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05/18/2004 Entry: "Mancha likes fingers"
Mancha the Jaguar has a taste for fingers.
I think they need a sign for all the morons out there - "Help us feed Mancha the Jaguar! Stick your fingers through the fence!"
Mancha especially loves to eat human-fingers when chicken-fingers aren't available. Perhaps that ought to be in the brochure.
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) -- A frequent zoo visitor whose bitten-off finger was found outside a jaguar exhibit has been banned from the Rio Grande Zoo for life.
A groundskeeper spotted the man running into a zoo bathroom last week with blood on his pants, zoo director Ray Darnell said Friday.
The groundskeeper followed the man to ask if he was OK, and the man then turned and fled.
The finger was found Wednesday outside the cage of the jaguar, Manchas.
The man, whose name was not released, had a New Mexico Zoological Society pass, which enabled officials to track him down.
Darnell said the man was contacted by phone and was asked if he was missing any fingers, but said there was nothing wrong.
But a print lifted from the detached finger told authorities otherwise, Darnell said.
Police went to the man's house and visually confirmed he was the right person.
He was banned because "you just can't take the risk," Darnell said.
General curator Tom Silva said it's the only case he knows of in which a zoo visitor has been injured by a zoo animal.
A couple of years ago a temporary employee lost the tip of his finger, but claimed a rock fell on it.
The fingertip was found, in a glove, in an animal's den.
That animal was Manchas, Silva said.
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