The Horrors of Zoos and Horse Racing

The Horrors of Zoos and Horse Racing is a compilation of how we mistreat animals.

The Murders of Elephants, Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Gorillas, Monkeys, Penguins, Beluga Whales, and Others by Zoos

Tyke

On August 20, 1994, the poor, suffering 20-year-old female elephant Tyke, who on several previous attempts tried to escape but was recaptured and kept in captivity instead of being relocated to a wildlife park or rescue, being abused and beaten for years as a circus elephant, including from her alcohol- and cocaine-addicted trainer who had been the focus of numerous previous complaints of animal abuse, escapes from the Honolulu circus arena and dies bellowing on the streets of Honolulu from nerve destruction and brain hemorrhaging after the pig cops of Honolulu bravely pump 87 bullets into her crumbling, blood-soaked, sobbing body (August 20, 1994). REMEMBER TYKE!

Remember Tyke. August 20, 1994.

Stoney the Elephant

The incredibly suffering and savagely treated Stoney the Asian bull elephant was a Las Vegas Luxor Casino “performing” elephant crippled from malnutrition. Predictably, he burst a hamstring while performing a hind leg stand during rehearsal. He received no immediate veterinary care. Unable to walk, he was loaded into a hotel dumpster and then moved into a dark steel maintenance shed behind the hotel where he was kept upright inside a mechanical cattle crush where he suffered alone for eleven months. The floor soon became covered with feces. After that period, a hotel staff member and the elephant trainer attempted to move Stoney to an elephant breeding farm. During the attempt to remove him from the crush, Stoney fell, injuring his other back leg. Concerned protesters there reported hearing Stoney screaming and crying. When the trainer walked through the door, the broken Stoney chirped and called to him, and reached out his trunk to the trainer apparently wanting to touch him. The trainer was reported to have said, “Cut it out Stoney,” and pushed Stoney’s trunk away. Stoney then sighed and died. It was sometime in 1995 or 1996. He was virtually left to rot to death and then rejected by his “trainer.” Stoney was only 23.

Chico, Peaches, Tatima, and Wankie

Chico was one of four elephants living at the San Diego Wild Animal Park (now called San Diego Zoo Safari Park). All originally captured in Africa for a life of incarceration in North America, he, along with females Peaches, Tatima, and Wankie, had been there for around three decades. In 2003, he was transported to a jail cell in the Caldwell Zoo in Tyler, Texas, at about 38 years of age. He was “found unresponsive” the morning of July 10, 2011, by zoo-keepers, perhaps dying on July 9. Similar endings occur to many other elephants in zoos. No one knows how long Chico had been down or how he suffered before they arrived and ended his life. Although African elephants live in the wild until age 65, Chico was only 46, yet the oldest bull elephant in captivity in North America (dead, either the night of July 9 or the morning of July 10, 2011).

Chico’s story is the end of a tragic and disgraceful chapter in captive elephant history, but one that is in constant danger of being repeated. Already ailing, in April, 2003, three older unfortunate ladies, Peaches, Tatima, and Wankie, beautiful African elephants who had lived for more than three decades with Chico at the spacious San Diego Wild Animal Park, were inexcusably, incomprehensibly, and reprehensively moved by its officials to make room for younger elephants from that warm, sunny climate elephants to the frigid winters of the city of Chicago patronage-worker dumping ground Lincoln Park Zoo, next to blustery, ice-covered Lake Michigan, and did not live longer than two years. Animal welfare advocates referred to the transfer action by the San Diego Wild Animal Park as “just a death sentence.” The San Diego Zoological Society acquired Peaches in 1953 from a circus, and she remained at the San Diego Zoo until the Wild Animal Park opened in 1972. She had lived in the warmth of Southern California for 50 years before being shipped to Chicago! Tatima and Wankie, both born in 1969, were purchased from a private individual and brought to the park in 1971 before it officially opened. (One source states that a private individual brought Tatima to the United States from Zimbabwe in 1969; perhaps Wankie had the same journey.) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals had written to the Lincoln Park Zoo director and begged him not to take the animals, stating they would “not last more than a few years.” They were ignored. The group wanted the elephants sent to one of two sanctuaries in the country where they would have been able to bond with other females and roam freely outdoors year-round. In the wild, elephants walk 30 miles a day. One of their former keepers in San Diego noted that placing the elephants in the Lincoln Park Zoo “is like me putting you in a closet.” After the ladies arrived in Chicago, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals kept track of their well-being and knew their health was declining. This was easily predicted. The cold winters had forced zoo keepers to keep the animals indoors in a small-sized jail, with its orthopedically and medically dangerous concrete floors. When massive animals take a step in the wild, natural environment, the grasses, sod, and soil muffle the concussion that occurs when the foot lands. When walking on concrete or pavement, no such shock- absorbing effect occurs. The damaging effects exceed the orthopedic ones. When that force hits the elephant's body, the concussion is transmitted through the legs, and upward through all the organs of the body, rupturing their cells. This occurs notably among the delicate cells of the alveoli of the lungs. That is the source of the well-documented prevalence of deaths due to tuberculosis, a disease of the lungs, among captive elephants and other large mammals. As the many organs in the body necessary for digestion are also damaged, emaciation is also a common occurrence. Damage to brain

Remember Tatima (October 16, 2004), Peaches (January 17, 2005), and Wankie (May 1, 2005). Top: Peaches (left), then 52, seen with Wankie, her 33-year-old companion, in 2002 at the San Diego Wild Animal Park where they had resided together with others for more than 30 years. Bottom: The two in jail at the corrupt and frigid Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.

tissues results in dementia. Ruptured capillaries results in internal bleeding and anemia.

Tatima arrived with a crippling left rear leg injury, which left the leg badly swollen. She was apparently never treated while in Chicago. As the social outsider, a common occurrence when placing three elephants together, Tatima was shunned. Wankie spent all of her days at the Lincoln Park Zoo and Crematorium neurotically swaying and bobbing from side to side in her cramped, shared space. All three ladies suffered significant weight loss residing in their cramped cell. Tatima died on October 16, 2004, like Chico found collapsed on the floor when the zoo-keepers arrived in the morning, from what the zoo claimed was a tuberculosis-like bacterium. This claim was later shown to have been a blatant fabrication. Tatima was only 35 when she died, half an elephant's natural up to 70-year lifespan. With this event, activists renewed expressing their complaints and concerns. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stated that Peaches and Wankie were doomed if the zoo didn’t do the right thing and move them out of Chicago to a proper sanctuary. One prominent activist wrote the mayor and city council trying to use her fame to force them to relocate Peaches and Wankie to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. She was ignored; in Chicago revenues take far greater precedence than animal welfare. All protestations to the cash-hungry political patronage-polluted workers who run this concentration camp for animals were ignored. The Lincoln Park Zoo took no action to send Peaches and Wankie to a more suitable habitat. Peaches died only three months later, on January 17, 2005, due to “old age” according to the Lincoln Park Zoo’s miscreant inept politically-connected public relations spokeswoman, although Peaches was only 55. She, too, was found in the morning lying on the floor of her cell, her eyes unfocused and her breathing labored. The cognitive-challenged public relations director, a political appointee unequipped for any real job, said the outrageous, as expected if she wanted to keep her job, that cold weather and exercise factors had “no bearing” on the premature deaths of Tatima and Peaches.

