Have they caught those zebras yet? As I write this, five zebras are on the loose somewhere in Maryland. I guess those stripes really do make for good camouflage.

       Wild animals — and even domesticated ones — periodically escape. They wanna be free. I grazed around in old newspapers on the lookout for notable escapes from our own National Zoo.

       Support our journalism. Subscribe today ArrowRight

       1892: A grizzly discover

       On May 24, 1892, a boy walking near Peirce Mill spied an unusual animal atop a nearby hill. It was a grizzly bear. According to the Washington Evening Star, the boy “immediately put forth all his powers of locomotion to get away from the uncomfortable-looking animal.”

       The three-year-old bear had escaped from the National Zoo, to which it had been sent eight months earlier from Yellowstone National Park. The grizzly was known to have a bad disposition, its keepers said, but, fortunately, had been fed recently and so was unlikely to eat anyone. Still, news of the bear’s escape “caused a feeling of uneasiness, especially to those persons who had to send their children to school,” the Star reported.

       Advertisement

       Story continues below advertisement

       A posse of about two dozen men was quickly organized, its members armed with pistols, pitchforks, pick handles and stones. When the bear was located, head zookeeper William Blackburne peppered it with both barrels of his shotgun before it was killed by a farmer named Routt.

       Zoo superintendent Frank Baker blamed the bear’s escape on the zoo’s stingy budget, which provided enough money to hire only a single night watchman.

       “I do not want to be captious, but desire the public to understand the facts,” Baker told The Washington Post. “I am not prepared to say what we could do if one of the big elephants should get loose. It is not a very easy matter to kill an elephant, you know.”

       1902: Wolf, man

       On the morning of Oct. 18, 1902, guards at the National Zoo looked on as what they believed to be a dog trotted past them and out of the zoo. It was not a dog, but an eight-month-old wolf pup, part of the zoo collection.

       Advertisement

       Story continues below advertisement

       The same morning, two children were attacked on the outskirts of Rock Creek Park, near Klingle Road. The animal buried its teeth in the neck of a three-year-old girl, then bit the hand of her seven-year-old sister as she tried to wrest the beast away. The wolf later attacked a terrier and a collie in Cleveland Park. The collie “more than held its own,” wrote the Star, “and drove the wolf to the woods.”

       The wolf wound up at the Woodley Road home of Rep. Francis G. Newlands, whose groundskeeper managed to shoot it in the hip. The injured animal survived and was returned to the zoo, where it drew huge crowds. Zoo officials insisted the children were not attacked by the wolf but by a dog.

       Head keeper Blackburne said, “If we thought the wolf inflicted the wounds, we would willingly admit it, as we have no desire to conceal anything, but there is no necessity for people to become unreasonably alarmed, as is always the case over a scare aroused by the escape of a wild animal.”

       1966: Where eagles dare

       On March 28, 1966, an African fishing eagle squeezed through a small hole in his enclosure at the National Zoo’s Bird House and flapped to freedom. For a while, he alighted on a lamp post at the Sheraton Park hotel. Then he headed into a residential area.

       Advertisement

       Story continues below advertisement

       A resident on 29th Place NW tried to lure the eagle down with hot dogs and rolls, but the bird was uninterested. As the name implies, African fishing eagles eat only fish.

       After a few days in Northwest D.C., the eagle flew to Virginia, where it settled into trees along the Potomac. Spectators there brought it fish.

       The eagle was followed by zookeepers who “kept hoping that he would roost at night and stay put,” zoologist Marion McCrane told The Post.

       But very bright moonlight meant the bird could see anyone approaching with nets — and though the African fishing eagle liked to fish, it really hated nets.

       After a week flying free, the eagle winged its way back to the zoo of its own accord.

       1981: Oh, deer

       On the afternoon of May 30, 1981, traffic on Connecticut Avenue in Cleveland Park came to a standstill as an animal bounded up the street, pursued by two men.

       Advertisement

       Story continues below advertisement

       “This is crazy, I thought,” Janet Dowling, an eyewitness, told a reporter for the Star. “Two men on foot trying to catch a kangaroo that has a three-block lead?”

       It was not a kangaroo but a muntjac, a small Asian deer with sharp teeth and a loping gait. The animal had slipped from his enclosure about a week earlier, but until then had stayed on the zoo grounds.

       “It’s normal for a frightened, escaped animal not to just take off,” the zoo’s Miles Roberts explained. But as keepers tried to capture the muntjac near the Bird House, it sprinted out the front entrance of the zoo.

       It jumped over a hedge near Macomb Street, startling a woman who was sunbathing on the other side. It was eventually cornered near a garage on Newark Street, netted and returned to the zoo.

       Said Roberts, “To tell you the truth, I was sad to see the little guy go back into his cage myself.”

       Twitter: @johnkelly

       For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.