Massacre

Ohio governor decision leads to the massacre of 50 wild animals including 18 endangered Bengal tigers.  Governor John Kasich let the state wide ban on buying and selling exotic pets expired in April.  This lapse along with other weakened exotic pet restrictions has led to the state having some of the highest number of injuries and deaths caused by them.  This lack of restrictions allowed Terry Thompson to cage 56 poor defenseless animals.  Although Thompson had been convicted of animal cruelty and was suspected of animals neglect.  The lax laws and failure to punish him for his crimes allowed him to continue to keep these animals.  Many of these animals he used for filmmakers and photographers who cared nothing about how he treated these animals.  If movie makers and others didn’t pay so much to use these kinds of animals then he might not have had so many.  Several articles stated that he loved the animals but if he loved them so much then he would not have caged them in the first place not would he have set them free knowing what might happen to them.  His releasing them was another way that showed that he really had no compassion for the animals.  Although he let the animals out, the deaths of them still could be avoided.  The police department is to blame.  Although they knew this man had these animals they had no real training on how to handle wild animals.  If you area has this kind of facility them there should be some planning in place to handle this kind of situation.  A large reason they killed them was due to laziness.  They killed the animals because they said it was dark and those tranquilized would wander into the dark and wake up later.  They just did not want to go hunting them in the big bad dark wilderness.  The officers weren’t the only ones trying to get the animals.  Members of the Cincinnati zoo came out and begged to save the animals but all they were allowed to save was 6.  None of this had to happen had the correct laws been in place to prevent these animals from being in cages to start with.  Even after the tragedy some people still showed how little compassion they had for these poor animals.  Many people have been emailing the sheriff and asking for the animal corpse.  They want to stuff these animals and sell them because exotic animals dead or alive are such big business.  This tragedy needs to make all states look at their laws and we must fix the laws before another tragedy happens.

Agony in the ocean

Why can we as humans be so outraged at the atrocities we commit against each other but not have that same compassion for animals?  I was absolutely appalled by the recent death of a pilot whale on a New Jersey beach.  This poor creature starved to death.  After the whale died a necropsy was performed where they discovered the shocking truth to the whale’s ultimate demise.  The beautiful creature had been shot and the bullet was located in the whales jaw.  The bullet had cause an infection that left the whale unable to eat.  The poor creature wandered the sea in complete agony and spent months slowly starving to death.  Can you as a human imagine seeing food all around you but not being able to eat any of it?  There is nothing this poor animal did to deserve this.  It is speculated that maybe a fisherman shot it because it was bothering their fishing.  Well guess what, the whale was fishing these waters before we were and we are the ones invading their habitat.  Another possibility was the whale was shot for fun.    There are laws to protect the whales.  Law to protect them was put in place in 1972.  It was the Marine Mammal Protection Act and it states that anyone killing a whale can be fined 100, 000 dollars and placed in prison for 1 year.  This is just not enough punishment for this kind of atrocities.  We need to increase the fine and prison time.  More government money for more agents to protect all animals is needed.  It would also help if we change society’s ability to have more compassion for animals.  We must make changes to the laws and society so we can save the whales.  If a person was attacked and was unable to eat and left to die a slow death the world would be outraged and we would hunt the person responsible down and punish them. This should be the same response to this case.