Boy, 7, goes on killing spree in zoo, feeding reptiles to crocodile

Sophie Tedmanson, Sydney

An “expressionless” seven-year-old boy broke into a zoo, bludgeoned to death giant lizards and fed them – and other live animals - to a crocodile named Terry in Outback Australia this week.

Zookeepers were horrified when they arrived at work on Wednesday morning to see Terry, an 11-foot long saltwater crocodile, feasting on his fellow showcase reptilians at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre in the Northern Territory.

At first they thought the animals, including the zoo’s favourite, metre-long, 20-year-old goanna, had escaped from their outdoor pens and accidentally become breakfast for Terry - the local zoo’s prize attraction.

But further investigation uncovered CCTV footage of the local boy’s horrific 35-minute killing spree which began when he scaled the fence of the zoo, located in the centre of Alice Springs, a popular tourist destination town in central Australia, just before 8am on Wednesday morning.

The blank-faced boy, who had evaded security cameras because of his slight size, then began his deadly rampage, smashing rocks on the heads of the reptiles and throwing them and other live animals into the crocodile enclosure, according to the zoo’s director Rex Neindorf.

The boy killed 13 animals in total, including a large turtle, bearded dragons, goannas and lizards including Thorny Devils and Western Blue tongues, which are hard to find in captivity.

“It’s absolutely devastating for us, we’re just horrified,” Mr Neindorf told Times Online today.

“The goanna was 20 years old, she was an absolute doll.”

The boy was so brazen he even climbed over an outer fence to get a closer look at the action.

“He was lucky because if he got in there with the goanna, she would have torn him to pieces,” Mr Neindorf said.

Police were called and questioned the boy, who comes from a family well known in the local area, but because of his age they are unable to do anything. According to Northern Territory law, children under 10 are not liable for criminal offences.

“I thought for the sheer consequences of what he did that there would have to be some severe punishment, but he’s only seven, they can’t do anything to kids under 10,” Mr Neindorf said.

“We’re going to see what we can do, maybe try and sue the family in the civil court, we’ll look down that avenue.”

According to Mr Neindorf, the “nasty” boy’s brother was part of a group who attacked Terry the crocodile about five years ago.

He said they often get kids trying to throw rocks at the animal enclosures from a nearby hill, but this incident is the worst that has happened in the history of the zoo.

“He will just get worse and worse and worse, by the time he’s 10 he will be a hardened criminal,” Mr Neindorf said of the boy.

The Alice Springs Reptile Centre is in central Australia, almost 300 miles from Uluru (Ayres Rock), and has 200 animals on display, including Perentie Goanna, Frill Neck Lizards, Thorny Devils, pythons, taipans and death adders, and, of course, Terry, the 440-pound salt-water crocodile.

Earlier this week Scottish-born Vietnam veteran Arthur Booker disappeared while camping in a remote part of north-eastern Queensland. A three-day search uncovered nothing but his sandals and wrist watch. He is thought to have been taken by a salt-water crocodile.

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Traumatized Elephant

August 15, 2008
What to Do With Traumatized Elephant Stirs Up Dallas
By JAMES C. McKINLEY JR

DALLAS — Jenny has had a hard life, even by elephant standards. She was orphaned at a tender age, stolen from Africa, shipped to America and sold to a circus, where a trainer notorious for his cruelty beat her to coerce her to perform.

When the Dallas Zoo took her in 22 years ago, she was a mess. For years, she suffered from depression and something like post-traumatic stress disorder, mutilating herself with her tusks, snapping steel cables, slamming her head into walls and requiring heavy medication.

Now, Jenny has become the focus of a boisterous debate about what to do with an aging elephant with a troubled mind. In May, after her latest companion died of heart failure, the zoo quietly made arrangements to send her to the Africam Safari Park in Puebla, Mexico, where she would be placed in a new five-acre exhibit with another female elephant.

But that decision sparked a firestorm in Dallas. Local protesters, world-renowned elephant experts and national animal rights groups are crusading to have her sent to a 2,700-acre sanctuary in Tennessee where 17 other traumatized elephants are kept in seclusion.

“Jenny is a special-needs elephant,” said Margaret Morin, a Dallas nurse who leads Concerned Citizens for Jenny. “She’s unique; she’s afflicted with crippling depression. The elephant sanctuary is the right choice.”

Beyond the debate about what to do with Jenny lies a national struggle between zoos and animal rights groups who, frankly, would rather see a world without elephant exhibits. The fight pits a loose coalition of elephant experts and animal rights advocates against the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a powerful private group based in Maryland that accredits zoos in North America.