Wankie had lost everything. She had lost her wild family. She had lost her daughter, Moja, at the age of 1 year, 5 months, when Moja was shipped off from San Diego to the Pittsburgh Zoo. She had lost her family in San Diego, and now she had lost her two sisters. The only thing left for her to lose was her life. Her health declined over the next couple months

Elephant and animal welfare activists, including this author, demanded that the sole surviving girl, Wankie, be transferred to a warm-weather sanctuary immediately. Her former trainer in San Diego demanded her removal, stating “Wankie is going to be dead in probably three weeks if they don’t get her out of here.” During this ensuing uproar, however, the emotionally-traumatized Wankie was secretly loaded onto a truck during a frigid night late in April, 2005, and shipped to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, Utah. This inexcusable act was committed despite Wankie’s recovering from colic, a condition so painful that it causes an elephant to collapse. Poor Wankie was seen kneeling in the truck, a life-threatening situation, near the midway point of the non-stop 22-hour, 1400 mile trip, in freezing temperatures in the unheated truck. She had collapsed in the van.

After one more stop, the decision to continue driving sealed her fate, and her life was ended a few hours after arrival at 4:00 a.m. on May 1, 2005, at the Hogle Zoo, a co-conspirator in her secretive removal and murder. Staff reported they tried to get her to rise, but she was “deteriorating” and “in pain.” They ended her life. She was 36. (Some reports state she was dead on arrival.) A “final report” showed her death resulted from the same bacterial lung infection, acquired at the Lincoln Park Zoo and Animal Crematorium, that killed Tatima, combined with the “stress of shipping.” The San Diego Wild Animal Park and Lincoln Park Zoo treated these gentle ladies like garbage, pieces of used furniture.

From the years 1994 to 2016, at least 65 circus elephants have died premature deaths.

Tatiana

Tatiana, a beautiful female Siberian tiger in prison at the San Francisco Zoo was murdered on December 25, 2007 by heartless gun-happy cops in a “hail of gunfire” when they felt “threatened” after she escaped from her poorly designed, inadequate enclosure by leaping and clawing to get revenge on three punk worthless minority teenagers who in the quaint Christian tradition of getting utterly drunk to celebrate the birth of their lord and savior Jesus Christ had been tormenting poor Tatiana mercilessly, provoking her, taunting her, throwing numerous objects at her, and waving and yelling at her, resulting in her killing one of the worthless punks (December 25, 2007). One of the two worthless punks who unfortunately didn’t die continued his history of felonies and was later sentenced to lengthy hard time at San Quentin, where he will hopefully rot.

A beautiful female tiger rattlesnake was murdered on August 29, 2010 by a human being who saw it when a worthless prison guard failed to lock a cage door, allowing the poor animal to escape from Zoo Atlanta, whose unconscious “officials” thought the little girl was still in her building (August 29, 2010).

The gentle and caring Silverback Western lowland gorilla Moja, 29, collapsed and died prematurely at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, on April 15, 2013 of heart failure, the most common cause of death in captive male gorillas, diagnosed in September, 2010, ending the life of a magnificent animal which had been spent entirely in prison (April 15, 2013).

Marius

Marius, a healthy male giraffe just three days his second birthday, imprisoned at the Copenhagen Zoo his entire short life, was murdered on February 9, 2014, by a zoo executioner yielding a Winchester rifle because the zoo officials considered Marius a waste product without any value, the Zoo stating that his “genes are well represented in the breeding programme.” Marius's keeper lured him with a piece of rye bread, his favorite food, into a yard away from the other giraffes, and as he bent down his long neck to take the treat from his keeper's hand, he was murdered with a shot from a bolt gun to his head.

This cold, calculated, cynical, and callous act devoid of compassion was followed by Marius’ body then suffering the indignity of being dissected in public in front of adults and children, sending the potent message to the kids that such lives are worthless, and the fed to other zoo animals, again in front of the children. Psychology Today magazine expressed outrage and disgust, nothing that the children were being taught that killing animals for entertainment was acceptable. The Copenhagen zoo director argued, in an incredulously outrageous statement, that this had educational valid

Remember Marius. February 9, 2014

for the children, providing an understanding of the anatomy of a giraffe. Seeing bored, depressed, and often neuroses-laden animals resulting from life-long captivity pacing, swaying, or circling constantly teaches children nothing about real animal behavior, let alone a dead animal being fed to lions, tigers, and leopards on the concrete in a zoo. Parents certainly wouldn’t take their children to prison to teach them about human behavior.

The murder of Marius occurred despite several offers to adopt the two-year old, and an online petition to save him Adoption offers for Marius were received from zoos throughout Europe, the Krakow Zoo, Yorkshire Wildlife Park, Dutch Landgoed Hoenderdaell wildlife park, and the Swedish Frösö Zoo, as well as an offer by a private individual. All were rejected in favor of murder, as was simple sterilization because Marius would “take up needed space,” and signatures on a petition of 27,000 people were ignored. The zoo noted that it “culls” 20 to 30 animals every year, including antelopes, llamas, wild boars, and goats and a spokesman for the European zoo association stated that each such zoo murders about five otherwise healthy “large mammals” every year. The Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich, Germany said the zoo would never perform a similar public dissection but that some zoo animals such as goats and guinea pigs are killed as food for predators (February 9, 2014).

This widespread zoo murder of animals because of their being of no value is Nazi-talk. The Warsaw Zoological Garden was bombed regularly by the Germans in September 1939, and many animals died from the bombs, bullets, including sadly apes, or the efficient German missiles, including an elephant and a giraffe. After the surrender of Warsaw to the Germans, most of the animals considered valuable by the Nazis, specifically, Hitler’s hand-picked zoo-meister, were taken to the Schorfeide reserve in Germany, while others, those “not valuable” were shot to death.

That murder wasn’t enough for the killers at the Copenhagen Zoo. On March 24, 2014, just six weeks later, an entire family of lions were killed in a mass murder. Two young lions and their parents were the latest victims. Although the killing of animals has been more accepted in Scandinavian zoos than other European zoos for a number of years, about 3000 to 5000 animals are killed each year in European zoos for to “manage zoo populations” (March 24, 2014).

