Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh MY

This sure is a weird one.  If you’re an anarchist or a high saluting communist where does this event fall in the law of unintended circumstances?  If you don’t know the news story, a fellow in Ohio has his own private zoo.  For some reason last week, he decided to open all the cages and let all the animals go out into the wilderness and then he committed suicide.  This was no little private zoo with a handful of animals, but large numbers of big mammals like lions, tigers, bears and monkeys totally close to fifty animals that escaped.

I guess the first question is, in our land of one zillion laws (I’m probably breaking one right now), how did this guy ever get to the point of having a zoo this large?  A lot of these animals are hard to come by, expensive to obtain, and also expensive to maintain.  I’m guessing money was no problem for him.  In this day and age, I’m surprised he was able to pull this off.  Even if he loved the animals and they were well taken care of, he would have not only governmental agencies after him, but also animal rights activist organizations.

How about the minutes right after the release of the animals?  I’m sure it was pandemonium in the surrounding area.  I’m sure people were frightened.  Kids playing in the front yard, moms pulling into the driveway from the grocery store, dads on the freeway coming home from work to hear on the radio.  I do understand that something needed to be done and immediatley with no delay.  I am real curious to find out how the sherifff came to the decision immediately to slaughter all the animals?

Everyone was immediately quarantined to their homes.  The schools were closed and so on.  This is a somewhat rural if not totally rural area.  From what I know of rural areas most everyone owns some kind of firearm.  I also know in rural areas, they do have veterinarians and they do have tranquilizers.  Why not use them and only use the kill shot if necessary.  Tell the people with firearms to protect themselves as need be.

That is just not police mentality.  It reminds me of a few years ago, an employee of my’s brother was murdered in cold blood by the police in daylight in Carlsbad in front of his condominium.  He suffered from some kind of mental disease and had stopped taking his medication.  He was wandering the condo complex, speaking to himself and just acting strangely.  The police were called and shot him in the chest.  Bystanders said it was obvious that he had some kind of mental illness.  The police have justified it all they want, but it is what it is.

Back on topic, I’m sure the police were highly excited about the proposition of going “hunting.”  I really can’t blame them.  I understand the thrill of the hunt. I understand the thrill of tracking an animal and besting it, especially if it’s much larger than yourself.  Instead of let’s go kill all those animals, what if the sheriff said, we have every tranquilizer gun in town here, we have a bunch of volunteers and some more volunteers on their way.  We’re going to bag and tag all these animals and only kill if in danger of bodily harm. 

I’m sure the response to this is, “we didn’t have time.”  Sorry, not buying it.

The response is that the tranquilizers on hand weren’t working.  Help wasn’t on the way from Cincinnati or Cleveland or Toledo?  Bigger cities usually have a larger supply of anything. 

WSY?

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