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NOVA Wild in Reston bills itself as a family-friendly place to see — and even sometimes feed — exotic animals. Some of them are extremely cute, others are majestic in their own way, but may not be the kind of animals you want to get too close to.

On Tuesday night, four people broke into the zoo, not far from the cheetah habitat, and proceeded to damage equipment, joyride on certain vehicles, and at one point even crashed into another habitat.

NOVA Wild posted video of the incident online, and is warning that what went on that night was a lot riskier, and more damaging, than the perpetrators may have thought.

“We’re lucky that none of our animals were put in any harm’s way,” said Elizabeth Kruckow, director of animal welfare at NOVA Wild. “They entered illegally and they were walking around. They took use of some of our vehicles and they drove around the park, and they actually did cause some damage to some of our exhibits, as well as to the vehicles themselves and around the property.”

At least one of the vehicles commandeered by whoever broke in collided with a stone wall that houses a group of capybaras. Had they been on the other side of the exhibit, they would have hit — and possibly smashed through — a wooden fence. In a facility that’s also the home to cheetahs, giant anteaters, primates and bison, hitting the wrong fence is a big concern.

“Interacting with the wrong animal is definitely a huge issue,” Kruckow said. “Any encounter with an animal can be potentially life-threatening, especially an exotic animal or an animal that you just don’t know or understand.”

She said the trespassers were eventually chased off when they were discovered by someone working on the property, who believes they were likely teenagers. Now, the zoo wants to find them.

“It could have been far, far worse, not only because we have these animals here, but also the equipment that they chose to use and take and inappropriately use, they could have ended up in a far worse situation,” Kruckow said.

In all, the damage to the vehicles and the landscaping is likely to run a few thousand dollars.

“Being a smaller nonprofit, anything that we have to do for repair can kind of set us back a little bit,” Kruckow said. “We’re hoping to find these people and then to hold them accountable for it, because we are hoping to also do more things with some of our funding.”