoo authorities caught her. "The lioness fled to a house adjacent to the zoo and we used two darts to tranquillise it," said Syed Ali Ahsan, veterinary officer of Dhaka Zoo. Zookeepers found the lioness already out while her mate lion Bengal was still struggling to get out of the cage when they went to give them breakfast. Mafizur Rahman, curator of the zoo, said the lioness could flee because the cage in the Dhaka Zoo became old, rusty making the grilles fragile.
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