Animal rights advocates have long argued that elephants in most zoos lack enough space and, as a consequence, suffer from foot ailments, arthritis and psychological problems.

For its part, the zoo association has clung to its traditions, saying the size of an enclosure matters less than the care elephants receive from zookeepers. It has also tried to keep the 300 elephants in its network of more than 78 zoos from being sent to sanctuaries, where the zoos could no longer use them for breeding.

All of a sudden, Jenny is at the center of this conflict.

The citizens’ group that Ms. Morin leads was formed this summer to hold protests in Dallas against sending Jenny to Mexico. Elephant experts across the country and national animal rights groups have also weighed in, urging that she be sent to the sanctuary. The City Council and The Dallas Morning News have been inundated with letters.

The uproar has put the Dallas Zoo on the defensive. The director, Gregg Hudson, had said in June that sending Jenny to Mexico was a done deal, but now zoo officials are backpedaling.

Mayor Thomas C. Leppert, who could cancel the plan, has artfully ridden the fence. “There is really not a position to take yet,” Mr. Leppert said.

But a spokesman for the zoo, Sean Greene, said Africam Safari Park remained the zoo director’s top choice. Founded in 1972, the Mexican animal park uses the same hands-off, gentle handling techniques that the Dallas Zoo adopted in 1996, after one of Jenny’s worst periods. Indeed, keepers from Dallas helped train the Africam staff several years ago.

The Mexican zoo also plans to acquire another African elephant, to live with Jenny, as well as a bull elephant in the future.

But some Dallas residents say the zoo’s arguments do not hold up. The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., has 300 acres just for African elephants, and Jenny, who is 32, would be the fourth to arrive, said the founder, Carol Buckley. No one except the staff visits the animals, who range freely.

“Why would we want her last years to be in a drive-through zoo in Mexico when she could have 300 acres in the lush Tennessee countryside?” said Councilwoman Angela Hunt, who has visited both destinations.

Experts in the field say zoo directors are cliquish and tend to move animals to other zoos in their association rather than considering the benefits of a sanctuary, which many zoo officials see as part of an anti-zoo movement. The association can also make or break a zoo director’s career

“If we stripped everything away and say what is in the best interest of Jenny, the sanctuary would win hands down,” said Les Schobert, a retired curator of animals at the Los Angeles Zoo. “But then you have to add in all the politics.”

Amy Camacho, general director of Africam, said the transfer seemed to make sense. Her park, which was recently accredited, was seeking African elephants to strengthen its collection, and the Dallas Zoo had a troubled elephant.

Mike Keele, a curator at the Oregon Zoo who is also chairman of the zoo association’s elephant “species survival program,” signed off on the deal. “I like keeping these elephants within the A.Z.A. where they meet our standards,” Mr. Keele said. “Space is just a catchphrase. It’s what you do with that space.”

Nonsense, say animal rights advocates. No zoo or drive-through safari park can match the peace of the Tennessee countryside.

On a recent sunny afternoon, Jenny stripped branches tossed to her by one of her keepers, Gavin Eastep, who said that Jenny’s mental health had improved in recent years.

“Most of the time she’s pretty calm, pretty relaxed,” Mr. Eastep said.

On a bench facing the steel-cable enclosure, David and Heidi McGuire sat with their two children and marveled at Jenny’s size and the graceful swing of her slow gate. “I would rather her stay in the United States,” Heidi McGuire said. “You just never know what’s going to happen to them down in Mexico.”

Mr. McGuire, a grocer, said, “I hope they are going to get someone to replace her.”


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Man gets 2 years in prison for killing cat

The Associated Press

Thu, Aug 14, 2008 (11:54 a.m.)

A Los Angeles man who killed his girlfriend's cat, telling her to "follow the blood trail to find Tweety," has been sentenced to two years in prison.

Blood was found in the girlfriend's apartment but Tweety was never found.

Scott Allen Atkinson pleaded no contest to two felony charges of animal cruelty and threatening the woman's life. He was sentenced Wednesday.

Prosecutors say the 46-year-old Atkinson killed the black-and-white cat after an argument in October, then he told the woman's daughter he was going to kill her mother.

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Pets On a Pedestal - On Point

Aired: Monday, July 14, 2008 11-12PM ET


A chihuahua named Tequila the day before the Westminster dog show in New York, Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
By host Tom Ashbrook:

Leona Helmsley was famously frosty toward human beings. Her nickname was "The Queen of Mean." Her infamous quote: "Only little people pay taxes."

