Paramedics Receive PETA Award For Saving Skunk With Cup on His Head

PETA Reminds Everyone to Protect Wildlife by Crushing Cups and Cans

For Immediate Release:
August 15, 2016

Contact:
Diane Hsiung 202-483-7382

Compassionate Action awards from PETA are on their way to Ryan Austin and Justin Mausz of Peel Regional Paramedic Services for their August 7 rescue of a skunk with a cup stuck on his head. The two men spotted the terrified animal while pulling into their station’s parking lot and rushed to action. To avoid being sprayed, Mausz suited up in protective garb normally used in Ebola cases and spoke softly to the skunk in order to get close enough to remove the cup and set the animal free.

“Ryan Austin’s and Justin Mausz’s compassion and quick thinking saved this skunk from slowly starving to death or getting run over while his head was stuck in that cup,” says PETA Vice President Colleen O’Brien. “PETA reminds everyone to crush cans and cups before throwing them in the trash, in order to protect wildlife from getting trapped inside.”

Mausz and Austin will each receive a framed certificate and delicious vegan cookies.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—has tips on its website for living in harmony with wildlife and properly disposing of trash, such as by keeping all garbage in tightly sealed chew-proof containers, rinsing out aluminum cans and putting the tops inside so that they can’t cut an animal’s tongue, crushing cans and cups, and cutting open empty cardboard and plastic containers so that small animals can’t get their faces or heads trapped inside them.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.