Here's hoping she can be captured alive

Escaped zoo hippo still roaming free: Female's movements are being tracked by the zoo's private security

A 2-ton hippo who escaped from a flooded private zoo in Montenegro was roaming free Wednesday but returning to the zoo owner's restaurant to eat bread and hay.

Officials disagreed over whether to kill the hippo, considered one of the world's most dangerous species. Nikica, 11, escaped this week as heavy rains sent water flooding through the zoo, raising the water level in her pen and allowing her to swim over the top of the cage surrounding it.

A spokesman for Montenegro's natural disasters commission, which responds to floods, said the law required animals that can endanger human lives to be killed. But state veterinary authorities said they were not entitled to kill animals.

Hippos are not the cute things you see dancing in tutus in Disney movies. They are extremely dangerous. That said, I hope that there is some way that she can be returned to the zoo (once it is functional again) alive and not killed.