Back at the zoo, discovery came too late. A night guard spotted the empty enclosure, the trampled mud near the broken gate. Radios crackled, orders shouted: “Lock everything down! Find her before daylight!” But the storm swallowed their voices. Sahara was already gone, carried toward streets she had never known.
Tom Reyes, her caretaker, heard the news with dread. He had hand-fed Sahara milk as a cub, watched her stumble through her first steps, and soothed her trembling during thunderstorms. He knew her instincts but also her fears. “She won’t hurt anyone,” he told the director. “She’ll be looking for something familiar.”