Red pandas just wanna be free. (Photo: flowermaze/CC0)

Back in December, Hangzhou Zoo lost three red pandas. On a snowy day, the weight of the snow broke a tree branch, providing a route out of their cage, and the pandas hightailed it out of there, leaving behind their less opportunistic brethren.

Two of the pandas were caught quickly. But one very clever panda managed to live life on the lam, until now.

Finally, deep into the summer months, the panda was spotted in a tree. Zoo workers rushed to the scene, the South China Morning Post reports, and climbed the tree to try to capture the missing panda. Others set up a net below. They tried to be nice. They offered the panda apples. The panda was not interested.

So, they shot it with a tranquilizer gun. “The panda staggered for about three minutes then fell from the tree into the net,” the Morning Post reports.

The fugitive panda will now return to the zoo, another entry in the annals of failed zoo escapes, once again proving that flamingos are the only animals that manage to escape zoo captivity for good.

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