One of two rodents, who became social media celebrities after escaping less than a day after they arrived at High Park zoo, was lured into a metal cage

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

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.

The door on their cage reportedly wasn’t properly closed and the pair, dubbed Bonnie and Clyde by zoo staff, fled.

The zoo initially downplayed the escape, saying that the pair were simply “out exploring the park”. They described the animals as shy, but warned residents not to approach the animals. The world’s largest rodent, capybaras can grow to weigh as much as 150lb. Just six months old, Toronto’s rogue capybaras are around 30lb in size.

Their escape – after a lifetime spent in captivity – captured the city’s imagination, with social media playfully showing the animals emerging from last week’s sinkhole in Ottawa or commandeering a getaway car.

Inevitably, capybara Twitter accounts were set up taunting the dozens of park employees and capybara hunters out searching for the fugitives: “We can hear helicopters overhead. Is that you looking for us,@HighParkZoo?”



Hundreds of Toronto residents reporting sightings. John Tory, Toronto’s mayor, visited the zoo and snapped a photo of Chewie sitting alone on a patch of concrete in his cage. “This one is lonely,” he wrote on Twitter.

At times their adventures were anything but covert; last week one of them popped up on news cameras, lolling around in a pond to the delight of reporters.

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.

Last year a peacock escaped the High Park zoo, home to llamas, buffalo, wallabies, emus and sheep. It strutted around a Toronto neighbourhood for several days before being captured.