Fake zebra keeps Tokyo zookeepers on their toes

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - If there were an Academy Award for Best Animal Impersonator, Tokyo's zookeepers might just gallop away with it.

Two staff at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo romped around in a papier-mache zebra costume on Wednesday, watched by stony-faced policemen, in an annual escape drill to practice recapturing animals on the loose in the event of a big earthquake.

Zookeepers in orange jackets and hard hats crowded around the fake zebra with a net but were kicked to the ground by black rubber boots protruding from the costume.

"We cannot have drills like this with live animals, so using papier-mache is our only choice," said 61-year-old Yoshiaki Sagawa, a zoo spokesman.

In the grand finale, a white van pulled up and a sharpshooter aimed a fake stun-gun at the zebra. A bang, and the animal began to reel, circling around before falling to the ground, knocked out.

It was then pounced on by victorious zookeepers.

The drill involved some 150 zoo staff, ambulance workers who carried off the zebra's victims, policemen -- and crowds of curious onlookers.

"I enjoyed the gap between the papier-mache animal's awkwardness and the zookeepers' seriousness," said 35-year-old Tamayo Taira, a visitor at the zoo.

While Japan is one of the world's most seismically active countries, making a freedom stampede at Ueno Zoo more likely than elsewhere, there have only been three genuine escapes over the past 40 years.

But this hasn't dampened the zoo's enthusiasm for its annual drill.

The elaborate costumes change every year, and past drills have featured rhinos, lions and orang-utans at large.

(Reporting by Toshi Maeda; Writing by Sophie Hardach; Editing by Hugh Lawson)