

Lucky for this youngster it's not in a Soviet bloc country. Photograph: Michael Probst/AP

Thirty-two years ago at a small zoo in Czechoslovakia a unique herd of 46 giraffes - the largest captive herd in the world - was slaughtered in a secret night-time operation overseen by the secret police. If it hadn't been for British author Jonathan Ledgard who came across the strange tale during his travels as a correspondent for the Economist in central Europe, the mystery might have remained untouched. The Czechs, as those who know them will verify, have an extraordinary lack of curiosity about themselves and this incident is virtually unknown to them.

Ledgard took the facts that he was able to gather through extensive interviews with the protagonists - zoo keepers, vets, eyewitnesses, and their widows, and wove them into an intriguing novel, called Giraffe, which is published in paperback this week by Vintage and that critics have likened to the writings of Milan Kundera and WG Sebald.

It is due out in the Czech Republic this autumn, which will, Ledgard hopes, spark some interest in the story. But it will likely remain forever surrounded in intrigue.

"I have never told anybody the whole story," the hunter Zdenek Papik told the Czech daily Lidove Noviny in one of the few pieces of journalism that the giraffe massacre has generated. "I don't like to remember it." Papik was one of the hunters called in to execute the giraffes in April 1975, an event that has to this day never been officially or credibly explained and even in this free, democratic republic, still remains a state secret.

Even on his deathbed in May 2000, Josef Vagner, the keeper of the zoo at that time who travelled to East Africa to catch the giraffes, was still without an explanation as to why the animals had had to die.

"There's someone very Czech about this," says Ledgard, "a subject that is fascinating but which no one is interested in getting to the bottom of".

It was at the end of March 1975 that the giraffes first began to salivate to the extent that their keepers became alarmed. They became lethargic and unstable on their legs.

On April 2, a sign went up on the door of the museum, saying: "z technickych duvodu u zavezeno" - "closed for technical reasons".

It was at that point that the state police got involved. The giraffes and zoo employees were quarantined. The local vet was replaced by a bigwig from the State Veterinary Institute in Prague, Jaromir Trunkat, who refuses to this day to reveal details of the illness.

Bioveta, the only Czechoslovak lab specialising in foot and mouth was brought in to the investigation. It believed the animals were suffering from SAT-1, an African strain of foot and mouth, though this has never been officially confirmed. An anti-serum against the African strains was available at the British government research institute Pirbright. But Pirbright was never sent samples to confirm a diagnosis. Neither did Czechoslovakia ever notify the Office Internationale des Epizooties - the international body which monitors veterinary illnesses.

On April 21, police records show, 43 zoo staff were told they must remain locked inside until the problem had been resolved. The local "infection commission" ordered the zoo to be isolated. Vets from Prague, Bioveta, and a team of scientists led by an epizootologist rushed round the zoo in protective space suits and by this stage the skin had begun peeling off the giraffes' tongues.

The epizootologist contacted the agriculture ministry and recommended extermination. Ministers were informed

On the evening of April 28, Papik the hunter was on his fourth bottle of wine, celebrating the retirement of a colleague when he was unexpectedly picked up by officials, and handed a rifle and protective clothing and goggles, was taken to the zoo. He and another marksmen were ordered to shoot the giraffes one by one "behind the ear" as they emerged from their enclosures under the glare of huge spotlights. Papik described how the giraffes sank to their knees as a stream of blood shot about one-and-a-half metres into the air, causing the hunter to vomit.

The massacre ended at around dawn the following day and forms the central and most harrowing part of Legard's novel.

Papik describes seeing Vagner, the zoo keeper, watching in desperation from behind the fence, where he had been stopped from entering the zoo in case he tried to sabotage the slaughter of his beloved animals which he had brought to the zoo just a few years before on a long journey from Kenya.

"I had to tell him: 'Josef, we've massacred your work,'" Papik recalls. Vagner's unexpected response was how glad he was that Papik was such a good shot that the animals would not have suffered.

One theory is that the infection was brought into the zoo by someone keen to destroy Vagner or do harm to Czechoslovakia.

Another is that the buffalos at the zoo - whose enclosure was next to that of the giraffes and who also came from East Africa - passed on the infection. Buffalos are the natural carriers of African strains of foot and mouth.

Jonathan's extensive research, which he carried out with his Czech sidekick, journalist Katka Zachovalova, leads one to the conclusion that the animals most probably did contract a strain of foot and mouth disease.

Their destruction was therefore imperative if the disease was not to spread around the country - but why they had to be slaughtered and then wiped off the records will probably never be clear.