Escaped lynx finally back in Dartmoor zoo following three weeks on the run from keepers
Big cat Flaviu said to be "grumpy" at his return to zoo, after being caught when he attacked four lambs
RUNAWAY lynx Flaviu was finally caught yesterday — after being snared on a killing spree.
His recapture came three weeks after he vanished from Dartmoor Zoo, sparking a widespread big cat hunt.
He was traced in the early hours on farmland after savaging four lambs. Now the zoo is finding him a female friend to cheer him up after he seemed grumpy at being captured.
Keepers believe the creature had begun reverting to the wild and was practising hunting.
They set a trap and within hours the lynx, which had been on the run since July 6, took the bait.
Zoo owner Ben Mee received a 1am text from one of his trackers. It read: “We have him.”
He then got a call confirming Flaviu was safe and under sedation for his one-mile journey back to captivity.
Ben said: “I couldn’t believe we’d got him so quickly. It was a moment of pure elation.
“Every professional tracker I’d spoken to said it could take three months. The most important thing is he’s safe.
"He’s grumpy but we’re already trying to find a female lynx to keep him company.
"Getting him a girlfriend will be some compensation for being back in captivity."
Flaviu was trapped just 200 yards from Hemerdon Plantation, a woodland near the zoo.
The zoo’s head tracker Andrew Goatman, 37, set the trap after the lynx attacked the lambs a mile west of the zoo on Friday.
Realising big cats returned to the scene of a kill, he removed the four lamb carcasses and ensured other
sheep were moved to safety.
He then set a 5ft by 2ft mesh trap baited with veal on the precise spot the lambs were found.
Mr Goatman said: “His instinct told him the veal was his food. He’d not triggered any of the 25 traps we’d put out since he escaped, but the scene of a kill did the trick.
“These attacks show captivity is the best place for him. Sooner or later he’d have been shot.”
The two-year-old Carpathian Lynx was transferred from Port Lympne Zoo, in Kent, to Dartmoor Zoo, Sparkwell, Devon, a month ago — but he chewed his way out of his pen on the first night.
Flaviu is now in Dartmoor Zoo’s empty cheetah house until his specially strengthened pen is ready.
