Llama drama at the London Zoo holiday party! In what may be my favorite story of the year, two female zookeepers reportedly got into a bloody brawl over their co-worker, who was apparently playing the field when he wasn’t tending the cages.
According to reports, Caroline Westlake—meerkat specialist—attacked Kate Sanders—monkey keeper—at the Zoo’s annual holiday party last year. The object of their aggression? Zookeeper Adam Davies, who dated Sanders for five years before taking up with Westlake.
According to London 24, the night started off poorly when Westlake overheard Sanders talking about her in the bathroom, saying, “Have you seen the state of her?”
Finally Sanders cornered Westlake in a cloakroom, where an aborted apology turned into a genuine fight. Via London 24:
“She (Ms Sanders) said ‘Caroline, I want to apologise for what you heard me saying earlier in the bathrooms’, and then I remember saying ‘why did you say it? I am trying to be nice, trying to be civil, I don’t understand what I have done wrong to you’.
“And then I remember her saying ‘you’re dating my ex-boyfriend’.”
“It got really, really heated and she was saying everyone hates you, everyone says you’re mad, no one likes you. She just kept screaming in my face. So then I said ‘they say the same about you’.
“She punched me in the side of my face. It kind of knocked me, knocked me back. And then it was like a split second struggle and I was standing apart from her and I remember seeing her face was cut, and I remember thinking ‘how has this happened?’,” she added.
Westlake was found guilty of assault today, but her boyfriend was around to add one last insult to Sanders’ injury:
Mr Davies said he had not seen the fight between Ms Sanders and Westlake, but that the former had been hanging around him a lot more than usual that night.
He said: “Kate had been spending a lot more time around me than she had previously. I would say she was being more flirtatious than normal. She was just dancing around, pretty close. She was just chatting to me more than normal. And there was an incident ... She was like stroking my tie.”
Surprised the llamas aren’t more pale, what with all that shade he’s throwing.
Image via Getty. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.