When Krystal Vangura of Murrysville heard that Little Joe the gorilla would be coming to the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium, she had to laugh a little.
“I thought maybe he was following me,” she said.
That’s because in the summer of 2003, when Vangura was working a summer job at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, she came face-to-face with Little Joe during one of two escapes he made in August and September of that year.
“I used to be a marine biologist in my former life, and I worked at the zoo doing education,” said Vangura, who today works at Vangura Surfacing Products in North Huntingdon. “I’d walk around and explain animals to kids and families. We had a relationship with the gorillas a little bit. They taught us how to play little games through the windows that would entertain kids.”
Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium announced last week it is set to trade gorillas with the Boston zoo.
Frankie, Pittsburgh’s 7-year-old male western lowland gorilla, will head to Boston. In exchange, Boston will send 33-year-old Little Joe the silverback back to Pittsburgh, the zoo announced.
Vangura said Little Joe was “my buddy.”
“He was like a lanky teenager, he was so skinny and tall,” she said.
That may be what helped the gorilla to become a two-time escape artist. One morning in mid-August 2003, Vangura was doing morning rounds and noticed that Little Joe was acting differently.
“He was moving around a lot and getting wound up,” she said. “I talked to him a little at one of the open areas, then a teen volunteer and I went around to another part of the enclosure.”
As the two came around a bend, the 300-pound gorilla was sitting there, out of the enclosure, resting an arm on the railing.
“We backed up, got around the corner and started running,” Vangura said. “We got through the main doors, and by then he had climbed back up into his exhibit.”
A few weeks later in the fall, when Vangura had left the zoo, Little Joe escaped his enclosure again, this time fully escaping the zoo and roaming the Franklin Park neighborhood where he injured a 2-year-old and a woman who were visiting the zoo.
The zoo made several safety upgrades to the gorilla enclosure following the two escapes.
In Pittsburgh, the zoo’s vice president of living collections, Dr. Chris Bonar, said the gorilla enclosure is specifically designed to prevent escape, with high-barrier walls on the outdoor section, and a closed-top indoor habitat.
“We feel very confident that’s a secure area,” Bonar said.
Gorillas’ combination of manual dexterity, strength and intelligence makes them tougher to secure than other animals.
“You have to be cognizant at all times of how they can get hold and grip onto things that other animals cannot,” Bonar said. “Designing the enclosures requires a lot of thought and planning.”
Bonar is also very familiar with Little Joe.
“I worked with him at the Cleveland Metro Park Zoo, and then some time later I was with him again when I worked at the Franklin Park Zoo,” he said. “So he’s kind of like an old friend.”
Vangura almost felt the same.
“I wonder if he would recognize me if we saw one another,” she said.