"We just lost track of him," said one staff member of the so-called "Kowski Keepers."

According to his scheduling staff, Murkowski was in Anchorage for other events when he heard there were hotdogs at the Alaska Zoo and dropped everything else.

Murkowski's assistant, Julia Stein, knew the governor was not there to see the elephants as he claimed.

"After he got his balloon," explained Stein, "all he could think about were monkeys."

They were not at the zoo for very long before the Kowski Keepers realized they had trouble.

"He got ice cream after seeing the camels," said Senior Kowski Keeper, Ima Tool. "After that he said he wanted to see the bears, and he just wandered off."

Tool explained that his job could sometimes be demanding.

"The governor has been known to walk off the red carpet from time to time, but we usually are able to keep up with him."

Tool and the rest of the Kowski Keepers spent much of the afternoon developing a search plan to find the governor. The plan was to start at the monkey cage and fan out from there, but they had barely begun when zoo officials began closing for the day. They were allowed to continue after-hours, but the search was soon cut short.

Tool called off the search for the day when none of the Kowski Keepers could find the monkey cage. Zoo employee Annie Mall explained that there are no monkeys at the Alaska Zoo "let alone many monkeys that would necessitate a monkey cage."

Tool said during a press conference Monday that a new plan to search for the governor started early Sunday morning with better success. "This time we started at the entrance to the zoo."

The plan worked. The governor was located around lunch when a young girl was overheard at the gift shop saying, "An old man was talking about the gasline to a moose." The Kowski Keepers noticed the governor's balloon and quickly moved in on the governor who was still talking to the large hairy animal he had mistaken for a republican

"I saw lions and tigers and bears," said Murkowski in a press conference. Murkowski was still holding the green balloon from the day before.

"If it wasn't for that balloon," said Miss Stein, "we probably would've lost him."

"We're not sure where he got it," said Tool. "I thought he got it at the gift shop, but that was before we found out there are no monkeys."

Murkowski looked very disappointed when his staff escorted him out of the zoo.

"I really wanted to see the monkeys."