[URBAN NOTE] "Fugitive capybara captured in Toronto park 19 days after zoo escape"

[rfmcdonald]

The Guardian reports.

For 19 days, the renegades roamed through a forested Toronto park, munching on grass and frolicking in ponds while social media celebrated them as folk heroes.

But the brief taste of freedom has come to an abrupt end for one of the capybaras that escaped last month from a Toronto zoo. The dog-sized rodent – native to South America and resembling a large, tailless beaver with stumpy legs – was lured into a metal cage on Sunday evening in one corner of a 400-acre park in the city.

Two capybaras, one male and one female, bolted from a small zoo in the park on 24 May. It was their first day at the High Park zoo, after being brought in from a breeder in Texas to join Chewie, the zoo’s lone capybara.

[. . .]

After initial attempts to attract the rodents by playing capybara calls over a speaker yielded no results, search teams turned to traps baited with corn and fruit to lure the animals.

Only one of them was caught on Sunday, the other capybara remains at large.