Lief was a sitatunga that had called the Brights Zoo home since 2016. He was an “exceptional animal” to the keepers because of his friendly personality. “He was pretty special to everybody here,” says David Bright, co-owner and director of Brights Zoo.
A rare antelope at the Brights Zoo in Tennessee died on Saturday after choking on a squeezable fruit pouch, officials announced.
Lief was a sitatunga that had called the Brights Zoo home since being moved there from a zoo in Texas July 2016, David Bright, co-owner and director of Brights Zoo, tells Inside Edition Digital.
David believes someone must have dropped or given Lief a juice packet that had a hard plastic top, and that the animal might have thought it was a treat and ate it. But unfortunately, as a result, Lief suffocated.
Patrons watched as the animal was choking.
“Within a few minutes of it happening, a guest flagged one of our zookeepers down and said, ‘hey, this antelope is acting strange.’ The keepers went in and realized right away that the animal wasn’t passing air,” David says.
A vet team rushed to the scene to help Lief and get the object out, but it was too late.
Lief was eight years old.
A sitatunga is a rare swamp-dwelling antelope with a shaggy and oily coat that allows the species to live in an aquatic habitat, according to the African Wildlife Foundation. “You don’t see them in zoo’s a lot because they don’t display greatly,” David says.
Despite this, Lief was a fan favorite because of his kind disposition and curiosity about people, David says.
“This is an antelope that was very curious of people, has no fear of people, so this [happened] at close range,” David says.
David says that people who work at the zoo have been mourning Lief’s loss as he was an “exceptional animal” to the keepers because of his friendly personality. “He was pretty special to everybody here,” he says.
The zoo is asking for anyone with cell phone video footage from that day to come forward, and authorities are checking surveillance cameras from the day as well, in the hopes that they can identify who gave Lief the pouch or dropped it in a spot where he could reach it.
“When I do see people who do something like that that costs an animal its life, I think they should be held liable,” he says.
Brights Zoo has been family owned an operated since 1989 and has over 1,000 animals across 120 different species, including many endangered animals. Sitatunga are native to Africa and Brights Zoo was one of the only zoos in the U.S. that had the species. The zoo is currently in their busy season. David says there were “about 600 to 700” guests at the zoo the day Lief died.
David says that littering and reckless or careless behavior is not common at the zoo and the employees do their best to correct anything that could be harmful to a guest or animal.
The Brights Zoo took to Facebook on June 8 to announce Lief's death. Zoo officials in the post reminded patrons that this is why they are not allowed to bring squeezable pouches into the zoo.
“Some ask why we don’t allow squeezable pouches into the zoo. The reason is simple - the packaging is dangerous to our animals,” the zoo wrote on Facebook. “Today we lost a beloved animal due to choking. If you look at these lids from an animal perspective it looks like food. This is what forced us to do bag searches but yet some people find ways to sneak these in. Guests are able to go to their car or the picnic areas in our parking lot as many times as they wish and re-enter the zoo.”
The zoo already conducts bag checks, but David says he also hopes “people will step up to the plate and be more honest” about what they have with them.
