Prague Zoo

This guide to Prague Zoo turns on the flood of August 2002, when the rising Vltava overwhelmed the riverside enclosures and keepers worked through the night moving animals to higher ground. It follows the losses that morning brought, and one small escape inside the disaster: a fur seal named Gaston, whose enclosure wall gave way, swimming free down the swollen river toward Germany. For days, nobody at the zoo knew whether he was alive.