Little Rock, Ark. – An escaped chimpanzee at the Little Rock Zoo raided a kitchen cupboard and did a little cleaning with a toilet brush before sedatives knocked her out.
The 120-pound primate, Judy, escaped Tuesday into a service area when a zookeeper opened a door to her sleeping quarters, unaware the animal was still inside. As keepers tried to woo Judy back into her cage, she rummaged through a refrigerator where chimp snacks are stored. She opened kitchen cupboards, pulled out juice and soft drinks and took swigs from bottles she managed to open.
“Then she went in the bathroom and picked up a toilet brush and cleaned the toilet,” primate keeper Ann Rademacher said. “Her technique was good enough to make me think she must have done it before.”
The 37-year-old Judy was a house pet before arriving at the zoo in 1988. Rademacher said that might explain how Judy knew how to wring out a sponge and scrub down the fridge.
The chimp accepted a strawberry yogurt laced with a sedative.
When it didn’t work, keepers waited until she was distracted by more food and injected her.
Within five minutes, she fell asleep on top of the refrigerator with half a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread she had pulled out of the freezer.