Joy

Joy the elephant, in jail at the Greenville (South Carolina) Zoo for 37 years, since 1977, died on June 12, 2014, from human negligence while being transported by truck hundreds of miles to the complicit Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Wyoming. She was found dead in the truck at 11:20 p.m., the final hours of a non-stop all day torture ride in the narrow vehicle. She may have tripped and suffocated under her own weight, unable to right herself in the small truck space, or suffered restricted or stopped blood circulation leading to blood poisoning.

Joy had been captured in the wild of Africa as a calf in the early 1970s, removed from her mother and companions, and shipped to the Greenville Zoo in South Carolina. There she existed as a living exhibit without companionship for nearly 30 years, alone, far from the open plains of Africa, jailed in an enclosure so small that it fails to meet the minimum federal requirements for the space that elephants must be provided. Finally, after 29 years of being sentenced to solitary confinement, a companion, Ladybird, was transported from West Palm Beach, Florida, to live with Joy in the summer of 2006. Elephants form some of the closest bonds of any animal and have been observed exhibiting happiness upon meeting, grief over loss, and offering comfort to one another. Finally, Joy had a friend.

Ladybird, sadly, was, in a too common incident, “found lying down” in her jail cell and her life was ended on March 3, 2014 at the age of 43. Joy was alone again. Zoo-keepers say that she exhibited depression. She died only three months after Ladybird’s passing. Joy, dead at 44, due to human beings, her life spent in jail for no reason of her own (June 12, 2014). Preceded in death by the only friend she had been allowed by humans to have in her life, Ladybird (March 3, 2014).

Baikal

Baikal, a male Amur, or Siberian, tiger at Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg, where he had lived since 2009 after being transported there from the Cherry Brook Zoo in Saint John, New Brunswick, where he had lived for twelve years with his mother Pam, after spending their first two years together at the Toronto Zoo, died three weeks and a day past his 19th birthday on September 25, 2014 when an incompetent zookeeper neglected to lock the gate separating his enclosure from the adjacent enclosure housing two two-year-old twin male Amur tigers, Vasili and Samkha, who had been transferred in January, 2014, from the Calgary Zoo, and Baikal entered their enclosure leading to a vicious fight over territory between Baikal and Vasili (September 25, 2014).

Julia

The tragic life of 33-year-old Julia the Western lowland gorilla ended on May 24, 2015 when handlers at the Melbourne Zoo decided to protect themselves and not intervene when she was attacked by Otana, an inexperienced dominant young male 13-year-old Silverback, who had been transferred in 2013 to Melbourne Zoo from Howlett’s Wild Animal Park in England. She died from extensive trauma, massive internal injuries, and significant complications caused by his repeatedly pouncing on her and slapping her, despite Julia’s running away from him, a tragic death which could have been easily prevented by immediate action when the attack began.

Julia had been rescued from a wildlife trafficker as a baby in May, 1982, and, when it was determined she could not be released into the wild, was sent to the Abuko Nature Reserve in Gambia, a hot and dry environment unsuitable for the gorillas, whose natural habitat is the rainforest, was then in May, 1990, moved to Jersey Zoo, in the English Channel, where for six years her life was stable until Ya Kwanza, a male gorilla brought to the zoo, attacked her several times leading to the breaking of one of Julia’s legs, and she was moved again, to Melbourne Zoo in 1997, where she lived for the next 17 years until human cowardice led to her murder (May 24, 2015).

We remember the Humboldt penguin “found dead” in the Dortmund (Germany) Zoo (November 30, 2015).

The 21-year-old sea lion Holly was bludgeoned to death by a human being, found with a smashed skull and three missing teeth, at the same prison. The autopsy showed that “stress induced by a violent attack may have contributed to her death” (November 6, 2015).

A tiger was killed by another at the Leipzig (Germany) Zoo when a partition separating the two was removed in an incredible act of ignorance by a prison guard (March, 2016). A male lion, his whole life spent in jail at the zoo, and lioness, who was rescued from a circus, were murdered at the Santiago (Chile) Metropolitan Zoo by shotgun-wielding human beings after a worthless fellow human being climbed into their enclosure, removed his clothing, and walked toward them while praising his Lord and Teacher Jesus Christ (May 21, 2016).

Harambe

Harambe was a gentle Western lowland silverback gorilla, an endangered species, incarcerated at the horrific Cincinnati Zoo. He spent his entire 16 years in jail, born at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, and transported to the Cincinnati Zoo in April 2015. A young boy, neglected and ignored by his ignorant parents, climbed up and fell into Harambe’s enclosure. Images clearly show that Harambe was protecting the boy, but the patronage-worker, job-protecting zoo keepers slaughtered him with gunfire (May 28, 2016). Arturo, the polar bear referred to as the “world’s saddest animal,” suffered alone in the 100- degree prison of the Mendoza Zoo in Argentina. A petition to have him moved to Canada was signed by more than 400,000 people but the zoo murderers ignored it and poor Arturo died in misery on July 3, 2016. Remember Harambe. May 28, 2016 Motshegetsi, a glorious lion originally from Namibia, but shipped to that same Leipzig (Germany) Zoo from its previous concentration camp in Basel, was murdered by prison guards when they failed to simply tranquilize him after he escaped from his jail cell (September 29, 2016).

Aurora

Aurora, the female 29-year-old white beluga whale, died at the Vancouver Aquarium after she began exhibiting symptoms days after her calf died, later to be found having suffered severe liver damage (November 25, 2016). Aurora died just nine days after her calf, 21-year-old female calf Qila, the first whale born in captivity in Canada, died of a similar illness (November 16, 2016). Both were thought to have died from “mysterious” circumstances, probably a virus, bacteria, or poisoning at the hands of killer human beings. The Vancouver Aquarium lacks adequate security for its captive animals. On Nov. 25, 1986, staff found a door pried open, murky water in their tropical tanks, and approximately 750 fish on that water system either dead, or dying. Among the murder victims was a lion fish that had been in jail there for 15 years, moray eels, and a young sawfish. Two of the three Bengal white tiger cubs, six-week-old infant brothers, of Tigryulia, one of the white Bengal tigers (a manmade hybrid of tigers, horribly interbred by zoos and animal parks to keep their distinctive white coats and therefore subjecting them to severe genetic problems) in the Yalta (Crimea) Zoo, dead of the cold when the no doubt Vodka-swilling zoo director failed to provide heating generators (December 4 and 6, 2016).

