Mate-motivated mongoose escapee caught in brewery

A yellow mongoose which went missing from a wildlife park for almost a month probably escaped because he was "highly motivated to find a female", an expert has said.

Curraghs Wildlife Park manager Kathleen Graham said keepers "looked everywhere" after the mammal burrowed out of the site in Ballaugh on the Isle of Man in late May.

The nine-month-old, nicknamed Gef in a nod to Manx folklore, was finally caught 17 miles (27km) away in the grounds of a brewery in Kewaigue after several sightings at locations around the island.

Ms Graham said Gef was now "safe and looked well" and would spend time in quarantine, ahead of him hopefully finding a "happy ending" with a "nice female" at another zoo.

She said Gef had escaped at some point before the island's annual TT motorbiking festival began in late May

She said wildlife officers "looked everywhere and there was no sight of him", before being "surprised" by a tip-off from a resident that the mongoose was on the loose in their garden about 12 miles (20km) to the south in Union Mills.

Gef was next spotted a few miles further south in the National Sport Centre car park in Douglas, before being recaptured using traps on the outskirts of the city at Heron & Brearley brewery on the Old Castletown Road, she said.

She said yellow mongooses, which are native to southern Africa and sometimes nicknamed the red meerkat, could "cover distance and move very fast"

"Animals will escape, if they have the motivations to," she said.

"I think he was highly motivated to go and find a female.

"Some people have said 'keep him here', but we think he wants to go.

"In all honestly, there's a lot of dangers out there [so] we'll find him a nice home and a nice female, so he will have a happy ending."

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