Cincinnati Zoo worker trapped inside Festival of Lights storage facility

CINCINNATI, OH - Following cleanup of the Cincinnati Zoo’s annual Festival of Lights celebration, a zoo worker is now trapped in the Festival of Lights storage facility. Prospects of seeing the worker before next year's celebration are described as slim.

Peter Damien was last seen inside storage facility where the millions of holiday lights and decorations are kept, as zoo employees worked to gather them up.  After one of the final truckloads of lights and decorations were backed into the facility, faint cries could be heard, but workers simply assumed those were coming from a display of quietly weeping elves that had been left on.

“We realized Big Pete was missing sometime yesterday,” said zoo employee David James. “And quickly figured out that we’d left him in a pile between the dancing fairy lights and the giant illuminated poinsettias. Once you get tangled in a few hundred feet of Christmas light strings there's no hope.  He was a great worker, and I’m going to really miss him until we drag that crap out again next November.”

As far as the possibility of Peter’s survival, zoo employees point out that there is an abundance of fresh water stored in the facility, as well as some food. “We keep a couple hundred of the LaRosa’s pizzas we sell here at the zoo in there,” said manager David Bannister. “They’ll be just as tasty for him in there as they are for our guests.”