by Joe Walker

joewalker@thekmgroup.co.uk

Life as a zoo keeper is never boring.

The accident archive of Howletts throws up a comedy of staff errors, with 18 zoo workers suffering injuries since 1997.

Incidents at the Bekesbourne animal park include a gardener who lost his balance and fell into a greenhouse and a keeper who stabbed himself in the leg after falling over with a knife in his hand.

Gorilla attacks and wild dog escapes are also on the list - obtained by KM Group using the Freedom of Information Act – which is kept by Canterbury City Council as the zoo’s licensing authority.

It dates back to December 1997, when an elephant keeper had three days off work after catching his finger in an enclosure gate.

It also details five bites suffered by keepers since 1999, with the attackers ranging from a ruffed lemur to an angry gorilla.

The most serious occurred in December 2007 when a keeper was attacked and bitten by an aggressive moloch gibbon.

She entered the monkey’s cage, unaware a slide door had not been closed correctly.

The incident was blamed on the “pressure of work” and “handler error”.

The park was also forced to review its use of film crews in August 2006 after a keeper was bitten by an angry gorilla mum as she tried to play with its baby on camera.

June 2000 proved to be a month of calamities, with two workers spraining their ankles and a gardener requiring stitches after losing his balance and falling into a greenhouse.

In September that year two milk floats crashed into each other, while the following month a keeper managed to stab himself in the thigh after he fell over with a knife in his hand.

In December 2005 the head elephant keeper was smashed in the chest by one of the beast’s huge trunks.

The gaffes continued into last year, when a handy man was taken to hospital after falling backwards out of a truck and a gift shop worker shut her hand in a mini bus door.

Eight visitors have also suffered injuries, including a woman who was poked in the eye with a bamboo stick by a silverback gorilla.

The ape pushed the long shoot through a fence and into her face.
The most serious safety breach occurred in February 2009 when eight wild dogs called dholes escaped from an enclosure at the park after digging beneath a wooden safety porch.

Five managed to get outside the zoo, but were either shot dead or electrocuted on the railway within 48 hours.

The break-out led to new animal escape procedures being introduced and wooden safety porches being replaced with steel equivalents.