Video captured by witnesses showed what happened after two zebras escaped from a suburban Chicago pumpkin farm and had travelers on a state highway doing double takes this week.
"They look like zebras... they got stripes," one person can be heard saying in the footage shot by witness Carrie Shriver as two zebras cross a suburban road, halting traffic before they enter an open field. "They are!"
The young male and female zebras escaped Sunday from a pen inside an indoor zoo at Goebbert’s Pumpkin Patch and Apple Orchard in Pingree Grove. They crossed Route 47 several times and wandered through farm fields in the northwest Chicago suburb.
Illinois State Police were called due to the ensuring chase being near Interstate 90, The Daily Herald reported. Other police agencies also joined the pursuit of the striped escapees.
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Shriver, a passenger in a car on the roadway at the time, filmed the animals running into a field and posted the video on TikTok. The footage goes on to show workers in all-terrain vehicles chasing the animals through the field.
Kane County Undersheriff Pat Gengler said police blocked traffic several times in the area, worried that cars would strike the zebras or gawking motorists would get in accidents.
After about two hours, workers with the pumpkin patch and the zoo tracked down the animals on all-terrain vehicles and captured both of them. The zebras, which are supplied to the pumpkin patch by another business, were not injured during the pursuit.
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“It was pretty exciting for a while. It was all hands on deck," said Jacob Goebbert, a farm employee.
