They like to move it move it... across Maryland

September 8, 2021 9:39 AM

Zebras Spotted in Prince George's County “I thought it was a deer for a second and then I saw it was a zebra - a whole zebra right next to our playground right next to the fence. So, I ran upstairs to get a better look up there and then I said, 'Mom, there's, like, a zebra outside our playground' and she didn’t believe me and said I was crazy."
posted by I_Love_Bananas (25 comments total)

Maybe we are the virus...
posted by chavenet at 9:45 AM on September 8, 2021

Nature is recovering!
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:48 AM on September 8, 2021 [9 favorites]

Ever since a zebra stole my packed lunch at West Midlands Safari Park a very long time ago, I have failed to be impressed with this evolutionary bar-coded donkey animal thing. One day I'll let it go THEY WERE CHEESE AND PICKLE SANDWICHES AND I WASN'T ALLOWED ANY REPLACEMENT FOOD UNTIL TEATIME.
posted by Wordshore at 10:06 AM on September 8, 2021 [24 favorites]

Surprised to learn that zebras are spotted anywhere
posted by babelfish at 10:22 AM on September 8, 2021 [98 favorites]

^ "Innocent Bystanders Devastated By Unprovoked Dad Joke Attack"
posted by elkevelvet at 10:24 AM on September 8, 2021 [51 favorites]

I know someone who grew up on a farm where they boarded other people's horses, and she says that someone once boarded their zebra there. I hadn't even realized that it was legal to own a zebra in the US, but apparently it is. I'm not sure why one would want to own a zebra, though. Is there any reason other than bragging rights that a person would want a pet zebra?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:25 AM on September 8, 2021

Well, the flag is a big plus.

Wait, sorry - wrong dad joke.
posted by nickmark at 10:37 AM on September 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

Is there any reason other than bragging rights that a person would want a pet zebra?

Perhaps they're hoping to be invited to a black-and-white ball?
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 10:37 AM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Not trying to one-up on our cousins in the US of A, but over here in England our animals have progressed beyond the bar code evolutionary stage.
posted by Wordshore at 10:50 AM on September 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

Newspaper-magnate William Randolph Hearst imported zebras to his estate, and they escaped, reproduced, and are often spotted around his castle on the central California coast. Maybe these zebras will colonize PG county (where I grew up) as well. But they won't appreciate the winters there -- like me, I bet those zebras would be happier in California.
posted by Rash at 10:54 AM on September 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

For years, when driving Route 15N, just below the Catoctin Wildlife Preserve, I'd see a zebra mingling with horses in a field. My children thought I was lying about this until they saw it for themselves.
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:22 PM on September 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

Medical professionals, please take note: Sometimes when you hear hooves, it's not horses.
posted by MrVisible at 1:59 PM on September 8, 2021 [17 favorites]

Is there any reason other than bragging rights that a person would want a pet zebra?

Not really. There were a few brief and ill-fated English attempt to domesticate zebras around the 1890s-1930s because they're not susceptible to the trypanosomiasis conveyed by tsetse fly bites and there was a notion that wild animals were perhaps inherently better than domestic ones. (There were similar programs cross-breeding wolves and German Shepherds around this same time for the latter reason.)

Anyway, these brave and enterprising souls quickly ran afoul of a few key points on zebra behavior.

1) Zebras are really aggressive, as befits an equid that lives in the middle of a whole bunch of enormous carnivores.
2) Because they are really aggressive, zebra social structures are intensely hierarchical and extremely xenophobic. This means you cannot just turn your zebra out with strange zebras--or even strange horses--and assume they will get along in a pinch. It also means that anything new will be treated with suspicion by the zebra, and their automatic response might be flight but might equally be fight.
3) Zebras have choppy, upright shoulders and gaits that are apparently miserable to ride. There was slightly more success training zebras to pull carriages or carts in teams, but they are smaller than horses and not so fast, and if you try to train lots of zebras to haul as a team, you have to make sure that the zebras in question know each other, tolerate each other, and don't decide to carry out a hierarchical dispute in the middle of your wagon team.

