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Zookeeper taken to hospital after zebra bite

Alexis Levinson Political Reporter
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If you think you’re having a bad Monday, consider that a zookeeper at the National Zoo was taken to the hospital Monday morning after being bitten by a zebra.

The zoo released the information via Twitter.

“This morning at the Zoo a keeper was bitten by a zebra & taken for medical treatment. The zebra is fine. No additional details at this time,” the official account of the National Zoo tweeted.

And, in case you were also worried about the bitten zookeeper and not just the zebra, a second tweet added: “The zookeeper bitten by the zebra was talking & conscious when he was taken to the hospital.”

The biting zebra is named Gumu, and he is one of three male Grevy zebras at the National Zoo. Gumu is 10 years old.

Grevy’s zebras can be “up to nine feet long, weigh up to 990 pounds, and stand up to almost five and a half feet at the shoulder,” according to the National Zoo’s website. Males are “highly territorial.”

The male zookeeper was bitten and had to be taken to the hospital because he was bleeding, Annalisa Meyer, the Zoo’s communications manager, told The Daily Caller. He sustained “several bites,” Jen Zoon, a communications specialist at the Zoo, told TheDC, but she said they did not yet know how many.

Meyer said they do not “know the details of where he was bitten,” and Zoon said they did not know how badly he was bleeding.

Zoon said she was unaware of any previous incident in which Gumu or any other zebra bit a zookeeper.

The zoo is “actively investigating: why the zookeeper was in the enclosure with zebra, Meyer said, which is not how the animals are usually handled.

“We keep a barrier between our staff and dangerous animals,” which the Grevy zebra is considered to be, Meyer said. She said they did not know why the zookeeper was in the enclosure.

In the meantime, Meyer said, Gumu, who was not harmed, “is off exhibit in a holding area” so the zoo can “investigate the incident.”

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Alexis Levinson