2021 seems to have been the year of the zebra. For whatever reason, the striped animals seem to be making headlines across the country this year like never before.
It all started this summer when an angry zebra broke free in middle Tennessee and had to be tased by authorities.
Then more than a month ago, a group of five zebras busted loose from a farm in suburban Maryland. The situation took a peculiar turn when a member of Congress jokingly issued an alibi recusing herself from being the one to let the zebras lose despite no accusations of being involved. A month later, those zebras are still roaming free with no indication they will be caught anytime soon.
Now two more zebras in Illinois have made headlines for making a great escape and leading police on a two-hour chase through traffic.
According to BroBible, Pingree Grove, Illinois, residents thought they were hallucinating when they thought they saw zebras stampeding through the neighborhood, but it turns out they were not.
At roughly 5:21 PM on Sunday, the local sheriff’s department was dispatched to Route 47 to investigate a report of animals in the roadway after a young male and female zebra reportedly escaped their enclosure at a nearby pumpkin patch and apple orchard.
Customers near the pumpkin patch were the first to notice the zebras had gotten loose, and they quickly notified employees, and from there, the chase was on.
Because the zebras were roaming free near I-90, the Illinois state police joined local police forces in efforts to subdue the zebras.
Both authorities and employees from the farm where the zebras escaped kept in hot pursuit as police blocked multiple streets in hopes of preventing the zebras from getting hit by a car.
Soon it turned from a car chase to an off-road adventure as ATVs were used to track the zebras for more than two hours. One zebra was eventually caught near the road, while the other was corraled at a nearby farm pasture.
Local police said they had dealt with loose animals before, but this was a whole new challenge.
“We’re used to loose cows, horses, all kinds of livestock. We’ve had emus — emus! — over the years, because there is an emu farm up that way. But zebras were a first. “How do we catch zebras? They didn’t teach us that at the police academy.”
On the other hand, Jacob Goebbert, one of the pumpkin patch employees, found the zebra chase to be quite the adrenaline rush.
“It was pretty exciting for a while. It was all hands on deck.”
Fortunately, no zebras or people were harmed during the high-speed chase, and the farm is currently investigating how the zebras managed to bust loose in the first place.
