We all remember the colorful Ohio story of the grandma who beat a fawn to death with a shovel, and the remarkable tale of animal husbandry from the Ohio trapper who told the paper he was only going to kill the ‘soldier beavers’. Maybe you even recall the nature center that brought in the trapper to tell stories of his hilarious animal killing adventures for children and families. Ohio, allow me to be frank, is insane. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that the head line today is of shooting escaped wild animals from a preserve in Zanesville.
As daylight came to this rural area 55 miles east of Columbus people were being told to stay inside. Officers with assault rifles patrolled the area looking for the wild animals ranging from tigers and bears to cheetahs and wolves.
“We’re telling people to look around, be cognizant of what’s around them,” Zanesville Mayor Howard Zwelling told CNN Wednesday morning. “We’re being cautious about it.”
Zwelling said he got a call from the city’s safety director around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday that Terry Thompson, the owner of the farm, had set the animals free and then shot himself.
So four schools are closed, people are staying in their cars and police have spent all night shooting lions, tigers and bears. Knowing what we do of the good sportsmanship in the state we have to assume that this is the very best night ever to be a member of the thin blue line in Ohio. Imagine the tales back at the station of the lucky officer who shot a wolf on the highway not to mention the water-cooler ribbing of the poor sod who only got a camel.
Let’s not think about the fleeing, frightened creatures who may be enjoying their first disorienting hour of freedom before being gunned down by Ohio’s finest. Don’t think about the Chimpanzees or Orangutans that lived in his house either. Lets just hope that when people in every state read this story
The U.S. Department of Agriculture had revoked his license to exhibit animals after animal-welfare activists campaigned for him to stop letting people wrestle with another one of his bears. USA Today
it makes them think about this:
Ohio has some of the nation’s weakest restrictions on exotic pets and among the highest number of injuries and deaths caused by them.
*******************************************************
Here’s some good news to wash that icky Ohio taste out of your mouth. Fur-bearer Defenders raised money last week to install a flow device on Bowen Island In British Columbia. This morning there’s a photo essay of their efforts on facebook and a nice story in The Province.
Bowen Island residents, animal protection advocates and municipal officials teamed up Tuesday in an effort to save the island’s “nuisance” beavers from their own damming ways.
A dam on the island’s Grafton Lake — which acts as a reservoir for the drinking water of nearly 4,000 residents — has been overwrought with beavers, who have been plugging a spillway daily with an assortment of mud, sticks and other dam-making debris.
“We have to dig it out every day. It’s costing us money,” said Bob Robinson, public works supervisor for the municipality.
Robinson said it’s his job to ensure that water is supplied downstream, but like other island residents he doesn’t want it to come at the expense of trapping or killing the furry animals.
So Robinson joined a handful of other island residents and members of the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals at Grafton Lake Tuesday with a potential solution — constructing beaver-exclusion fencing, made from timber and wire, which prevents the beavers from building dams and blocking the waterway.
Oh, and more good news comes from our beaver friends in Scotland, where the
Scottish Wild Beavers group has just been granted charity status and launched a new website. Go check it out and think about giving them some beaver love from across the pond.
It’s interesting to think that when I started this beaver campaign there were exactly two active beaver websites on the entire internet. Three if you count the Department of Public Works in Washington. Now there are nine, and when Sherri Tippie launches hers there will be ten. That’s a pretty nice proliferation, considering that trickle down that follows.
Lets aim for 20 by next year? Maybe one in Ohio?
