Cougar that escaped Kansas zoo is recaptured, officials say

A cougar that escaped its enclosure at a Kansas zoo on Monday has been recaptured, officials say.

The animal apparently didn’t get very far.

The cougar escaped Riverside Park and Ralph Mitchell Zoo in Independence, a town in southeast Kansas, according to a news release posted on Facebook. Park officials said the cougar was found on zoo grounds.

Officials have not yet released how the cougar escaped.

Tink, a female cougar, arrived at the zoo in 2011 after being rescued by the Tulsa Zoological Park, according to Friends of Riverside Park and Zoo, a funding organization for the zoo. She is 8 years old.

In 2011, she was found in the backyard of a home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, perched in a tree, Tulsa World reported. The mountain lion was captured and taken to the Tulsa Zoo for care, the newspaper reported.

A DNA test showed that Tink likely came from the Black Hills area in South Dakota, but how she arrived in Oklahoma was a mystery, the Rapid City Journal reported. Because she couldn’t be released into the wild, the Tulsa Zoo relocated Tink to Independence, the newspaper reported.

This story was originally published September 30, 2019 at 12:59 PM with the headline "Cougar that escaped Kansas zoo is recaptured, officials say."