Exotic animal laws called into question after Ohio killings

A lot of people were up in arms about them shooting the animals, but I was listening to a detailed radio interview with the director of the Columbus zoo and the common sense approach of shooting to kill cannot be denied in this.

Tranqs take on average 8 to 12 minutes to take effect, giving the animal time to go sleep it off in the dark. When they awaken, they are generally confused and can be quite agressive.

The most amazing thing about all of this is that no human was injured or killed. The first zoo person on site nearly was as she went to take down a grizzly with a dart. It was agressive and charged her and if the two deputies hadn't been there to gun it down, she likely would have been killed.

It's sad that so many animals had to die, but this should have been stopped long before it ever happened. Ohio has the most lax exotic animal laws on the books and despite 30+ calls to the police just this past year about loose animals, nothing could be done. The guy was going through a divorce and even said that he was going to do this - let the animals out and then kill himself.

No one did a #### thing and he went and did it.

Bet Ohio laws get changed now.

 

Ahh, who needs knee jerk reaction laws...knee jerk reaction laws are the worst kind of laws...and is why the trucking industry is so pinned down....

I bet many of those animals had the domestic natures no worse than fido, your pet dog...but were never given a chance to proove so...

To just shoot, without giving them a chance seems so, well so 'man'....

Makes ya wonder who's the real 'animals' here...

 

I would hate to get tangled up with an agitated Bengal tiger.

 

If some moose or owl, shot me with a tranqulizer dart of other such device, I'd be agitated too...

 

When I was growing up, my uncle ran a sale barn and twice a year, they did an exotic animal auction. My brother and I worked the sale with him, taking animals in and out of rings - these are bears, cougars, snakes, buffalo, emus, wolves, etc. - helping feed baby animals overnights in the office, just a lot of fun stuff.

One thing I had drilled into me from day 1 was that no matter how docile these animals seem to be, never forget they are still wild animals. They are not domesticated breeds. And I had a few close calls to prove it.

No chance at all that the animals in this Ohio fiasco were family-friendly. It takes decades of breeding through generations to domesticate and 'tame' a type of wild animal.

As much fun as I had working my uncle's sales, Ohio passing anti-exotic laws isn't a knee-jerk reaction. It's something long overdue. They just finally got a violent push into doing what should have already been down.

 

Pure knee jerk idiocy! The animals weren't to blame it was the idiot taking care of them, or lack there of!

You corner a dog and a lot of times it will be aggressive, so should we not allow people to own dogs?

 

What part of my post is difficult to understand?

I never said the animals were to blame and the laws that Ohio is going to pass are designed to protect the animals - laws that have long been on the books in most other states. The POS that caused all this is to blame and the laws are designed to keep future POS's from doing the same thing and to protect future animals.

Sadly, these animals suffered because of what happened, both during their miserable lives in captivity to this crapheap and again when they had to be put down, which was the only choice they had in the end. These animals were aggressive, it was night, and tranqs were not an option. Officials did what they had to, but again, it falls back to the fault of the idiot that owned them in the first place.

Again, it's not kneejerk. It's something that should have been done in Ohio a long time ago before he did what he did. And it's not like people didn't know...they've known for years what conditions these animals were existing under and they knew for weeks that he was planning on letting them all out and committing suicide.

Hardly kneejerk...more like did it really take something of this magnitude to wake these idiots up to do something about this kind of thing?

 

I wasn't replying to your post, it was just a statement in general...

But whether you like it or not, this is a knee jerk reaction from the state. Maybe you just don't understand what everyone else is considering knee jerk reactions?

But I do agree the state should've done something sooner and maybe this could've been prevented?

 

If 32 hardened criminals escaped or were released from prison, I wonder if they'd do the same?

The nature of man scares me far more than any of those Tigers, and bears...

At least with them, I know their only coming after me cause their hungry... or protecting their young, aside from that they really have no motive, or angle, to be aggressive...

I know what my bounderies are with animals...with man, you just never know...cause everones different...

Those animals got their 'death row' executions swiftly, and never even commited a crime...

We have humans who have done grizzly things, and are on death row some 23 years later watching NFL play offs....


I do understand those in uniform who are sworn to protect, had a job to do...

The whole situations just regretable...