“Have you seen the zebras?” I yelled out of my car window.
“No! But I’m looking for them! Every day!” replied the woman walking her Rottweiler in the hilly, wooded, sprawling expanse of Maryland equine heaven, where a dazzle of zebras were on the loose for more than a month.
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We found out on Thursday their herd was thinned, when officials announced one of them died after being caught in a snare trap.
I think it’s unlikely the rest of them will go willingly back to captivity. Because they’re not running around in your average suburb.
I, too, thought of the Bojangles on Route 301 or the Home Depot or Food Lion dotted between the suburban developments of Marlboro Riding or The Hunt or Oak Creek Club when I heard the zebras were still running around Prince George’s County, more than a month after they broke out of their farm.
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Are they hiding at the Foot Locker in the strip mall? What gives? But after spending a workday hunting them, I totally understand what’s going on here. This is not suburbia.
Zebras run wild after escape from Maryland farm
“This is the country,” said the woman cleaning the front porch of her small, square home with a sweeping, resort-quality view of hills and forest. “And I mean country.”
She hasn’t seen the zebras, either. Not on her route driving a commuter bus in Prince George’s County or near her home off Duley Station Road, right next to the farm that lost them on the last day in August, setting off a celebrity zebra hunt in the county.
A few times, folks have posted photos of the zebras on their exploration of the verdant county. There was a glance behind a backyard fence, one darted across the road at night and the back seat commentary to top them all, a father and son who went fishing and spotted the zebras on their trip back.
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“On the way home he calmly says ‘Dad, I saw the zebras,’？” Joshua DuBois said in a tweet last month, describing the conversation with his 6-year-old son. “Something tells me he actually thinks he saw them. So I do a U on Croom Road, pull into some guy’s driveway and .？.？. BAM. WILD MARYLAND ZEBRAS.”
The funny thing was that his wife actually had dressed the kids up in zebra pajamas and drove them around on a zebra hunt — just for fun — earlier.
So I thought it would be pretty easy to spot them if I spent the day trying. It wasn’t.
I got through half of my audiobook (“Monster Hunter International,” my sons’ cringey action book, in honor of the chase) without spotting a deer, let alone a zebra.
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Upper Marlboro — named for John Churchill, the First Duke of Marlborough, in the early 1700s — isn’t just a bedroom community. Its rural roots, primarily tobacco fields, remain. Prince George’s County still has about 35,000 acres of active farmland.
Move over Florida Man, Maryland Man is coming
As my colleague Dana Hedgpeth reported after talking to experts this week, these zebras are going to be okay in the wilds of Maryland if humans leave them alone. No lions, no drought. The only hunters looking for them — besides the owners — are picture-takers armed with iPhones. They can go for miles before they get to any commercial spaces or main roads.
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This part of the county is acres of sorghum crops, a cashmere goat farm and smaller homesteads on the way to Duley Station Road, where the rest of the 30-head herd lives.
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They came to Maryland from Florida (of course), where their owner, Jerry Holly, had a sizable zoo.
The Micanopy Zoological Preserve made news in 2004 when it took in 53 animals after a jungle cruise attraction in a nearby amusement park went under. The Holly family brought zebras, impalas, ostriches, cranes, lemurs, giraffes, aoudads, mouflons and sable antelopes, according to the Gainesville Sun.
At the property in Maryland, Holly advertised an exotic pet breeding company, Jerry Holly Exotics. “We breed Fennec fox, African Pygmy Hedgehogs, Prairie Dog Pups, Sugar Gliders, Chinchillas, Kinkajous,” his website advertised.
Holly didn’t return my calls and at the farm, a worker who met me at the driveway said Holly wasn’t home. Maryland authorities said he is trying to recapture them.
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Good luck with that.
Remember Ollie the Bobcat? Ollie ditched the National Zoo in 2017, sparking social media feeds musing about how the cat might spend her time in freedom at a 14th Street bar, a steakhouse and a club.
The Ballad of Ollie the Bobcat
Turns out she never even left the zoo.
But the zebras? Those equines came from Florida. They don’t want action. They’re done with drama. They want peace.
The Maryland Zebras Twitter account reflects their chill, understanding their quest for Zen.
“We’re kind of happy about the fading media attention, to be honest. It makes it easier to lay low and just do our thing,” they tweeted.
Animal experts say the zebras can’t be chased, they have to be coaxed back into captivity. (Sadly, I wonder if the snare trap might not have been the best way to go.)
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A month of staying away from their corral — despite all the yummy bait the owners set out for them — made it clear they have no interest in returning to captivity.
So let them stay in the woods, in peace. After all, a zeal of zebras wouldn’t be the weirdest thing found in Maryland.
Twitter: @petulad
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