Ok, the world is getting really freaky now
by digby
Residents of Tbilisi, Georgia, were warned to stay off the streets on Sunday lest they encounter one of the lions, tigers, bears or other beasts set free from the city zoo after floodwaters devastated the center of the capital.
At least 12 people died in the floods and 24 were reported missing, according to Davit Narmania, the mayor of Tbilisi. “Not all the animals that fled from the zoo have been caught yet,” the mayor was quoted as saying by Russia’s Interfax news agency. “Therefore I would ask the population to avoid moving around the city except in cases of acute need.”
It was not immediately clear how many animals were on the loose and how many had been killed in the floods. A usually burbling stream that feeds through a narrow gorge in parts of downtown Tbilisi turned into a raging torrent that burst its banks after heavy rains on Saturday night, local news reports said.
Images from the city underscored the animal anarchy — one showed a group of people herding a hippopotamus along a street choked with mud, after it had been hit by a tranquilizer dart. Others showed the corpses of animals amid the debris of wrecked cars and buildings. A bear perched above the roiling waters on an air-conditioning unit.
A special police team was dispatched to the neighborhoods around the zoo to hunt for the roaming animals, according to local television reports.
Some of the animals were killed when they could not be captured, the report said, including six wolves found on the grounds of a children’s hospital as well as a bear and a hyena. Some residents expressed indignation at those killings, but officials said various animals were too aggressive to be captured.
The director of the zoo, Zurab Gurielidze, called for an investigation into the killing of the animals. “If an animal attacked people, it’s one thing,” he was quoted as saying by Interfax. “I know that no order was issued to kill animals. Some policemen exceeded their authority.”
Zoo workers were quoted as saying that a full animal census was impossible because parts of the zoo remained under water, but a popular albino lion called Sumba was found shot dead on the grounds.
I realize floods have happened forever and that there have been times zoo animals escaped into big cities. But there’s just something that feels so contemporary about this one.
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