Written by Jeff Mackey
After inspectors found animals kept in appalling conditions without proper care, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cited two disreputable roadside zoos in North Carolina for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). PETA keeps these two hellholes constantly in our sights and had just filed a complaint about Jambbas Ranch Tours before the inspection.
A USDA visit to Jambbas Ranch Tours last month following a PETA complaint led to a citation for AWA violations after inspectors discovered a thin elderly llama who had a "thick creamy discharge" oozing from an eye socket (the eye "has been gone for some years"). As PETA had told the USDA, the llama also appeared to be suffering from diarrhea—the animal had a large area of what appeared to be dried feces on the back legs but was given no medical treatment for these conditions.
The inspector also observed a raccoon whose tail and part of whose hindquarters showed complete hair loss, as PETA had reported. The animal was being given an ineffective flea- and tick-control medication, which wasn't prescribed by a vet as required by law. Immediate veterinary care was ordered to treat the raccoon's condition.
An inspection of the Cherokee Bear Zoo last month resulted in a repeat citation for failure to feed a young tiger cub a healthy, edible, and contaminant-free diet. The cub is described as "small and underweight for its age. The coat looks dull, dry, and brittle."
The shabby animal prison (one of three around Cherokee, North Carolina) also received a citation for failure to vaccinate the same tiger cub. The operators were warned of the need to correct this failure "from this day forward."
Roadside zoos range from small menageries to large compounds—but they are all unhealthy environments for animals. The owners' focus is on their customers' desires, not the animals' needs, so neglect and abuse are common.
These cruel operations stay in business only because people patronize them, so please never visit a roadside zoo, and encourage your family and friends to stay away too.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
glenn_e_wilson | cc by 2.0
Ah, New Year's Eve. Staying up late, sipping bubbly, singing "Auld Lang Syne," and … scaring the daylights out of an opossum? Unfortunately, yes, that last one happens every year at the New Year's Eve "Opossum Drop" in Brasstown, North Carolina. During the cruel event, a live opossum is suspended above a raucous crowd in a Plexiglas box for hours before being "dropped" about 40 feet in a redneck variation of New York City's Times Square ball drop.
The opossum used in this event was snatched from her natural home—a terrifying and disorienting experience—and is reportedly confined to a retail store until the event. During the "drop," the frightened animal will be subjected to a screaming crowd, fireworks, and the firing of muskets, which can damage her sensitive hearing and respiratory system. It's no wonder that eyewitnesses have reported that opossums used in previous years were shaking in fear. After the event, the opossum apparently will be released in a parking lot, putting her in danger of being hit by a car.
After PETA alerted North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) officials to the fact that the event’s organizer, Clay Logan, didn’t have the necessary permit to keep a wild animal, they hurriedly created a new type of permit for Logan, blatantly ignoring captivity permit or license requirements, including the requirement that animals receive humane treatment.
Please politely urge NCWRC officials to revoke the illegally issued permit for this cruel event. There's no reason to be cruel, and the Opossum Drop would be fun and safe for everyone if a toy opossum were used instead.
Written by PETA
In the wake of the storm system that sent dozens of tornadoes spiraling across the southern U.S., PETA visited the hardest-hit state to aid animal victims. After 62 tornadoes hit North Carolina Saturday night, PETA staffers arrived Sunday morning, traveling to devastated neighborhoods to offer animals food, treats, medicine, and doghouses. Chaining dogs is common in the areas that the team visited, so many dogs were left to fend for themselves when the tornado hit and likely did not survive. Fortunately, many did make it, even some whose doghouses were ripped apart.
This pretty white dog, named Squirt, rode out the storm in his pen, which was made of wood pallets and a tin roof. Squirt's owner evacuated her trailer just minutes before the trailer flipped upside down and rolled to a stop a few feet from Squirt's pen. Amazingly, Squirt was unharmed, but he was dirty, hungry, and terrified. PETA gave him food, water, a doghouse, straw bedding, and treats.