Essentially, having a zebra is basically like having a donkey if donkeys really hated you. Pre-emptively. There might be a case to be made that they could make good flock guards, the way people use donkeys as flock guards against coyotes, but I'm not sure that putting up with the zebra would make it worth it.
posted by sciatrix at 2:13 PM on September 8, 2021 [41 favorites]

Locals directed us beyond the proper limits of the town of Valladolid, Mexico saying the circus was in town and offered a unique, authentic taste of Mexican culture but as we neared the site our attention was captured by the ethereal voices of a children's choir wafting from the ancient colonial cathedral across the road and rising above the surrounding Yucatan jungle. We quietly crept in but, wary of disrupting their practice, quickly turned up some stone steps to the side and found ourselves climbing the bell tower flight by flight until we reached the top looking out above the canopy. With the hymns as our soundtrack and the glowing sun setting low into the jungle, we gazed across the road and down upon the dusty fairground where the festival was still setting up and realized we were watching two carnies put the finishing touches on a couple of donkeys, now an exotic half dozen freshly hand-painted "zebras" certain to thrill the townsfolk. It was as Fellini a moment as is possible in real life - and as cherished a memory as is possible in a lifetime.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 2:17 PM on September 8, 2021 [19 favorites]

sciatrix: "if you try to train lots of zebras to haul as a team, you have to make sure that the zebras in question know each other, tolerate each other, and don't decide to carry out a hierarchical dispute in the middle of your wagon team. "

I used to think my job was akin to herding cats, now I know it's herding zebras.
posted by chavenet at 4:46 PM on September 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

Here in New Mexico, someone thought it would be a great idea to introduce a larger game animal into the grasslands on White Sands. And now we have thousands of oryx. They have thrived and there's a lottery for hunting licenses. I hear they are also not friendly.
posted by answergrape at 5:14 PM on September 8, 2021

Could be worse
posted by leslies at 5:56 PM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

North of zebras: The Wandering Wallaby. "Alas, what could have turned into a Homeward Bound-style odyssey came to an abrupt close as the Pennsylvania Game Commission stepped in, rescuing the [wallaby] for safekeeping and suggesting that it was unlikely in any case that the former owner of the indigenously Australian mammal had the proper ownership paperwork for their supposed companion to begin with."
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:02 PM on September 8, 2021

Perhaps the mules are just starting football season.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:29 PM on September 8, 2021

There were (and probably still are) feral wallabies in England; their ancestors are believed to have been released from private ownership when England tightened up its notoriously lax wild-animal-ownership laws sometime in the 1960s or so.
posted by acb at 1:19 AM on September 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

I thought it was a deer for a second and then I saw it was a zebra - a whole zebra right next to our playground right next to the fence.

That raises some disturbing questions.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:32 PM on September 9, 2021

Using "whole" as an intensifier in this way is common in AAVE, but seems to have gotten very little lexicographic or academic attention (as far as I can tell). It may be more familiar in the phrase "a whole baby". This one-comment thread is actually the only discussion I can find from a quick Google.

I would add this sense to Wiktionary but just the thought of getting into another circular RFV-sense debate makes me extremely tired.
posted by Not A Thing at 12:43 PM on September 9, 2021

I was imagining something more like having a zebra whose stripes were green-on-white, and using greenscreen tech to make it look like it was only partway there on video.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:46 PM on September 9, 2021

MonkeyToes, there certainly was a semi-feral colony of wallabies living at Leonardslee Gardens in Sussex in the 1980s, when my father was head gardener there, and according to the website, they are still there. The then owner's great-grandfather had been one of those intrepid Victorian aristocrats who traveled the world and brought back living souvenirs to install in his (extremely large) garden. At one time there were apparently Barbary sheep, beavers, capybaras and several other species, but only the wallabies lasted. As I remember, they lived in paddock of their own and were left pretty much to their own devices, apart from a few bales of hay in the winter, and often wandered out into the surrounding woods to give late-night drivers heart attacks.

Talking of 19th century types with more money than sense, Baron Rothschild had a carriage drawn by four zebras (picture in the link, as well as one of him riding a giant tortoise). He was seriously interested in zoology though, and had a fantastic collection, since in those days an interest in wild animals usually involved collecting dead ones. The collection lives on as the Tring Zoological Museum, and is very well worth a visit.
posted by Fuchsoid at 5:07 PM on September 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

AFAIK they are still on the loose. “I’m telling you I haven’t been drinking, and I haven’t been doing any drugs. There are zebras in my backyard,” resident Alexis Curling told an operator... While the five zebras remain on the run, they are no longer all together, with animal services stating a trio of the zebras are wandering together, while the other two are together as a pair.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:39 AM on September 11, 2021