Orangutans

In his nursery, Ken would unscrew every nut that he could find and remove the bolts. Keepers would no sooner put them back when he would be at it again. Nor could he ever be kept in his room. One of his favorite schemes, a trainer described, was to “grab someone’s hand who was waving at him, and swing himself up.” Good luck trying to catch the little red ape after that. Yet, for the zoo, his later life would represent a much greater challenge. In fact, when Ken was first moved into the Heart of the Zoo exhibit, he was caught throwing rocks at a television crew that was filming the neighboring gorillas. When he ran out of rocks, Ken threw his own shit. The crew scattered. In an ironic twist, there would be a similar problem at the zoo several years down the road. Large glass windows had been installed in the exhibit, and the orangutans took to pitching rocks at them. San Diego officials, thinking quickly, instituted an exchange program. One non-thrown stone would get you a banana. But the orangutans were not interested and kept trying to break the windows. The park finally had to bring in a contractor to dig up the entire ground floor of the exhibit in order to remove all of the rocks, as each shattered window cost the zoo $900 to replace. What happened next? The orangutans began to tear the ceramic insulators off of the wall and threw them instead. Evidently, these animals really wanted out.

Ken Allen would make his first successful escape on June 13, 1985. Keepers found him mingling among visitors outside of his exhibit. After he was placed into isolation, officials set to work trying to figure out exactly how he did it. A few years previous, Ken had constructed a ladder out of some fallen branches. “He was very methodical about it,” one employee noted. “He would carefully put the foot of the ladder on the ground, and pound it with his hand to be sure it was solid, and then he would climb to the top of the wall and climb back down.” But there was no ladder to be seen this time. So that was ruled out. It might have been human error: a door left ajar or something. But that did not appear to be the case either. The zoo was definitely stumped. Nonetheless, it was not going take any chances. Cinder-blocks were stacked to raise the height of the retaining wall, and several portions were smoothed over to prevent any handholds. These alterations, the zoo anticipated, would do the trick. They didn’t.

Ken escaped again on July 29th and then again in early August. Each time, San Diego would make additional changes. The walls were made taller. The surfaces were made smoother. Electrified wires were added to guard the perimeter. Keepers brought in new females into the exhibit. The hope here was that one of young ladies might attract Ken’s attention. We want, the trainers’ stated bluntly, “to turn his wanderlust into just lust.” San Diego even started using spies. Zoo employees would disguise themselves as visitors. They would dress up in blue jeans, sunglasses, and a Hawaiian shirt, and watch from afar to see if they could spot anything unusual happening. The zoo eventually began utilizing two spies at the once, as it was certain that Ken was recognizing its informants. This belief would be affirmed.

Here.