Tim Ryan, tryan@shawanoleader.com
A Shawano police officer’s keen eye and a quick response from firefighters were being credited Friday for catching a fire at Anello’s Torch Lite before it could do more than moderate damage.
“Five more minutes and we would have lost everything,” owner Rita Mondus said. “We got lucky.”
One animal, an arctic fox, was lost in the fire, Mondus said. The other animals housed where the fire started — including several other foxes, cavies and skunks — were rescued.
One of the other foxes did get scorched, Mondus said, but was otherwise fine.
Officer Elinor Harris was on patrol on East Green Bay Street at 1:35 a.m. Friday when she spotted a plume of white smoke coming from behind the restaurant at 1276 E. Green Bay St. The Shawano Area Fire Department was on scene about eight minutes later.
The fire started in the back of one of the shelters housing some of the animals at the restaurant’s petting zoo.
Fire Department Capt. Jeff Zimmerman said one of the animals knocked over a space heater, causing some straw to catch fire.
“We knocked it down fairly quickly,” he said.
Though the back end of the shelter will need to be rebuilt, the front end is still usable, Mondus said, and all of the petting zoo’s animals — including those relocated to other pens after the fire — are sheltered and accounted for.
“Everybody’s taken care of,” she said.