Szenja and Snowflake

Although publication constraints had led me to set December 31, 2016, as the final date to document animal abuse at the hands of ignorant and greedy human beings, a 2017 murder is so tragic and sad yet illustrative of the torture that zoos inflict on imprisoned beings that I had to make an exception. Szenja, a 21-year-old female polar bear, born to a lifetime of incarceration in the Wuppertal Zoo in Germany in October, 1995, had lived alongside fellow female polar bear Snowflake sharing the same habitat at Sea World in San Diego for 20 years. What became a deep friendship began in 1997 when both the Sea World Arctic exhibit was opened and Snowflake was transported to live with Szenja from the Buffalo Zoo in New York. The two beautiful ladies became deep, best friends, for, to repeat, 20 years.

In February, 2017, Sea World announced it incredulously had decided that it would destroy the 20-year bond of devotion by shipping Snowflake to the Pittsburgh Zoo for breeding purposes. This act would create additional animals destined to lifetime imprisonment but would create a new source of revenue for the Pittsburgh Zoo as brainless zoo-goers would be encouraged to pay to see the cute baby polar bears. This is a significant reason that older animals of all species are murdered, “culled” in the term utilized by zoo managers, to make room for babies. As the National Geographic Society website wrote discussing the murder of Marius the giraffe and the need for zoo space, “Humans are drawn to babies of all kinds; we love the big eyes, the floppy limbs, the fluff and fuzz of infants. Baby leopards, baby pandas, baby elephants ... baby giraffes. They all draw huge, paying crowds to zoos.”

Incredibly, the Pittsburgh facility is not accredited by the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums and yet this is where the murderers at Sea World wanted to ship Snowflake. The head of Sea World was urged to cancel this cruel, ignorant plan, “which would leave Snowflake’s beloved companion of 20 years, Szenja, sad and alone.” A petition to stop the separation of Szenja and Snowflake received 56,000 signatures, but this massive and immediate outpouring of concern was ignored and Snowflake was shipped to those complicit in the act in Pittsburgh, the two polar bears being separated at the end of February.

By April the prison staff “noticed” that Szenja had lost her appetite and energy. Szenja “did what anyone would do when they lose all hope, she gave up,” stated People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The forlorn sweetheart died on Tuesday, April 18, at the age of 21 of what those who had been truly concerned for her well-being referred to as a broken heart. Polar bears can live into their 30’s. It had been only seven weeks after Szenja’s best friend Snowflake was taken from her by the murderers at the San Diego Sea World.

The Calgary Zoo and Captive Animal Crematorium

Special recognition goes to the concentration camp otherwise known as the Calgary Zoo and Captive Animal Crematorium, matching the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago for exceptional incompetence and maliciousness towards animals incarcerated for life for no fault of their own. Because of the viciousness by which this government-licensed animal murder facility and patronage worker dumping grounds ignores its blatant systemic animal welfare ineffectiveness and clear and repetitive evidence of a serious rift in their operation and mistreats animals of all species, we have literally hundreds of beautiful animals murdered at the Calgary Zoo to whom we provide dedication. I put them in reverse chronological order, to somehow lessen the pain.

Penguins Drown and Fish Poisoned

Seven Humboldt penguins “mysteriously” drowned to death in their pool-prison (December 8, 2016). As deep divers, hyperactive, extremely gregarious, and accustomed to living in large colonies, penguins suffer egregiously and should never be imprisoned in zoos.

Two hundred cichilds fish, one-third of all those imprisoned including every adult, were murdered in the “rainforest exhibit” by incompetent prison guards who allowed poisonous chemical contaminants from poisoning the water (July 8–9, 2016).

Otter Logan Drowned

The 12-year old North American river otter Logan drowned to death after getting entangled in one of the legs of a pair of trousers, which became the “instrument of death,” given to him by two miscreant, negligent, ignorant, incompetent keepers as a plaything, who retain their jobs, and was unable to breach the water’s surface for air (February 11, 2016). While the average North American river otter can hold its breath for up to eight minutes, it was too late for Logan.

Caribou Calf Murdered and Fish Gassed to Death

The infant, five-month-old woodland caribou calf named Chocolate was murdered by the infliction of a “sudden severe neck trauma” (November 3, 2014).

Some 85 tilapia fish, nearly half of the total captives, were gassed to death in their tank by exorbitantly high ozone concentrations which the zoo director allowed to occur (circa September 10, 2014).

Fiona the Penguin and Her Relatives All Killed

Fiona, the female Genton penguin, was murdered by incompetent handlers when she died of internal bleeding following a botched surgery to remove a foot-long stick that she had swallowed after it had unexplainably landed in the penguin jail cell — the zoo didn't issue a news release because the officials didn’t consider the death to be anything “out of the ordinary” (December, 2012).

From February to November, 2013, six penguins died from avian malaria and a fungal lung infections resulting from poor sanitation in the prison, King penguin Asa (February), Humbolt penguin Juntos (August), Humbolt penguin Guillermo (August), Humboldt penguin Eduardo (October), Gentoo penguin Akemi (October), and Gentoo penguin Houdini (November).

Peacocks, Scores of Fish, Grey Owl, and Snake

Four peacocks and scores of the tilapia and piranha fish died when the ill-prepared zoo, without adequate back-up power following a power outage resulting from flooding, could not maintain and regulate water quality and warm-climate temperatures for these tropical fish (circa June 21, 2013).

A great grey owl was murdered by human zoo handlers, who kept their jobs despite being careless and incompetent, when the imprisoned and terrified animal flew into a gate during a transfer between prison cells (September 26, 2012).

A keeper murdered a corn snake by heat stroke when the ignorant human being left a heat source blasting unattended near the snake (October 9, 2011). Another corn snake was literally starved to death, failure to follow proper feeding procedures being found to have led to the reptile’s death.

Siberian Tiger Cub Babies

Two female Siberian tiger cub babies, weighing less than two pounds and being no larger than the palm of your hand, died, the first shortly after its birth (September 7, 2010) and the second the third night of her life (September 9, 2010), offspring of the ten-year-old Siberian tiger Katja mother, from severe head trauma resulting from the refusal of Katja to nurse the babies, perhaps because of the stress of incarceration, and “inexperience” in gently transporting her young by mouth, skills learned, not in prison, but by observing other mothers in a natural environment.

Adali Crushed to Death

The 18-month-old female South American capybara named Adali, who came to the zoo on July 9 with her one-year-old mate Pakhi from the Buffalo Zoo, was literally crushed to death when the Calgary prison guard, while moving her from one enclosure to another, playfully closed a hydraulic door on her, leading to fatal injuries, for which murder the prison guard was given a two-day suspension (December 5, 2009). The zoo did not announce the murder; it was tipped off to animal welfare activists by a concerned zoo staffer. Capybara are a “traditional” Lenten food in South America, an enlightened manner by which Christians celebrate this pagan observance.