PETA's Community Animal Project team often travels to North Carolina and will continue to aid animals there. If you would like to help animal survivors of disasters, consider making a contribution to PETA's Animal Emergency Fund. And remember, now is the time to make emergency plans to protect all members of your family.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
Here's a story that could melt even a snowman's heart. Fourth-grade students in teacher Chris Maxwell's class at Mills Park Elementary School in Cary, North Carolina, have raised more than $300 to help dogs who are trapped at the end of a chain with no shelter from freezing temperatures, snow, and sleet. The kids are donating the money to PETA's national "Change for Chained Dogs" program, which provides dogs who are chained up like old bicycles with warm, sturdy doghouses. Sadly, these doghouses are often the first "homes" that these animals have ever known. To thank the kids for their compassion, TeachKind—PETA's humane-education division—has given the students and the school its Compassionate School Award.
Check out a couple of the happy dogs with their new doghouses:
Inspired by these kids' kindness? Why not sponsor a doghouse in behalf of a cold, lonely dog?
A new billboard in Mooresville, N.C., is doing its best to boost Bloom supermarket's beef sales by using huge fans to waft the smell of charcoal and black pepper fragrance oils (aka the store's idea of charred cow) into traffic.
PETA thinks that it's time for people in Mooresville—which is best known for its NASCAR teams—to wake up and smell the cruelty. That's why we're trying to raise a stink of our own by using the same technology to erect a realistic, slaughterhouse-inspired, stench-producing billboard nearby:
Imagine sitting in hot, rush-hour traffic while the smell of fear, rotting flesh, blood, guts, urine, and feces drifts through your car window. If that whiff of reality doesn't inspire shoppers to head to the produce aisle, I don't know what will!
My advice to Mooresville residents: Look after yourself, the environment, and animals the next time you fire up the grill for a NASCAR event. Race to the store, take a left past Bloom's meat counter, and score some Boca burgers instead. Seriously, we wouldn't steer you wrong.
Written by Amy Skylark Elizabeth
The following is a post that originally appeared on PETA Prime.
Because of your support, PETA is able to work in local communities, helping individual animals in need. Thousands of animals are helped by PETA's Community Animal Project (CAP) each year. This is the first edition of a series of posts chronicling the work of CAP—this post is from Emily Allen, assistant manager for CAP.
Before I started at PETA nearly five years ago, I didn't realize how dire the situation for animals was in so many rural and impoverished areas. There are millions of individual dogs out there who need help. They suffer in all weather extremes, at the mercy of people who often fail to do even the very minimum to care for them. If there is a chance that we can make their lives a little less hellish, we'll certainly try.
PETA's Community Animal Project (CAP) drives for more than two hours each way every week—sometimes several times—in our effort to spare North Carolina's animals as much misery as possible. Many of these animals don't have anything good in their lives—certainly not the hope of an indoor life or a decent animal protection law to keep them safe, let alone a law enforcement agency that gives a hoot. Here are just a few of the dogs we met this week during one of our North Carolina trips:
Our first stop of the day was checking on a playful lab mix named Mariah. Last winter, we persuaded Mariah's humans to allow us to spay her. We transported Mariah to and from her spay appointment, and we provided her with a sturdy doghouse. The ride to and from her spay appointment was the first time that Mariah had ever been in a car. It was also the first—and only—time that she has ever seen a veterinarian. She gets uncontrollably frantic with excitement whenever she's off her tether, which, unfortunately, doesn't happen very often. Mariah's people are elderly and frail. And while they feed her regularly and talk nicely to her, they just aren't able to give her all the attention and exercise that she needs so desperately. And they aren't willing to give her up either. I try to stop at Mariah's house whenever I can and take her for a walk around the block so that she'll have the opportunity to smell new things and experience a bit of freedom.
A couple celebrating their wedding anniversary in New Bern, North Carolina, got stuck with the memory of a lifetime when the horse-drawn carriage in which they were riding was struck by a car, sending them and the carriage driver to the hospital. (Needless to say: open carriage, no seat belts, no air bags.) The horse, Suzi, was also injured.
Horses like Suzi have a bad life, trying to dodge traffic—but traffic doesn't always dodge them. This couple may now have a cautionary tale to tell their grandkids, but for Suzi and other horses who are forced to bear the weight of carriages and tourists in traffic day and night in all weather extremes, carriage rides are a hard trip down memory lane. New Bern needs to join cities around the world that have put these rides out to pasture for good.
Send a polite note to New Bern Mayor Lee Bettis Jr. asking him to ban horse-drawn carriages.
Written by Jennifer O'Connor
What do you call it when a KFC is "closed for cruelty"? A goreclosure!
For more than a year, dedicated animal advocates have been holding monthly demonstrations outside a KFC in North Carolina to spread the word about KFC's tormented chickens—and watching the restaurant's business dwindle. Now, so many people have washed their hands of KFC's blood that the location has recently shut down!
The only thing better than vegan party food? Knowing that no chicken will ever leave that building in a KFC bucket again. Inspired to instigate a goreclosure in your community? Start organizing your own KFC protest today!
Written by Logan Scherer
The following is a guest post from PETA Prime's Scott VanValkenburg.
Did you know that February 23 is Spay Day? Leading up to this very important "holiday," PETA Files readers are going to be treated to a series of posts that are aimed at highlighting the importance of making sure that animal companions are spayed or neutered.
In my time at PETA headquarters, I can honestly say that nothing has changed the situation more for dogs and cats in the border region between North Carolina and Virginia than have PETA's mobile clinics. The original "Spay and Neuter Immediately, Please!" (SNIP) clinic has been joined by the Animal Birth Control DogDoc clinic. Last year was a banner year for the struggle to end companion animal overpopulation in the poor urban and rural communities served by PETA's clinics.
In 2009, our mobile clinics performed 8,677 spay or neuter surgeries, preventing the birth of as many as 62,472 kittens and 55,536 pups in the next year alone. That's easily equal to the local animal shelter intake for one year! The local shelters (where they exist in these areas) are bursting at the seams—so no adoption program can possibly solve the problem—and exporting pups and kittens to shelters in areas with a lower population also doesn't address the root of the issue.
PETA not only drives the clinics to towns where there are no veterinary services at all (let alone a low-cost clinic) but also uses creative grassroots work to reach people. Volunteers from PETA's Community Animal Project (CAP) march in the "Peanut Parade" (this is the South, after all) and go door to door trying to help "backyard" dogs. Many of the animals who receive free doghouses from PETA are also spayed or neutered by SNIP. PETA now has a full-time employee in North Carolina who drives a small van to remote residences (many on roads with no street signs) to pick up dogs and cats to take to the clinics. Last year, 562 animals got a free round-trip ride to the clinics. It was definitely the first ride that many of these animals had ever had!
PETA has also worked to have legislation passed that promotes spay and neuter surgeries.
PETA's clinics are among the few that provide "early" spaying and neutering, which not only prevents accidental litters and helps the shelters we serve with pre-adoption sterilization but also helps the individual animals avoid many health problems. Last year, 2,917 puppies and kittens were "snipped" so that they'll never have a litter! Our clinics also helped the most abused breed of dog by providing 210 low-cost or free surgeries to pit bulls. And feral cat caretakers brought in 735 felines, moving us closer to the day when there are no outdoor cats.
One local animal shelter reported that it received 100 fewer pups last year than it did in 2008, attributing the decrease almost entirely to PETA's mobile clinic services. The flood of dogs and cats needing homes continues, but PETA's local and national programs are helping to stem the tide. Have you waded into this issue?
Written by Scott VanValkenburg
A 75-year-old woman who is a "caretaker" at Chief Saunooke Bear Park (one of the concrete bear pits in Cherokee, North Carolina) was bitten by a bear earlier this week. The bear grabbed her coat through the cage as she and her son, who owns the facility, were giving the animals water. She suffered a serious injury to her arm and lacerations near her mouth and hairline.
Neurotic and hungry, the bears who are imprisoned in the Cherokee pits exhibit unnatural behavior such as pacing and begging as a means of coping with life inside a concrete pit. In this dismal environment, they are unable to forage for food, explore their surroundings, create dens, or receive any of the necessary stimulation and enrichment that bears in captivity require.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investigating the recent attack, and we've asked the agency to revoke the facility's license, but we won't rest until we see these bears retired to sanctuaries. Luckily, we've got some compassionate star power behind us. Bob Barker, friend to animals and proud descendent of Native Americans, has worked tirelessly to shut down the hideous bear pits—from meeting with the Tribal Council for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to advocating for the bears' freedom in the blogosphere. Help Bob Barker end the suffering by urging the USDA to close Chief Saunooke's cruel bear prison immediately.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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