See, our gorillas have good Southern manners and don’t need shooting.
What I’d like to know is:
If they have an ordered list of which animals are to be shot…
Which one is last on the list?
Turtle?
The Pygmy Shrew?
Meerkat?
Baby deer?
The sloth.
No, for a situation like this you want gorilla warfare.
Or whatever’s in that exhibit where you can never see any animals. Ninja deer, one supposes.
ETA - or the fish.
Nah, for aquatic stuff you obviously want SEALs. 
Shoot the chimps, but spare the bonobos!
They can teach our culture something positive…
And my wife rolls her eyes at me when I carry a .45 to the zoo.
I’m not rounding a corner to come face to face with a tiger or gorilla with just a 7 dollar panda-shaped ice cream bar in my hand!
Nah, I’m good. I’m slow, but I can outrun the pregnant ladies with the strollers.
No no no, arm the b-
Never mind.
I don’t care for this one bit.
Whatchu talkin’ bout, tdn? These words. They hurt.
24/7 boom-chick-wa-wa music.
One would think they would be ranked in order of tastiness.
In a related story, school kid was mauled by a leopard at Wichita Zoo.
Kid climbed over 4 ft railing and approached the exhibit. WTF, a 4 ft railing separates a big wild cat exhibit and the public?
Fortunately, the article said:
*While the animal was sequestered following the attack, zoo officials said there are no plans to euthanize the animal.
“It was a leopard being a leopard.”*
From what I read, the railing was there to keep the kids from getting near the bars of the cage. So, 4’ railing plus distance to the bars plus bars.
My parents run a small zoo, which recently got their first leopard, their most potentially dangerous animal (a mate is arriving in a few months once he’s settled in, they’re not just planning on keeping one) and the local council insisted, rather bizzarely, that they had to get a gun to keep on site at all times (not the weird bit), but until the licence arrived and they could get legally armed, they had to sleep on site.
I’d love to know what the thought process was here, ‘until you have the capability to shoot it in an emergency, you can have it, but we want to make sure you’re the first person it eats.’
‘We’re hoping it’ll get so fat and lazy after eating you, that in the morning, one of the staff can just whack it with a spade.’
Seems a bit odd that they’d want to publish that list really, and I’m curious as to why they state tranquilising is unethical- not 100% effective, yep; not as safe as it seems, yep; potentially too slow to prevent an attack, yep; but they surely tranquilise animals for vet visits if they get ill or injured. Odd.
I am just having a hard time imagining what could possibly happen that all the animals in the zoo would be running around willy-nilly…
Well, you could certainly imagine a scenario where some of the restraints were broken - an earthquake, obviously, might liberate more than just one animal.
ETA - it is thought that Hurricane Andrew liberated a breeding pair of lionfish from an aquarium which have since multiplied to be very bad news for a lot of sealife. So, not exactly the same thing, but, you know.
Wellington is right on top of a fault line, and has small-to-medium tremors constantly. That’s probably exactly the scenario they’re preparing for.
I thought it was standard practice to issue cyanide capsules in the event of an emergency.
You volunteer at your local zoo?! Between that and the librarian thing, I really want your life. That sounds like so much fun. I’m a little worried about what “they don’t like you” means for the gorillas. Like…do they snub you when they don’t like you or gnaw your face off?