Mule Deers Murdered in Round-Up

A mule deer died when he ran “into a fence” (November) and another was “found dead” by keepers (December) of “a mysterious broken neck,” in addition to two other mule deer deaths, all between September and December, 2009.

Markhor Strangled to Death

A large two-year-old male Turkmenian markhor, a spiral-horned wild goat-antelope, was strangled to death by a rope, a rope zoo “toy” suspended above a walkway which entangled the animal and effectively acted as a noose, hanging the poor animal, left in his jail cell by the City of Calgary union-protected, patronage-appointed concentration camp guards (July, 2009 Jan 2010? January, 2009).

Malti the Baby Elephant Killed

Malti, the one-year-old Asian elephant baby who was born at the Calgary Zoo in 2007, died from elephant herpesvirus-caused internal bleeding and heart failure, just one day after blood tests confirmed her condition, waking up from a nap, struggling to get up, and then collapsing and dying within minutes, the same malady that has killed nearly a dozen young elephants in North American zoos over the past 20 years (November 1, 2008).

Entire Sting Ray Piopulation

Forty-one (later reported as forty-five) cow nose stingrays suffocated to death, leaving only two alive, soon after the opening of an exhibit, which allows ignorant paying customers to pet them, from lack of oxygen in the pool-cell resulting from unprofessionally designed life-support systems, too many animals, and lack of keeper training and skill (May, 2008). The zoo reopened the stingray exhibit in December, 2008, and one of the ten new stingrays delivered to the jail died of a parasite in January, 2009, only several weeks later, adding another murder to the 2009 total, as the zoo president stated, “I think we need to be very frank here: our main expertise is not in fish here at the Calgary Zoo.” During the week of March 9, 2009, two more sting rays were murdered at the hands of the Calgary Murder Squad. The animals, meant to be part of a new shipment died after arriving at the zoo. The box and bag that carried the rays were damaged in transit, so the deaths, according to the zoo official, were stated flippantly as being “no surprise.”

Hazina the Female Hippo Killed in Truck

The young six-year-old female hippopotamus Hazina died within two days of being subjected to a viciously inhumane 29-hour truck-ride transfer from the Denver Zoo and Concentration Camp — the poor six-year-old girl had been lying in one position in her prison crate for too long, which severely restricted or stopped her blood circulation and caused death of her leg muscles and other tissues, leading to blood poisoning so that when she arrived in Calgary she was “in distress” and couldn’t stand (October 27, 2007). The Denver and Calgary concentration camps must have followed the Lincoln Park Zoo and Greenville Zoo instruction manuals for transporting large mammals in such a manner as to absolutely ensure that they suffer and die.

Donge the Gorilla, Tabitha the Gorilla, and a Baby Gorilla Murdered

The life of the 22-year-old female western lowland gorilla, Donge, was ended after she had suffered for years from chronic diverticular (colon) disease, was rapidly losing weight and growing sicker, and it was found that she had another severe intestinal abscess and a large blood clot in her heart, her death being the fourth prematurely dying western lowland gorilla within only a year at the Calgary Zoo, an “unprecedented” sequence, their lifespans being in the 40’s and beyond, showing that “not even a shred of conservation value” exists there so that “there’s not any reason for [the zoo] keeping these animals” (August 10, 2007). The 26-year-old dominant female western lowland gorilla, Tabitha, after years of having seizures, could not be revived from a devastating series of them and died on April 14, 2007. Six weeks later, the 37-year-old female western lowland gorilla, Julia, the zoo’s oldest female gorilla, died from an aggressive liver infection (May 28, 2007). A twelve-day old female baby western lowland gorilla, too young to even have been named, died when the highest ranking female in the troop, Tabitha, prevented the inexperienced first-time mother Zuri, who had not learned mothering skills in the wild, having been hand-raised in captivity at the at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from nursing the baby (August 17, 2006).

Keemaya the Baby Elephant

The murder of Malti by zoo negligence isn’t the first elephant death at the Calgary Wild Animal Concentration Camp. Four years before her 2008 murder, the stressed Malti’s mother, Maharani (as well as her captive mother Kamala), refused to nurse a new-born female calf baby, later named Keemaya, who was born November 16, 2004, who soon thereafter suffered an infection and suffered additional infections and digestive problems before falling into a coma and dying (December 7, 2004).

Possum Crushed to Death, Monkey Left Out in the Bitter Cold and Dies

In 2007, a possum was crushed to death when a negligent keeper literally walked on it.

In 2005, a spider monkey was murdered by negligence. The tropical jungle animal was left outside in the frigid Calgary winter and sustained severe frostbite.

Investigation Discovers Cover-up of More Killings

A joint investigation of the zoo by the U.S. Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums uncovered numerous other “unpublicized,” “unreported” murders of inmates at the hands of the Calgary Zoo, detailed in a 2010 scathing report of the zoo and its staff, noting, “The number of deaths due to human error is significantly higher than at other similar institutions.”

Monkeies, Gliders, Deer, Caribou, Oxen, Wild Dogs

Among the murdered was a spider monkey who was fatally crushed by a hydraulic door. Another spider monkey died in 2005 from gangrene resulting from frostbite after this tropical jungle animal was let out and then left outside in the frigid Calgary winter weather. Four feather-tailed sugar gliders — mouse-like mammals — were mortally injured by keepers, either crushed to death after being stepped on (one each in 2007, 2008, and 2009) or crushed to death in a manual door (one in 2007). Several mule deer were killed or injured while handlers tried to capture them from capture or manual restraint related traumas, that is, in an unskilled “round-up,” for veterinary checks. Woodland caribou and musk oxen were repeatedly injured or killed either because of faulty exhibit design or interspecies aggression which obvious incompatibility was ignored by the zoo. African wild dogs were injured because of exhibit design or interspecies aggression.

Entire Colonies of Bats Murdered

A heart-wrenching total of 170 bats, entire colonies, were mass-murdered needlessly at the Calgary Concentration Camp over six years, Pallas bats (40 in 2004, 26 in 2005, 9 in 2006, 35 in 2007, 35 in 2008) and then Seba’s bats (25 in 2009) unbelievably brought into the same environment with the maintenance and design problems that killed the Pallas bats not having been corrected. These included improper climate in their enclosures, that is, excessive heat and humidity, and, believe it or not, piano wire strung across their cages as part of the exhibit to “enhance visitor experience” by keeping the shy bats in view of visitors, into which the bats would fly, leading to wing fractures and death. The report described this as “mal-adaptation to the piano wire.”

