Thursday, July 15, 2004
Pig bait as tiger bait is jail bait
The Palm Beach County animal control folks, who have just pumped five rounds into an escaped tiger, are prosecuting a woman for offering her pig up as tiger bait.
A woman who offered to use her 5-month-old pig as bait to lure a tiger that escaped from the home of an actor who once played Tarzan will be cited for animal cruelty, officials said.
Linda Meredith, of Loxahatchee, put the pig in the trunk of her car and drove to the neighborhood where officials were searching for the tiger shortly after she heard of its escape.
Meredith asked officers to grab the hind legs of the pig, named Baby, or twist its ears so it would squeal and attract the tiger. The officers declined her offer.
Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control Director Dianne Sauve said Meredith will be cited for transporting the pig in her trunk.
While TigerHawk, notwithstanding his affection for tigers, does not agree that the Palm Beach animal control officers should catch grief for killing the beast, to spin around in frustration and prosecute a citizen who was just trying to be helpful strikes me as petty and cruel.
3 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Jul 15, 06:44:00 PM:
Shouldn't the "pig-lady" be given a commendation for being willing to sacrifice her pet for the greater good of the community?
A community which had TIGER menacing it?
Rob A.
(F?WF?)
By 
Rick, at
Thu Jul 15, 09:09:00 PM:
I live just North of West Palm and the uproar here is that the animal control officers were showing off their asshats in prominent fashion. The officer with the tranq was on his way, all they needed to do was wait and contain. They chose to approach...
By , at
Fri Jul 16, 07:33:00 AM:
I think the blog deserves a deeper treatment of the broader implications of this post. Let me get this straight. This woman faces prosecution for offering up her pig for what looks to me to be a fairly contructive use, but at the same time, thousands of pigs meet their maker every hour at a certain pork producing plant in a certain town that I am all too familiar with, and yet the idea of "prosecuting" the owners of that plant would strike all but the most irrational as just plain silly. This whole animal rights movement, which seems to have made real headway in getting local governments to adopt pro-animal legislation and ordinance and even more headway in convincing idiotic prosecutors to go after people like this, has to be made to come to grips with reality, and reality is that hundreds of thousands of farm animals are killed every day (in some of the more inhumane ways you can imagine -- e.g., shocking, throat slitting etc.) so that we can all enjoy our hamburgers and pork chops (as it should be).
