Banksy‑style capybara pops up

A capybara that escaped a Hampshire zoo on March 17 has now turned into street art twice in one week, with a new stencil appearing on the side of The A Bar in Old Portsmouth overnight and local reports linking it to the same runaway animal, Samba. (yahoo.com) The Portsmouth piece was reported on April 10, and the bar told local media CCTV captured a covert overnight painting operation before staff found the mural in the morning. (portsmouth.co.uk) Local reports say the stencil was created by street artist Pidg, and the image borrows the black-and-white, balloon-era visual language that made Banksy’s wall pieces instantly recognizable to people who do not follow street art closely. (dailyecho.co.uk) This was not the first Samba mural in Hampshire. A few days earlier, another capybara stencil appeared on the London Road Brew House in Southampton, and staff there nicknamed it “Banksy-bara.” (hampshirechronicle.co.uk) The reason a missing zoo animal is getting tribute art at all is that Samba has become a local folk hero since slipping out of a temporary enclosure at Marwell Zoo near Winchester less than 24 hours after arriving there from Jimmy’s Farm and Wildlife Park with another young capybara, Tango. (yahoo.com) Tango was quickly recovered near the zoo, but Samba kept going, and Marwell said residents around Owslebury should check ponds, rivers, and gardens because capybaras like water and are more likely to travel after sunset. (marwell.org.uk) By late March, Marwell said search teams were using specialist tracking dogs, thermal drones, and camera traps, while sightings placed Samba along the River Itchen rather than back inside the zoo grounds. (marwell.org.uk) On April 10, more than three weeks after the escape, reports still described Samba as missing, with Marwell saying the search remained “challenging” and continued day and night in dense vegetation and along waterways. (yahoo.com) That is how a fairly small local animal escape turned into a rolling Hampshire story: first a zoo search, then roadside sightings, then pub-wall stencils in Southampton and Portsmouth following the same animal down the map toward the south coast. (yahoo.com) For now, the murals are easier to find than Samba. As of April 10, the capybara was still at large, and the second artwork had given the chase a new chapter without ending the original one. (portsmouth.co.uk)