insomniacdragon asked: The state of ohio and the ohio police are at fault.
I can’t say I entirely agree with you. Local law enforcement are not trained for such a situation nor are they usually equipped with tranquilizer darts. According to reports, deputies arrived at the property roughly an hour and a half before nightfall after hearing accounts of escaped animals in the area. They did call in help from Columbus Zoo and the Division of Wildlife, and some animals were tranquilized, though at least one tiger hit with a dart attempted to attack a veterinarian and was subsequently euthanized. Tranquilizing dangerous, panicked animals in the dark is no easy feat. Law enforcement did what they had to in order to protect the public and themselves.
Am I heartbroken that all of those animals were gunned down? Of course! But what frustrates me more is that there was someone who was able to keep their own private menagerie of wildlife in the first place, and Muskingum County Animal Farm is only one of many - Born Free USA is full of information on privately owned exotic animals, including this report on Ohio.
We can speculate all we like on how the situation could have been handled better, but it won’t change what happened to those animals. What we can change is the fate of current and potential privately owned exotic animals in the United States. The following are some suggestions from Born Free:
- Learn about exotic animal incidents in your state by using their unique, comprehensive online database. Armed with such information, you could approach your local and state lawmakers and encourage them to pursue laws that ban private possession of exotics.
- Ask your two U.S. senators to pass the “Captive Primate Safety Act,” which prohibits interstate commerce in monkeys, apes and other primates in the exotic “pet” trade.
- Consider making a donation to the Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary, where they care for more than 500 macaques, vervets and baboons, many of whom were rescued from the restricted and deprived lives they were leading as household pets.
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