As detailed above, despite the report and promises of reform the murders at the Calgary Cemetary and Crematorium continued at an accelerating rate through 2016.

The Tragedies of Horse Racing

Horse racing is a torture on a par with greyhound dog racing, dog fighting, cock fighting, rodeos, bullfights, and the other legal or illegal animal abuse activities to which human beings submit animals for entertainment and profit.

Ruffian

Ruffian was murdered by the greed of thoroughbred racing. In a highly publicized, made-for-television match race, the greatest filly of all time, and perhaps the greatest thoroughbred of all time, was matched against Foolish Pleasure, the 1975 Kentucky Derby winner, in one of the most eagerly awaited match races in the history of racing on July 6, 1975. Not only had she never lost a race in her ten starts, Ruffian had never even trailed another horse in her ten starts, a front-runner from post to finish. In one step she shattered her right front leg on the Belmont Park backstretch as she was leading Foolish Pleasure. In seconds, the beautiful bounding filly was floundering grotesquely, straining to keep on running, a shell of a horse with only heart and instinct remaining, Her leg wasn’t simply shattered, it was splintered so badly that fragments of bone protruded at different angles, penetrating the back of the foot joint (fetlock) to create an open wound, tearing the skin of her fetlock, and ripping her ligaments until her hoof was literally flopping in air, Ruffian still wanting to run and finish the race. The tall, stately, black filly had been reduced to a pain-racked sweating horse. Following a three-hour emergency operation, she came out of anesthesia and flailed out with her powerful legs, shattering the protective cast, leading to bleeding and the fateful decision. Remember Ruffian, dead at age 3 years and 3 months (April 17, 1972 – July 7, 1975).

Alydar

In a story so abhorrent it is difficult to relate, greed, fraud, and almost unimaginable human cruelty led the damnable son of a tenant farmer, the hateful country bumpkin John Thomas (J.T.) Lundy to murder Alydar. The owner of Calumet Farms of Lexington, Kentucky, Lundy’s gross incompetence and profligacy had put the stables more than $120 million in debt and he developed a plot to murder the wondrous thoroughbred Alydar with one goal in mind, to collect on his insurance policy. Alydar had became famous as the close runner-up in all three races to Affirmed in the 1978 Triple Crown of racing in what turf writers describe as the greatest duel in horse-racing history. In the Belmont Stakes, they raced side by side, eyeball to eyeball, their hooves pounding as they hit the home stretch, running dead even for the final seven furlongs.

For a period in 1990 at Calumet Farms, those races were in a way repeated. In idyllic scenes, Alydar’s old rival, Affirmed, was also at Calumet in 1990. When the two chestnut-colored horses were out in their paddocks, they would stare at each another, their manes flicking in the breeze. Occasionally, Affirmed would start running on his side of the fence, and Alydar would take off after him on the other side. Even then, twelve years after their races, they remained competitors.

Remember Alydar. November 15, 1990

Alydar became one of the greatest sires in thoroughbred history, whose offspring often became champion racehorses themselves, and as such Alydar became the most heavily insured horse in history. His death meant a payoff of $36.5 million.

That was his undoing. On the evening of November 13, 1990, one end of a rope was tied around Alydar's right hind leg and the other end of the rope was tied to a truck. The truck drove into the stallion barn, pulling Alydar's leg from underneath him, with a force three times what a horse can exert, until it was destroyed. A security guard who had gone to the barn to make a phone call, found the great stallion in shock in his stall, his coat glistening with sweat, his right hind leg hanging by tendons, a shaft of white bone jutting through his skin. The regular night watchman assigned to the barn had been ordered five days earlier to take the day off and was replaced by a substitute. The security guard had a veterinarian called and in emergency surgery veterinarians were able to set the bone and put a cast on his leg. Unfortunately, within 24 hours, Alydar, hearing the whinnying of some mares in a nearby pasture, turned to look out a window in the Calumet clinic, put too much weight on the leg, and broke his femur. The sound of the break was reported to be as loud as that of a gunshot.

As he lay on the floor, an uncomprehending look in his eyes, the life of Alydar was ended. Alydar was murdered for insurance money by the owner of one of the most prestigious thoroughbred breeding farms in the world in the center of Kentucky thoroughbred country on November 15, 1990, at age 15. Remember Alydar (March 23, 1975 – November 15, 1990).

Barbaro

Michael Matz murdered Barbaro. The “trainer,” whose background was as a steeplechase rider, had decided to saddle Barbaro in a completely different manner before the Preakness on May 20, 2006, than he had before his other races, including the Kentucky Derby, disorienting the poor horse. Barbaro had won the Kentucky Derby and was favored to be the first Triple Crown of racing winner since Affirmed in 1978. He had won the Kentucky Derby by 6 1/2 lengths, the biggest margin in a half a century since Assault’s 8-length victory in 1946, and many expected him to not only win the Triple Crown but to accomplish feats unprecedented in the history of thoroughbred racing. That would mean untold millions for the owners, breeding with 100 or more mares each year, and prestige and a nice salary increase for Mr. Matz. Barbaro stood in the gates, and then lurched forward against the still closed restraining metal gate with the force of a 1200 to 1300 pound animal. The horses were removed from the gate and Barbaro walked around. No one examined him, despite later claims to the contrary. I know. I watched it on television.

Metz stood in the stands. Any moron with a 50 I.Q. knew that the precision racing machine had to have been injured physically, at least bruised, and dizzy and woozy from banging his head fiercely against the metal gate. Yet, Matz remembered the purse and the salary increase and the prestige and the stud fees. He did nothing. I remember screaming at the television, “Scratch him, scratch him.” Metz was gutless. A spinless loser who murdered Barbaro. The mega-millionaire senile owners, Gretchen and Roy Jackson, were in the stands. Today they mourn Barbara as if he had been a member of their family, yet the millions dancing in their heads took precedence over their years of horse-owing experience telling them that Barbaro should not run and greed won over compassion. Stand up and scream, “Scratch him, scratch him!” The television cameras would have caught the frenzy in the stands and the jockey Edgar Prado would have dismounted.

The race began and 100 yards later, just a couple dozen steps, Barbaro’s tried to retain his balance on three legs in a pitifully wrenching sight, his right rear ankle shattered. Ruffian had not been enough for me to reject horse racing as barbaric. The date that Michael Matz and the Jacksons murdered Barbaro, however, I vowed never to watch a horse race again. Surgery led to an incurable hoof disease and Barbaro’s life was ended on January 29, 2007. The chief of surgery said that he doesn’t often see such catastrophic injuries. Most such horses are automatically just euthanized on the track, lacking the economic value to justify the surgery and rehabilitation. Barbaro was potentially very valuable. Remember Barbaro, murdered by the greed of the horse racing industry and Michael Matz, the gutless steeplechase rider, and the greed-motivated owners Gretchen and Roy Jackson on May 20, 2006, murdered at age 3 years and 9 months (April 29, 2003 – January 29, 2007).

