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19 OCTOBER 2004 · AND AN ECHO IN 2026
The escape: Five months after Coolah's death, the zoo made national news of a different kind. On 19 October 2004, five wildebeests broke through a gate and jumped a fence and roamed the streets of a north-central Fort Wayne neighborhood for hours. Fort Wayne police and Animal Care and Control officers cornered and tranquilized the animals and returned them to the zoo — but two of the five had suffered broken legs in the escape and were euthanized. The zoo was fined $825 for the incident, a figure the wire reports carried as faithfully as the escape itself. The episode has a documented echo: on 10 July 2026 the zoo evacuated its African Savanna exhibit after a male white-bearded wildebeest — an animal that had arrived only three days earlier, on 7 July — moved from its habitat into an adjacent one through a shared pond. That time no fence was jumped and no street was roamed; the animal returned to his enclosure on his own, and the story ended with an evacuation drill that worked. Between the two dates sits the whole modern history of zoo-keeping in one pair of entries: the same animal, the same zoo, and twenty-two years of learning what a gate is for.
Sources: United Press International, "Zoo fined for wildebeest escapes," 17 February 2005, and USA Today, "Five wildebeests escape from Fort Wayne zoo," 19 October 2004 (the escape, the captures, the two euthanized animals, the $825 fine), as carried in the Fort Wayne Zoo's published history record; WBCL, "Wildebeest Escapes Enclosure at Fort Wayne Zoo," 13 July 2026, and WANE 15 reporting of 10–11 July 2026 (the 2026 habitat slip, the evacuation, the animal's return).