3 Cheetahs Escape New Zealand Wildlife Park
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Three cheetahs swam a moat and crawled through a hole in a rusty fence to escape their enclosure and then briefly roamed inside a wildlife park in New Zealand.
Orana Wildlife Park rushed visitors to a secure area while rangers rounded up the big cats Thursday, park chief executive Lynn Anderson said Friday.
"Our cheetahs, just like a domestic house cat, they all hate swimming, so if you had asked me yesterday would any of our cheetahs swim I would have said no," Anderson told National Radio. "They proved us quite wrong."
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The cats, three youngsters who had been bred at the park, crawled through a fence hole that was exposed recently when greenery was cut back, she said. The breakout at the park near Christchurch lasted about a half hour.
The whole fence around the cheetahs' enclosure will be replaced, Anderson said.
Lucy Tame, a 25-year-old park visitor, said she and her mother took photographs as the three cats made their escape shortly after midday.
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"We saw them sitting in their enclosure and they decided to go for a bit of a swim, one, two, three," she said. After climbing through the hole in the fence, the cats ran in front of a park shuttle bus, causing the driver to jam on his brakes, she said.