Keeper Anthony Nielsen was hosing down an animal holding area in Lincoln Park Zoo’s African Journey exhibition hall when he heard a frantic voice crackle over his zoo intercom radio.
“Lions in the moat!” shouted veteran lion keeper Nancy DeFiesta. “Help! Red lion!”
In zoo emergency code, the use of the word “red” signals the highest priority, meaning a terribly dangerous situation has transpired.
DeFiesta, 60, was being mauled in the bottom of the moat that separates zoo visitors from the lions’ outdoor yard.
On Thursday, two keepers who played crucial roles in getting the lions away from DeFiesta, perhaps saving her life, gave the Tribune a gripping account of the rescue a week earlier.
“All my animals were securely locked up,” said Nielsen, 30, of hearing DeFiesta’s call for help, “so all I had to do was sprint from my exhibit to the lion house.”
As he ran out the door of his exhibit–the African Dry Thorn Forest, which holds meerkats and aardvarks–he grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall, following the instructions drilled into keepers who practice emergency procedures monthly.
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Barely a minute had passed, Nielsen said, when he dashed up to the lion house yard. A Chicago police officer and three other keepers already were on the scene, including lead lion keeper Cindy Swisher, 40.
“I got there 30 seconds after Nancy called,” said Swisher, who had been cutting up fish to feed seals and sea lions in the seal pool 60 feet from the lion house. “I got on my radio and yelled, `This is Cindy. I’m coming,’ and took off.”
Arriving at the moat, Swisher looked down and saw DeFiesta already was injured, curled up on the ground with her arms folded over her head for protection. The back of her dark green zoo polo shirt had been shredded, and two lions were in the moat with her–Adelor, a 450-pound male, and Helene, a 250-pound female.
“Helene was on her stomach, intently watching Nancy, her front legs stretched in front of her so that her paws were just touching Nancy’s arms,” said Swisher. Adelor stood nearby.
Two other keepers had climbed over a low fence separating the public from the moat’s edge and were yelling and throwing clumps of dirt into the moat, trying to distract the lions. Bill Rose, a police officer who patrols the zoo, was beside them.
Nielsen dashed up with his fire extinguisher and clambered over the fence, handing the nozzle to another keeper to point while he turned it on.
“The first blast made Helene jump back,” said Nielsen. “But then she came back and grabbed Nancy’s [left] arm in her mouth. We started shooting a lot of short bursts from the fire extinguisher, and both Helene and Adelor backed away.”
Fire extinguishers are often used in zoo emergencies to move dangerous animals out of dangerous situations without injury. The animals hate the loud, hissing noise of the extinguishers and are distracted by the thick, cloudy spray.
While Nielsen and others kept the lions at bay with the extinguisher, Swisher, who is on the zoo’s emergency weapons team, dashed into the lion house and grabbed a shotgun from a cabinet.
By the time she returned, other keepers were arriving with emergency shotguns and tranquilizing guns, as well as with more fire extinguishers, which they began using to herd the animals toward doors leading to indoor cages. Swisher gave her shotgun to the police officer and went inside to oversee locking up the lions as they came inside.
Myra, the zoo’s third lion, never went into the moat but had watched the attack with interest from 12 feet above, crouched on the lip of the moat’s inner ledge.
When keepers on the other side of the moat began sending bursts from fire extinguishers at her, Myra hustled across the outdoor yard and went indoors.
Dealing with Adelor and Helene at the bottom of the moat was more problematic. The lions often leap down there to get out of the sun, but they are unable to jump out, so their only exit was a door at the moat’s east end that opens to an indoor ramp.
DeFiesta was on the ground about 15 feet from the doorway.
“She was conscious but kept her head covered up with her arms,” said Nielsen. “We kept yelling to her, `It’s going to be OK,’ and telling her where each of the lions was.”
With multiple fire extinguishers blasting, Adelor soon lost interest and escaped indoors. But Helene, in the excitement, had moved west of DeFiesta so that the injured keeper now lay between the only exit door and the lion.
“Helene was really frantic,” said Nielsen, “because every time she moved toward Nancy, we sent off a burst. All of this took place in the space of a few minutes, but it seemed like forever. We soon realized we had to take a chance and not fire the extinguishers the next time Helene moved toward Nancy and the door.”
Keepers hoped the lion would run directly to the door, but if it had stopped over DeFiesta, “they were ready to shoot the lion,” said zoo spokeswoman Kelly McGrath.
Stepping lively, the lion slipped past the prone keeper and dashed through the door. A moment later, the door safely clanked shut, and DeFiesta struggled to her feet.
Almost at the same time, a Chicago Fire Department truck arrived and soon lowered a ladder into the moat. A firefighter climbed down and cajoled the profusely bleeding DeFiesta up the ladder, grabbing the back of her pants to help hoist her up each rung.
At the top, firefighters lifted DeFiesta across the 4-foot black metal fence, handing her off to zookeepers who took her into their arms and lowered her onto an ambulance gurney.
“Her face was bloody and her hair was saturated in blood,” Nielsen said. “The back of her shirt and sleeves were all ripped off, and she had scratches all over her back, but they weren’t bleeding.”
Once the animals were locked inside, Swisher dashed back out just as DeFiesta’s gurney was being wheeled to the ambulance.
“Nancy kept saying, `Thank you, thank you,’ to each of us. It was incredible,” she said.
The zoo continues to refuse to divulge any information that might explain how DeFiesta, who apparently was doing routine cleaning chores in the moat, ended up there while the lions also were in the yard. Swisher and Nielsen would not talk about what events took place leading up to the incident.
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Both Swisher and Nielsen credited frequent emergency training and drills for the quick reaction by the zoo’s staff.
“Going to work day to day, you sometimes lose sight of the dangers of this job, so this really hits you hard,” Nielsen said. “It makes me feel safer at work to know all these people would respond if I got in trouble.”
The three lions are back to their normal routine, lazily lounging outdoors in the late summer weather. Lions normally spend much of the daylight hours at rest and sleep up to 20 hours a day, a behavior that has raised suspicions of many zoo visitors following the attack.
“We’ve been getting a lot of telephone calls from zoo visitors accusing us of heavily sedating the lions since the attack,” said McGrath, “and no amount of explanations seems to satisfy them.”