Eight Belles

The Kentucky socialite women with their colorful hats and inebriated minds celebrating the biggest social event in the cultural wasteland known as Kentucky, and trying to ignore the murder of Barbaro less than two years earlier, saw a beautiful filly similarly murdered in front of their eyes when Eight Belles collapsed after shattering both front ankles one-eight of a mile after the finish line in the Kentucky Derby on May 3, 2008. Her injuries, similar to that suffered by Barbaro in only one leg, and the resulting trauma to the animal were too devastating to even remove her from the track, resulting in the immediate induced end to her young three-year-old life. Cry in your champagne, pastel-bonnetted Kentucky debutantes. Although Larry Jones, her trainer, had the gall to state that Eight Belles just tripped over her own feet, the examination of the dead filly showed not only an absence of joint fluid in the damaged areas but also congested lungs, indicating over-racing, poor training, lack of medical attention, and the presence of performance drugs in her body.

Jockey Gabriel Saez certainly wanted to maximize his pay check, whipping Eight Belles mercilessly as she came down the final stretch in second place, in agony from two front legs whose tendons were stretched to breaking, the event that precedes the horrific snapping of bones. Saving a filly, who obviously produce many fewer offspring that colts, the gestation period for horses being 11 to 12 months, a significant fraction of their lives, isn’t worth the medical expense compared to simply cashing in the insurance policy. Murdering her on the track was the clear choice of the greedy owners. Remember Eight Belles, murdered May 3, 2008, at the age of 3 years and two months (February 23, 2005 – May 3, 2008).

Never Tell Lynda

The 5-year-old mare Never Tell Lynda died needlessly at the famous Churchill Downs racetrack because of a newly installed sound system that was oppressively loud. The system includes 750 speakers. She died during schooling, a walk-through to prepare for future races, before the racing began for the day. She was walking toward the paddock on the dirt track when the sounds of a starting gate bell blaring and a starting gate slamming open were blasted from a commercial being shown on the new video board. Poor Never Tell Lynda reacted as if in a race. She reared, twisted, lost her balance, and fell, hitting her head. Blood started gushing from her nose and mouth. She may have had crushed bones in the back of her skull. Five-year old mares aren’t very valuable, so they ended her life right then and there (May 22, 2014).

The Torture of the Industry

Breeding, Training, Racing, and Fractures

The entire horse racing industry reeks of inhumanity, greed, and unspeakable horrors.

The inhumanity begins with breeding and continues through training and racing. Thoroughbreds are primarily bred for speed, and racehorses have a very high rate of accidents as well as other health problems. Most horses in training are confined to a stall for as long as 22 hours per day. Horses control their stomach acids by continuously grazing, which they are unable to do confined to a stall. This leads to an estimated 90% of horses suffer from ulcers as a result of stress and an unnatural feeding regime.

A high accident rate may also occur because Thoroughbreds, particularly in the United States, are first raced as 2-year-olds, well before they are completely mature. Though they may appear full-grown and are in superb muscular condition, their bones are not fully formed and will have a decreased chance of injury. Studies have shown that track surfaces, inappropriately designed horseshoes, possessing toe grabs, medications, and high-intensity racing schedules may also contribute to a high injury rate. Horses are over-run. Their ligaments and tendons do not have sufficient time to heal and the bone fractures that lead to “break downs” result as a secondary result of the ripping of the supporting tendons.

One-tenth of all Thoroughbreds suffer orthopedic problems, including fractures. Estimates indicate that 1.5 career-ending breakdowns occur for every 1000 horses starting a race in the United States, an average of two horses per day. The State of California reported a particularly high rate of injury, 3.5 per 1000 starts. Similar rates of breakdowns occur during training, and the figures are probably higher at the poorly-maintained county fair race tracks. Other countries report lower rates of injury.

Among other race-induced health problems, 90% suffer from bleeding in the lungs due to over- exertion when racing, so-called exercise induced pulmonary hemorrhage.

Mass Murders

Any belief that racehorses are retired to live out the rest of their lives in a tranquil country pasture is a myth. The reality for nearly all ex-racehorses is that they will be slaughtered well before the end of their normal lifespan. The average lifespan for a horse is 25 years of age yet the average age of a thoroughbred is just over 5 years. For those few whose lives are spared, many face an even worse fate, being passed from owner to owner, often ending up in paddocks, neglected and left to starve. A depressingly 130,000 American horses were slaughtered in Mexico and Canada in 2015, yet the rodeo, racing, and show industries—along with other irresponsible breeders—continue to breed hundreds of thousands of horses annually. Two-thirds of horses set to slaughter are quarter horses, and many are castoffs from the rodeo or racing industries. The Thoroughbred-racing industry sends an estimated 10,000 horses to slaughter annually, many for pet food, meaning that half of the 20,000 new foals born each year will eventually be killed for their flesh, sold by their owners often for just a few hundred dollars. Another estimate states that 35,000 thoroughbreds are born every year. For most of the horses that leave the racing industry, this means sooner or later the slaughterhouse. Many of these horses will not have run a single race. Out of 1000 registered horses born each year, only 300 will ever run a single race. Only around 2% of the horses that do race will win enough money to cover their costs. The racing industry keeps and publishes statistics of every conceivable description yet keeps no records of the fate of horses after they finish racing. The unsuccessful race horses are not the only ones sent to slaughter. The 1986 Kentucky Derby winner and 1987 Horse of the Year winner Ferdinand was slaughtered in Japan without publicity or notice to previous owners when he was no longer “sufficiently” valuable as a stallion (March 12, 1983 – 2002). Exceller, who won numerous Grade I stakes in France and North America from 1976 to 1978 including the Hollywood Gold Cup, and who is in the U.S. Racing Hall of Fame was slaughtered for meat in Sweden on April 7, 1997 (May 12, 1973 – April 7, 1997).

Mexico and Canada Slaughter Countries

The U.S. Congress effectively close down horse slaughter facilities in the United States, but that led to more suffering for the animals. Instead of shipping to the slaughterhouses in Illinois and Texas, the horses unlucky enough to be picked up by the meat man or that are sold at the “kill auctions” in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, now endure a long crowded van ride to Mexico or Canada, and then face death in ways even more barbaric than those that were the norm in the U.S. The “Mexican method” involves piercing or severing the spinal cord (pithing) and conscious dismemberment; horses endure conscious dismemberment.

