GREAT ESCAPE

When seven chimpanzees broke free from their enclosure at Furuvik Zoo in Sweden, their keepers faced a terrible choice. This is the story of the most dramatic 72 hours of their lives

- IMOGEN WEST-KNIGHTS

IT WAS a freezing winter's morning in the little town of Furuvik in Sweden. Outside it was -15°C, and even inside it was so chilly that residents were wearing jackets and hats.

Rickard Beldt, a zookeeper who was responsible for looking after the chimpanzees at the town's zoo, was away at a meeting about health and safety in a nearby city when his phone rang. It was one of his colleagues.

Furuvik Zoo is only open to the public during the summer, but on the morning of 14 December 2002 there were still 35 people on site: administrative staff, zookeepers attending to the animals and contractors renovating the amusement park.

"Don't come to the park today," she said.

Furuvik Zoo was home to seven chimps. They lived in a building that the park refers to as the ape house, in a series of colour-coded enclosures (green, brown and yellow) over two levels, connected to one another by hatches.

That morning, two of Beldt's colleagues, Lucas Eriksson* and Eva Lindgren* had been tending to the chimpanzees. At noon, Lucas and Eva unlocked the hatches that connect all the enclosures to each other so the chimps could move freely, and left by a door on the upper floor of one of the enclosures.

According to the zoo's internal notes on the incident, as Lucas reached the lower floor, he was struck by a strange feeling. Keepers are supposed to double check that each door is locked. Had they done that? He looked up, and his stomach dropped. The door on the upper floor of the enclosure was open.

He ran up the stairs, but it was already too late. He caught sight of Selma, a 14-year-old chimpanzee, lumbering off down the corridor outside the enclosure. Santino, the park's oldest chimp at 44, was at the door.