Search for zoo's otter enters 2nd week

As the hunt for a North American river otter missing from the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo entered its second week Thursday, zoo officials said they haven’t given up hope.

“We’re feeling positive that with warmer weather coming and more people outside being active and biking and running on trails and that sort of thing, that there’ll be some sightings and we’ll be able to run him down,” zoo spokesman Sean Anglum said Thursday. “But for now, the trail’s a little cold.”

Zoo staff discovered on the morning of March 25 that all four of the zoo’s otters had fled, thanks to a failed crimp in the otter exhibit’s mesh covering. Two were discovered minutes later at the grizzly pond, directly above the otter exhibit in the Rocky Mountain Wild complex. A third was recovered about an hour later within the zoo’s secondary containment fence. But the fourth, named Kitchi, breached the fence. It was spotted later that day on The Broadmoor hotel’s golf course, but slipped away and has been missing since.

Zoo staffers are no longer engaged in an active search, but continue to seek help from the public. As of midday today, about two-dozen tips had been phoned in to the zoo’s otter hot line — “mostly sightings of a dark creature of some sort that they saw in the shadows or along a fence line,” Anglum said. But investigations have found only evidence of other animals such as muskrats or raccoons. There has been no confirmed sighting of Kitchi since last Friday.

The otter is not the first animal to escape the zoo. In February 1996, a chamois goat fled into the mountains during a routine cleanup of his holding area; it took just over two years to recover the elusive goat.

People who spot the otter or evidence of the animal, such as fish remains or otter tracks, are asked not to approach it, but instead call the zoo's otter hotline, 648-7348.