For Immediate Release:
December 12, 2013
Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382
This afternoon, Wake County Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour denied a motion filed by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (WRC) to dismiss a lawsuit brought by PETA and several North Carolina citizens that seeks to stop an illegal permit from being issued to allow a wild opossum to be suspended alive in a Plexiglas box and lowered into a noisy crowd at a New Year’s Eve celebration.
PETA has advised the WRC that the nation’s top marsupial experts agree that the so-called “Opossum Drop” is inhumane and that forcing a wild, captive opossum to dangle above a crowd of humans, a primary predator, with screaming celebrants, thumping music, musket fire, and fireworks, frightens the animal so severely that he or she is likely to die after the event from stress-induced illnesses.
PETA’s general counsel Jeff Kerr says, “PETA now continues the case in the hope of relegating this cruel event to the trash heap of history, where it belongs.”
