ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.

 

This site built and maintained by: GREANVILLE ASSOCIATES and CRESCENT COMMUNICATIONS • Rev. 12.1.05 Copyright ANIMAL PEOPLE, INC. 1992--2005

 

 

 

 

 
   
 
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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: May 2006

OBITUARIES

Elora Petrasek, 6, remembered by acquaintances as a very gentle child who loved animals, was fatally mauled by a bear on April 13 in Cherokee National Forest, near Benton, Tennessee. The bear also bit her brother Luke Cenkus, 2, puncturing his skull, and mauled their mother, Susan Cenkus, 45. The attack, 10 miles from the nearest highway, occurred as adults tried to drive the bear off of a hiking trail. A bear in the vicinity was later shot by rangers, but was not positively identified as the killer. Petrasek was the 56th person verifiably killed by a black bear in North America within the past 100 years, according to Lynn Rogers of the North American Bear Center in Ely, Minnesota, and only the second person killed by a bear in the Great Smokies. The first was Glenda Ann Bradley, 50, of Cosby, Tennessee, who was killed in an un-witnessed attack in May 2000 near Gaitlinburg.


Richard Meza, 52, was fatally shot by an unknown assailant at about 11 p.m. on April 8, 2006, while feeding a feral cat colony he attended near Anaheim and Walnut Avenues in Long Beach, California. No motive was evident; Meza was not robbed. A 30-year lineman and repairman for GTE and Verizon, Meza and his wife of 24 years, LoAnn, 48, planned to retire in June 2006 to a home they were building in Virginia. LoAnn, who was losing her sight, received a cornea transplant from her late husband.

 

Barbara Osborne, 84, died on April 8 from kidney failure at home in Bellevue, Washington. Osborne was known for performing open heart surgery on rats and mice at the University of Washington, 1971-1979, “but she treated her rats like human subjects. She didn’t like to see them suffer. She was always worried about her rats,” her son Richard Osborne told Seattle Times medical reporter Warren King. Richard Osborne is director of the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, Washington, an institution which has often provided a speaking venue to anti-whaling and anti-cetacean captivity activists.

 

Janet Ennis, 76, died on April 9, 2006, at her home in Akron, Ohio. “Jan contributed to numerous animal charities in the U.S. and abroad, including CHAI, “ CHAI founder Nina Natelson told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “and was a tireless activist for the cause. An art expert, she compiled a huge collection of animal folk art from all over the world.” Ennis in 1960 was among the cofounders of Animal Aid, a local humane society that later merged into the Animal Protective League of Greater Akron.

 

Pete Thomashay, 66, longtime animal control officer for Bellingham, Massa-chusetts, died on April 23, two weeks to the day after Country Gazette staff writer Rick Holland profiled his long career.

 

Richard “Baba” Looey, 57, of Chicago, whose surname was changed from Bogulewski, drowned on April 16 while trying to rescue a dog from Lake Michigan. Looey was criticized by some animal advocates because his own dogs had produced two litters of puppies in recent years.

 

Joan Haggard, of Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, England, remembered by World Society for the Protection of Animals director general and former Royal SPCA chief executive Peter Davies as “well into her eighties,” died in the third week of April 2006. “Joan was a prolific writer to British newspapers on animal issues,” recalled Davies. “She campaigned particularly on live transport of farm animals. She took a great interest in spreading animal welfare messages into developing countries.”

 

Chrystal Ann Lloyd, 19, of Norfolk, Virginia, stopped her car along U.S. I-58 near Virginia Route 272 at about 10:30 p.m. on April 22 to help a dog who had been hit by a preceding car. Both Lloyd and the dog were killed when another driver swung wide to avoid Lloyd’s car, not seeing her in the road. [The safe way to remove an animal from a road is to use your car as a shield, with four-way flashers on, and ideally with flares placed at an adequate stopping distance back.]

 

 

Alfred the Great, 17, named for his political wisdom, was euthanized due to incurable suffering from conditions of age on March 30, 2005.


While removing a poacher’s snares set for fox or coyote from an abandoned junkyard near Brigham, Quebec, in December 1998, at twilight, in a blizzard, ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton found hints that a kitten had been used as live bait but escaped. Amid the snow, in the gathering dark, among countless hiding places, the kitten could not be found.


“I reluctantly hiked home,” Clifton recalls, “and was just shaking the snow off my coat in the woodshed, when my landlady, Lorna Kemp, came out and pointed to a tiny gray-and-white kitten stumbling up the road behind me, looking like a moving snowball.


“Alfred spent his first week in the house tied to the woodstove with a pink ribbon, eating everything we gave him so fast we were afraid he’d make himself sick, then abruptly changed from the wildest kitten ever to the tamest. He started trying to fight our 10 other cats as soon as he tamed up. He was so small that they all thought he was nuts.


“I adopted him out two months later, but was called two months after that to rescue him from a violent domestic dispute. After that I kept him. He rewarded me by often bringing me live snakes.”


Joining the ANIMAL PEOPLE household in December 1989, continuing to catch snakes occasionally even when kept indoors, “Alfred was at the bottom of the hierarchy,” among 41 rescued cats at peak, recalls publisher Kim Bartlett, “but in 1992 he began following a grouchy old cat named Gidget, nicknamed ‘Devil of the Boss Cats’ by our son Wolf, then two years old. Gidget kept other cats at bay with a snarling swagger. One day I found Alfred following a step behind her, in the same gait, making the same snarl. From then on, Alfred mimicked Gidget around other cats. He rose into the upper echelon of tomcats, and kept his position through cunning, rather than brawling with younger and stronger cats. When he did get into a face-off, Alfred always out-growled and chased off the other cat, even with a considerable size disadvantage.


“Voltaire, the reigning tom until his death in March of 2004, at almost 20, slept on my pillow,” relates Bartlett. “A few nights after Voltaire died, Alfred crept onto my pillow, and was acknowledged by all the other cats as the new king. In recent months, as Alfred declined mentally and physically, he gave up the pillow and began sleeping next to me in the center of the bed. He seemed to know that he could no longer hold the dominant position. When I placed him on my pillow in his old spot, he quickly moved away, as if afraid that he might be challenged if he pretended to still be the king.”