Two young bears escaped from their enclosure at a U.K. wildlife park and devoured a week’s worth of food store honey before falling asleep, the park said on Tuesday.
Mish and Lucy, both aged four, got out of their enclosure at Wildwood Devon in southwestern England on Monday afternoon.
The pair made a beeline for their food store where they scoffed snacks, including the seven-day supply of honey, a park statement said. The park released video of Lucy devouring the food and “looking very pleased with herself.”
The bears “posed no threat to the public at any point” although visitors on site were escorted to a secure building as a precaution.
During the hour-long drama, the bears were “continuously monitored both on the ground and via CCTV” until they were returned to their enclosure by keepers and promptly “fell asleep,” Wildwood added.
“Our experienced keeping team acted immediately, following established safety protocols, and successfully used recall training to encourage both bears back into their enclosure without the need for any intervention,” the park said.
Police were at the scene and an investigation was underway to determine how the animals managed to break out. The park said an “operational error” allowed the bears to escape, without elaborating.
“This was an isolated incident, and we are conducting a full internal investigation to understand exactly how it happened and to ensure robust measures are in place to prevent a reoccurrence,” the park wrote on social media. “While the structural integrity of the bear enclosure remains uncompromised, we take any operational lapse extremely seriously.”
The park, which covers 40 acres of gardens and woodland, is home to an array of wildlife including brown bears, wolves and arctic foxes.
Mish and Lucy were taken in by Wildwood in 2021 after being abandoned by their mother in a snowdrift in the Albanian mountains.
Several attempts were made to reintroduce the cubs into the wild but it became clear to conservationists that they could not survive on their own.
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