Last Thursday, primary school students from Sainte-Thérèse school in Grace-Hollogne were out at Forestia park in Theux. Adventure park in the morning, animal park in the followingnoon… The ideal excursion. With, as a bonus, a fright and a privatized meeting with a young American bison.
The young male, relatively harmless, managed to get out of his enclosure, getting abnormally close to the students (there were regarding sixty of them, with regarding four attendants). The park staff quickly intervened and the school was contacted once more, but the facts reached the non-profit organization Wolf Eyes. Its founder telephoned the park, recorded (without warning and without authorization) a conversation to publish it onYoutubethis Wednesday.
“He lifted the gate”
“There may have been panic generated at the time but it’s really not the event of the centurytells us Adrien Lafontaine, park manager. We have a paddock with four American bison: three males and one female. They are all castrated. But the two youngest remain playful and one of them got a little upset. We found many stones very close to the place where the animal was. Without drawing any conclusion on the origin of the stones, the animal manager concedes that the bison got carried away. “He put his horns in the gate. All of our gates are double hinged except this one… It’s a simple hinge, it should have been like the others. The gate rose and fell, with a end of the gate on the foot of a student I was told.”
The panic of students and teachers
Teachers and students logically panicked in the face of this hairy colossus. “We received an email from several teachers, not from the director. We replied this morning, and we invite them all for a new visit to the park. I tried to contact the school this Wednesday…”
The bison came out “five minutes” from its enclosure, and “the colleagues secured the premises”but the fear is legitimate. “We can understand it, but I’ve been working here for 17 years and if there was really a danger with the bison we would know. The biggest animal in the park is a cow… well I have more confidence in the bison. The animal is impressive and it is a little crazy, but it is not dangerous at all. I can even invite the teachers to enter the enclosure”, continues Adrien Lafontaine, who will certainly think regarding changing the hinge. He concludes. “There is an association fighting once morest zoos which is making a big fuss around it, I tried to contact it. But at the level of European standards, we are far above. This Tuesday once more, there was an intervention by the vets on the youngest… the other three left because they were scared. But I will contact the school once more this Thursday.”
Hoping that the bison, clever, do not find a new fast way to come and meet the visitors.