Even so, it was a stunner when Helmsley's bequest left $12 million dollars to her favorite Maltese pooch, and up to $8 billion dollars to the dogs of New York. Eight billion. For dogs.

But in a time of Prozac for pets and big love for furry companions, Helmsley isn't the only American whose tie to her pet may have been her best relationship.

This hour On Point: people and their pets, and when pet love is pet crazy.

Guests

· Stephanie Strom, has been following the Leona Helmsley story for the New York Times

· Joel Gavriele Gold, psychologist and psychoanalyst who has been practicing in New York for more than 25 years. He is author of "When Pets Come Between Partners"

· Stephanie LaFarge, she is a psychologist and the senior director of Counseling Services for the ASPCA

· James Vlahos, his cover story in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine was titled "Pill-Popping Pets." He is contributing writer for National Geographic Adventure and Popular Science.

KRAZY KAT GOT ME KOMMITTED

Drunken Swedish elk attacks toddler

by Anna Brones Jul 23rd 2008 @ 9:00PM
Having lived in Scandinavia, I love stories that involve moose or elk, and with so many running around the northern country, it's not hard to find them. The animals sometimes do weird things, like run amok on subways. But today's bit of Scandinavian news is even weirder; it involves a drunken elk.

Just outside of Gothenburg, a three year old was playing in her sandbox when a young elk walked up to her and bit her on the arm. The elk was apparently drunk after having consumed a few too many yeasted apples and after biting the young girl stumbled away from the backyard.

Elk roaming into residential areas isn't uncommon, but inebriated ones are. Something to keep in mind during your next trip to Scandinavia.

Pet rabbit credited with saving couple from fire

MELBOURNE, Australia—A pet rabbit is credited with saving a couple from a fire that swept through their home in the southern city of Melbourne.

Metropolitan Fire Brigade commander Mick Swift said the husband returned home from a night shift early Thursday and heard the family pet, named "Rabbit," scratching at the couple's bedroom door half an hour after he had gone to bed.

Swift said the husband, whose identity has not been released, discovered a fire in a back room and smoke spreading quickly through the house. He was able to escape the house with his wife unharmed.

Swift said the rabbit saved the couple from injury.

He said the blaze caused substantial damage to the house before it was extinguished by four crews of firefighters.

Bridgewater woman recounts fox attack

BRIDGEWATER - Shirley Doyle was down on her front lawn on Saturday, knocked over by an angry, and probably rabid, fox that had sprinted from the woods near her home while she was out for a walk. It had lunged at her ankle, and now it was growling and gnawing its sharp teeth into her lower left leg, even as the 71-year-old woman repeatedly hit it across the head with her shoe and screamed for help. Doyle thought she would faint from the excruciating pain, or even bleed to death.

Next door, Norman Millikan, a lanky 72-year-old who in recent years had undergone three heart surgeries and now has a pacemaker, was watching the movie "Dial M For Murder" with his wife. The film was reaching its climactic end, but something was bugging Millikan. He'd forgotten to lock his pickup truck. So he got up and walked outside.

Millikan at first thought the cries he heard were sounds of glee from one of Doyle's many grandchildren. Then he saw the fox, and he saw his Edgewood Drive neighbor writhing on her side, desperately trying to free herself from the growling animal.... continue



FOR THE RECORD: "Foxes can be petted, but not tamed" remember that!

Donkey Librarians

Rare white lion cubs are born in Germany

The trio were born last month at the zoo in the German town of Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock, after both the park's white lionesses gave birth simultaneously to seven cubs.

One cub died during birth, but the other three were being taken care of by their mother, named Kibo, out of the media spotlight.

The other three cubs, which are being looked after by keepers, attracted a lot of attention at the meet-and-greet, but they have a way to go before they match the celebrity of Germany's most famous zoo resident.

Knut the polar bear has attracted a worldwide following since his birth in 2006.

He was rejected by his mother, a former circus bear, which prompted an animal rights activist to suggest he should be left alone to his fate. The story, which first appeared in German newspaper Bild, spurred a public outcry and a mass-media interest that led to the production of books, toys and DVDs.

Knut was eventually raised by zookeepers and became the first polar bear cub to survive past infancy at Berlin Zoo in more than thirty years.

But his popularity has brought problems. Knut, who gets more than 200 visitors a day, has become "addicted to human beings," according to German animal rights activist Frank Albrecht.

Albrecht argues that animals born in zoos become so dependent on man they end up divorced from nature.

The German zoologist Peter Arras has even gone so far as to describe Knut as a "psychopath".