Search Exotic Incidents Database

A 12-ft-long Burmese python escaped from his enclosure.

Fu Manchu, an orangutan at the Henry Doorly Zoo, picked the lock of his cage each night and escaped. Workers eventually found the pick in Fu Manchu’s cage; the pick was a piece of wire he hid between his lips and gums.

A black bear escaped from his home and was later recaptured. This was the fourth time the bear had escaped.

A python was found in Everett’s Silver Lake. It was suspected that the snake was someone’s “pet.”

A gray fox wearing a collar was spotted alongside a road. The fox had been kept in a ferret cage.

A “pet” mountain lion escaped his home and attacked and injured a neighbor’s dog. The dog was rushed to a vet hospital with more than 100 lacerations, where he was treated and released.

A replica Old West stagecoach at Knott’s Berry Farm, driven by two employees and pulled by four horses, failed to stop at the end of its six-minute ride that carried eleven passengers. The momentum of coach, which can weigh up to 4,000 lbs when fully loaded, prevented the horses from stopping after the braking system reportedly failed. The horses tried to turn but couldn’t, and the first horse on the left died after slamming into a chain-link fence with wooded slats. Four passengers were treated for minor injuries as well as the employee sitting shotgun, who was treated for a shoulder injury.

Halala, a female cheetah at the St. Louis Zoo, used vines to climb halfway up the 10-foot moat wall and leap over it to freedom. After only 20 minutes, Halala was herded back into her enclosure without incident.

A man who was bitten six times on his forearm and wrist by his “pet” mamba was rushed to the hospital. The man also possessed 26 poisonous snakes and 4 small crocodiles in his mobile home where four small children also resided.

A first-grader was bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake.