The Great Zebra Hunt of 2021

Some background for those not in the DC area — there is a farm in PG County in Maryland that houses dozens of zebras. A couple of months ago a few of them escaped the farm. One was found dead after being caught in an illegal snare trap. The others are still on the loose. The owner of the farm has now been charged with animal cruelty and all of the zebras will likely be re-housed.

I decided to take a drive to the area where the zebras have been spotted to see if could spot them. As the photo below shows I do have some zebra experience.

I waited for rush hour traffic to die down and then made my way south. As is usually the case, even leaving later in the morning I was routed to back roads to avoid heavy traffic on the main road. This was my biggest mistake — leaving when more people were on the road.

I eventually made my way to the road mentioned in all of the news articles about the zebra sightings. It is much more rural than the PG County near me, but there were still quite a few cars on the road with me. Not exactly a nice quiet place to find a skittish animal. One road in the area was closed and I wondered if it was due in some way to the zebras. Did they have something on the road to lure the zebras and didn’t want traffic to scare them away? Or was it just mundane road work? I will never know.

In an effort to circle back to the main road, I turned on to an even smaller side road. I thought for sure I would finally have no other traffic, but sure enough, another car turned on the road and was behind me most of the way. Turns out there was a random neighborhood at the end of this small country road.

There was too much traffic and not enough places where I could pull over to look in the open fields for any sort of animal. I should have followed the signs I saw that claimed there was a park somewhere in the vicinity. That would have been a better place to walk around. By the time I saw the sign, though, I was ready to just head home and eat lunch.

It was not really a great zebra hunt. It was just a bored man taking a drive in an area where there might be zebras.

Originally published at http://theycallmetater.com on October 21, 2021.