Investigators from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals found ex-racehorse Royale With Speed, the grandson of Triple Crown winner Secretariat, packed inside a “kill pen” in Kalona, Iowa, in 2012 among hundreds of panicked horses. By the time investigators saved him, Royale With Speed had been purchased by a meat buyer for $350 and was hours away from a harrowing ride to slaughter in Canada. He was dehydrated and running a fever of 103.7 degrees Fahrenheit, far above the normal 100.0 temperature for a horse, and his lymph nodes were so swollen that they later burst and oozed pus through his skin. Thankfully, this horse was saved and recovered, and was sent to pasture to join another horse that had been saved.

Investigators followed a trailer from the meat buyer’s property in Iowa to a slaughterhouse in Québec. They witnessed how the 33 horses aboard the transporter endured a 1,100-mile, non-stop 36-hour journey in subfreezing conditions and were never given food, water, or a chance to unload and rest. Eyewitness video footage taken inside the Québec facility revealed that at least 40 percent of the horses were still conscious after receiving a captive-bolt shot to the head. One horse suffered through an agonizing 11 shots before finally collapsing.

As with almost everything in horse racing, it’s the economics of greed that drives the decision. The most effective tool with which to kill a racehorse is the wallet of its owner. Solutions to the retirement problem are too often letting a horse starve somewhere in the back paddock, or shipping it off to Mexico for a horrifying death. The “industry” should either be banned or ended voluntarily or compassionate means of retirements must be found for these beautiful animals.

Individual Human Killings of Animals

It is no wonder, with such influences, that individual human beings commit grievous crimes against helpless animals.

Dogs and Other Animals

Remember Onion the Henderson, Nevada, dog, who we saved to freedom on my initiative on January 23, 2014, after 21 months of incarceration for an accident; the two- or three-week old Doberman mix puppy who was drowned in a toilet at the Central Nebraska Regional Airport by its useless, low-life woman who had to catch a flight after airport officials refused to let the dog onto the plane because of its age and not being “properly” housed (January 23, 2015); the Allen County, Ohio, 4-year old pit bull mix Axel murdered after the family negligently left their 3-day old daughter unattended while they cooked on June 1, 2012; Rusty, the loving family pit bull, murdered because another ignorant, inept Allen County hillbilly living in Lima, Ohio, considered him a piece of furniture and would not expend the energy to try to find the dog a home when her son couldn’t or didn’t want keep the poor guy, on about July 20, 2012; the two pit bulls murdered in the compassion-wasteland known as Lima, Allen County, Ohio, again taking revenge, this time on the two pit bulls, but leaving the low-life owner continue to live, when her dogs, who she allowed to run at-large, made the mistake of going after a cop, killed on October 19, 2015; the Chicago pit mixes, Brownie and the four-month old General Chico, both murdered on January 29, 2014, at the hands of the heartless and incompetent paper-shufflers, and their clerical error, at the Chicago Animal Control Concentration Camp; the two St. Mary’s, West Virginia, pit mixes, sacrificed because of an ignorant owner and his ignorant brother, an equally ignorant neighbor who left his two-year old alone in his back yard next door, and the owners father, an incompetent judge trying to protect his judgeship, on about June 25, 2012; the seven of a total of 13 bioengineered cows in a herd murdered by a British farmer about January 5, 2015, because they were too aggressive; Marius, a healthy male giraffe just three days his second birthday, imprisoned at the Copenhagen Zoo his entire short life, murdered on February 9, 2014, his body used for food for other zoo animals; Tatiana, the beautiful female Siberian tiger in prison at the San Francisco Zoo murdered by heartless gun-happy cops in a “hail of gunfire” when they felt “threatened” after she escaped from her inadequate enclosure on December 25, 2007; Tatima (October 16, 2004), Peaches (January 17, 2005), and Wankie (May 1, 2005), the female elephants murdered by the inept political-appointees at the Lincoln Park Zoo; elephant Chico transported at about 38 years of age from the San Diego Wild Animal Park, where he had lived with Tatima, Peaches, and Wankie, in 2003 to a jail cell in the Caldwell Zoo in Tyler, Texas, to be found “unresponsive” on July 10, 2011; Joy the elephant, in jail at the Greenville (South Carolina) Zoo for 37 years, found dead from human negligence on June 12, 2014, at 11:20 p.m. in the final hours of a non-stop all day torture ride in a narrow truck while being transported hundreds of miles to the complicit Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Wyoming; tragically sad elephant Tyke, brutally shot to an agonizing death on August 20, 1994 by cowardly pig cops on the streets of Honolulu; the incredibly suffering Stoney the elephant, the Las Vegas Luxor Hotel and Casino “performing” elephant crippled from malnutrition and then thrown into a dumpster and then steel maintenance shed for 11 months and rejected by his trainer as he died in 1995 or 1996.

Just in 2016 Alone

Remember, just in 2016, the loving pit bulls, a 4-year-old and her two 1 1/2-year-old pups, whose owner was allowed by the foster care system of Sacramento County Child Protective Services to leave them alone with her 9-year old brother in a trailer house in Yuba County and then betrayed them, murdered on January 12; the female black bear in Forest for the World, British Columbia, murdered by “Conservation officers” for protecting her now-orphaned two cubs from a man and his dog encroaching on her den (May 17); Harambe, the gentle Western lowland silver back gorilla, an endangered species, slaughtered by his job-protecting “keepers” at the horrific Cincinnati zoo while protecting a young boy (May 28); the five or six alligators murdered at the Lake Buena Vista Disney resort in Florida when parents ignored the “no swimming” sign and their unsupervised tot was dragged into a pond (June 15); the rural cougar murdered when he was trying to escape after being frightened by two unsupervised young boys in a non-fenced-in backyard (June 18); the rural Oklahoma beautiful 14-foot python which presented no danger shot to death with three bullets by a cowardly redneck (June 21); Arturo, the polar bear referred to as the “world’s saddest animal,” who suffered alone in the 100 degree prison of the Mendoza zoo in Argentina while a petition to have him moved to Canada signed by more than 400,000 people was ignored (July 3); and in 2017, Szenja, the 21-year-old female polar bear, who died of a broken heart when her 20-year companion at Sea World in San Diego, Snowflake, was transported to the unaccredited Pittsburgh Zoo, leaving Szenja alone (April 18, 2017); and all the other needy, stray, and abandoned dogs and feral cats and kittens, opossum, raccoons, rabbits, squirrels, rats, mice, chipmunks, birds, and other wildlife, farm and zoo animals, fish, flying, burrowing, and crawling insects, and trees, bushes, plants, and grasses, all residents of the Earth, that I have befriended, loved, saved, tried to save, and mourned.

We don’t own the Earth; we simply share it.