A giraffe committed suicide, an Egyptian newspaper reported, and the government pulled a former zoo director out of retirement to deal with the resulting media storm.
"The problem is with the press," Nabil Sedki said on a recent afternoon, taking a deep drag on a cigarette as he settled into a giraffe-patterned armchair in his office. He was five days into the job. "The media fabricated the suicide."
The deceased animal in question was a 3-year-old giraffe named Roqa, who inadvertently hanged herself in early December after getting tangled in a wire inside her enclosure, Sedki said.