Justice For Ed – After A Week On The Run, Ed The Zebra Has Been Captured And Airlifted Back to His Owners

RUTHERFORD COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — The pet zebra that escaped captivity in Rutherford County has been captured after a search that lasted more than a week.

According to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, the zebra, affectionately nicknamed “Ed,” was caught Sunday, June 8 in a field near the Buchanan Estates subdivision of Christiana.

The zebra was airlifted by helicopter and lowered into an animal trailer to await its return to its owners.

Officials said the rescue was a combined effort involving the RCSO, Tennessee Highway Patrol and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

According to the RCSO, the zebra’s owner first brought it home Friday, May 30 and reported it missing the following morning.

God damn it. I was cheering for Ed the Zebra. I wanted him to be free. I had a whole journey mapped out for him in my mind. He was going to traverse west across the plains of the United States, narrowly escape being captured by a Joe Exotic-esque private zoo owner in Oklahoma, and after a summer's worth of trails and tribulations, Ed the Zebra would finally arrive in San Simeon, California, where he'd join a herd 150-ish wild zebras leftover from a zoo run by William Randolph Hearst that shut down during the Great Depression, and Ed would live the rest of his life as a free zebra. It's hard to imagine a much more opposite ending my desired Ed the Zebra story arc than this.

I hate how the people who "owned" Ed the Zebra get their zebra back after all of this. Ed was purchased by a couple in central Tennessee from a breeder in Texas. That alone tells me Ed is living a life a zebra shouldn't have to live. This couple obtained Ed the Zebra on Friday, May 30th. By Saturday morning, he had already escaped. Obviously this couple is not fit for zebra ownership. But apparently zebras are treated like dogs in Tennessee. There are no special permits required to legally own a zebra. If you get your hands on a zebra, that is rightfully your zebra and nobody can take it away from you. Nothing more to it than that. 

So what I don't understand is that if I were living in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and my pet dog went missing, I certainly don't get the full force of the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office, the Tennessee Highway Patrol, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources agency, and a whole ass team of animal rescuers from Texas behind me to bring my dog back. Why do these assholes, who've clearly demonstrated that they never should have been given a zebra in the first place, get everybody but the National Guard to drop what they're doing and embark on a week long zebra hunt? If the state of Tennessee believes Ed the Zebra is important enough to warrant all those resources, then why the hell are they just giving him back to the shitty owners who were responsible for this whole mess?

Hey Peta... for all the bullshit I see you stepping in and making a fuss about... could you really not have stepped in to help out my guy Ed? PETA should have their own professional animal rescue team for situations exactly like this. If an exotic animal escapes from a private zoo in the middle of America, or escapes any living situation that's ill-equipped for an exotic animal, PETA should send their own team of rescuers to get to the animal first. From there, they can hold the animal hostage (in a good way), and use whatever psycho PETA tactics they have at their disposal to assure it ends up in the hands of people who know what they're doing. Getting exotic animals away from shitty private zoo situations is a PETA initiative I think a lot of people would actually support. That idea's free, PETA. Get yourself some good PR to counterbalance the times you try to shame Ben & Jerry's into making their ice cream with human milk.

Hopefully I'm wrong about this mysterious zebra owning couple who lost their zebra within 24 hours of purchase, and from here on out they'll treat Ed the Zebra with the care and respect he deserves. Maybe they'll end up having the resources to give Ed a good home, and a fine life in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. But they're off to a rocky start. I swear to God if I hear of anything bad happening to Ed the Zebra, or if they let Ed the Zebra escape yet again, then mark my words... I will write a blog about it before returning to my regularly scheduled life without giving it much more of a thought.