Red panda escapes from Australian zoo, is found in fig tree two days later

A wild situation unfolded when a red panda escaped from an Australian zoo.

Zookeepers located the small mammal in a fig tree at a local park on Sunday — two days after it broke loose from the Adelaide Zoo — but were unsuccessful in coaxing the animal down with treats like bamboo and sweet corn, officials said.

They ultimately needed to use a tranquilizer on the red panda, whose name is Ravi. Officials caught the animal using blankets once it fell from the tree.

Ravi the red panda is pictured in a tree on Sunday.

“Ravi’s doing really well,” Phil Ainsley, the director of the zoo, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“Settling down into animal health hospital, where he’s just going to spend the next two or three days after being on the run. Just want to make sure he’s all healthy and recovered from his adventure.”

Ravi, who is 7 years old, had only gotten to the Adelaide Zoo a week before his escape. The zoo is now working to determine how Ravi got out of his enclosure last Friday.

Officials managed to capture the animal after using a tranquilizer.

“Obviously he’d just arrived and was testing his enclosure,” Ainsley said. “We know that red pandas are incredibly agile, and renowned for being escapologists.”

Red pandas, which originally hail from China and the eastern Himalayas, typically weigh around 13 or 14 pounds.

With News Wire Services