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At least one Spingbok had some luck this weekend
Johannesburg, November 15, 2004
At 9am on Saturday the Johannesburg Zoo began receiving calls from members of the public telling us about an antelope that was running along Jan Smuts Avenue.
Zoo staff drove around the surrounding neighborhoods but could find no antelope, throughout the day calls continued to come in from Rosebank, Parkhurst, Parkwood and Parkview. The Zoo had already ascertained that it was not one of our antelope but continued to search.
Eventually at 2pm I got a call from the Rosebank Police to say that they had located the buck on Bolton Avenue and were bringing it to the Zoo. It turned out to be a springbok ewe, only a few weeks old.
Besides scratches, bleeding hooves and the stress factor the lamb is doing very well, it is suckling on a bottle at the moment.
Radio reports went out requesting that anyone with information as to the origin of the springbok should contact Carnivores Curator Dominic Moss, and on Sunday morning a gentleman came forward to say that he had purchased the springbok with the intention of putting it onto his game farm. But it had escaped from his home in Saxonwold before he could get it to the farm.
We estimated it ran more that 8 km, through 5 suburbs and crossed Jan Smuts Avenue twice. Not bad for a few weeks old.
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