Just before Memorial Day weekend 2011, a group of U.S. Forest Service employees was finishing a training session in the Lubrecht Experimental Forest outside Missoula when some of them found a brush-covered depression in the ground and, in it, a tiny mountain-lion cub.

It was one of those moments Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wildlife biologists spend a lot of energy addressing. Someone finds a cute baby animal. It’s alone and seems to have been abandoned. So the people are faced with a dilemma: should they leave it where it is or intervene? Biologists at every level say the best thing to do is leave the little animal where it is, because, whether or not you see her, the mother is probably nearby. It can seem counter-intuitive to caring people, but intervention can diminish the animal’s chances for survival.

According to Lubrecht’s director, Frank Maus, when the group found the little cat, they followed this advice and left it where it was.

However, they didn’t entirely leave the area. They stuck around to set up a motion-sensor camera to monitor what happened. The mother didn’t return that night. The next morning, the cub was getting more lethargic. Its mother didn’t return that night either. On the third morning, Maus went to check on the cat and it was no longer moving.

If things had ended there, those involved would probably have walked away feeling powerless and sad. But they had already interfered with nature and felt responsible, so Maus approached the cat to check for signs of life.

“It was stiff, almost like rigor mortis,” Maus said. “But when I touched it, it raised its head. So we rolled it up in a fleece jacket and brought it down to the truck and put it by the heater and warmed it up a bit.”

Janie Howser, who was Lubrecht’s facilities manager at the time and another of those involved, kept several pets, so the group looked to her as de facto caregiver. She lived in the area and took the cub, wrapped it in a blanket, fed it some formula made for domestic kittens, gave it subcutaneous fluids. A photographer who had also kept animals much of her life, Mae Foresta, said the cub wasn’t walking but was “mobile and alert.”

“It had a nice plump belly and responded to (warmth),” she said.

Howser at one point returned to the center to show people how well the cat was recovering.

“I was amazed,” said Maus. “Within a few hours, this little guy had come around.”

This posed a new problem: what does one do with a mountain lion cub? They knew it was under Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ jurisdiction and they knew the department operated a wildlife-rehabilitation center in Helena, so they tried to reach someone at the center, but had the wrong phone number and couldn’t get through. They kept making calls and eventually contacted a game warden for the
Helena area, Dave Loewen, who arranged to meet them at the rehab center.

A U.S. Forest Service logging engineer named Stephen (Obie) O’Brien was at Lubrecht, but he lived in Helena. Since the session was now over and he was about to make the return drive anyway, he offered to transport the cub. Howser rode along to help with the cat.

Howser said it was a relief to know it would soon be with people who could help if its health deteriorated, but she was certain it was active and eating formula during the drive.

“The little bugger wasn’t in great shape, but it was in the box and seemed to be yowling, making noises and that,” O’Brien said.

Once in Helena, they met Loewen in the parking lot outside the rehab center, handed over the mountain lion, then drove away under the impression the warden was going to try to rehabilitate the cub or transfer it to someone who might.

But Loewen didn’t contact anyone at the rehab center. Wardens sometimes consult with biologists or vets if they aren’t certain about the best course of action, but he said in a recent interview that he didn’t have to talk to anyone else in this case because it was obvious to him that, despite what Maus, O’Brien, Foresta and Howser believed, the cub was dying.

So he euthanized it with exhaust at the tailpipe of his FWP truck.

***

The incident last May began with a well-intentioned decision to interfere with nature and escalated to the point where a group of state and federal employees found their evaluations of a mountain-lion cub challenged by a warden who looked at the same cat and saw a starkly different set of options. The incident also highlights the public’s deep emotional investment with Montana’s wildlife and the ways FWP policy navigates fraught waters.

State vet Jennifer Ramsey said wardens receive training in which they learn how to quickly and humanely euthanize wild animals and that she urges field staff to follow the American Veterinary Medical Association euthanasia guidelines when conditions permit. But, she added, conditions in the field are not always optimal, so wardens have latitude to make decisions based on the situation at hand. For instance, though an overdose of barbiturates might be a particularly humane means of euthanasia, a warden who comes across a severely injured bear in the woods probably doesn’t have a syringe or the ability to safely inject a wounded bear.

Since so much depends on wardens’ decision-making process in the field, Ramsey said, “Hopefully they use good judgment.”

Officer Loewen has been featured in several news stories in the Independent Record, on local TV stations and even on the National Geographic Channel. A warden for the region around Helena, he enjoys some small celebrity because he is one of the people city and county officials call when potentially dangerous animals like lions or bears turn up on private property or in the middle of the city. Loewen shot and killed a mountain lion on a deck in the south hills some months back and another in February after it killed a couple domestic cats west of Helena.

But Loewen’s job title doesn’t convince Howser and the others that he made the right judgment with this particular cub.

When she found out about the euthanasia a few days later, she was bewildered.

“If I felt it was on death’s door, I wouldn’t have bothered taking it over there. I would have just dealt with it until death, but I thought it had a good chance,” she said.
According to Howser, she and O’Brien only agreed to meet Loewen in the rehab center’s parking lot because they believed he was going to try to rehabilitate it or transfer it to the center’s manager, Lisa Rhodin.

Furthermore, Howser is adamant Loewen lied to her, claiming the warden explicitly stated he was going to make sure the cub was rehabilitated. O’Brien didn’t go so far as to say Loewen lied, but he did say the warden gave the impression someone was going to try to rehabilitate the cat.

Loewen denied lying or giving them false impressions.

“I think at one point I told them I would have to take a look at the cat and that it probably would have to be euthanized,” Loewen said.

Howser said that doesn’t gibe with her memory because she had no idea he was going to do this when they left.

When asked if he thought it was possible that meeting them outside the rehab center might have led to their mistaken impression, Loewen said they met in that location because the others didn’t know their way around Helena but knew where the center was. When told that O’Brien lived in Helena, Loewen said it also made sense to meet there because they were coming from McDonald Pass and the highway passes by the center on Broadwater Ave.

He said a couple of times that he didn’t want to respond to what he called “Janie Howser’s personal attacks,” but noted another reason she might have been upset.

“I had a pretty frank discussion with her about what they had done wrong,” he said.

By the time the cub arrived in Helena, the issue of what they should have done back at the Lubrecht forest was moot. They weren’t planning to take the cat back where they found it because they thought it was going to be rehabilitated. And Loewen wasn’t going to return it because he didn’t believe it had a chance of recovery.

Howser, O’Brien, Foresta and Maus are not wildlife biologists, but all four saw the cat for extended periods of time and were convinced it at least stood a chance of survival. Maus believed it was still too young to walk, but claimed to have seen it pushing itself up and wobbling on its legs.

“It was up and meowing and just acting like a kitten,” he said.

Howser and Foresta provided several photos of the cat. Most featured it wrapped in blankets, with human arms holding it. But one photo did show it holding its own head up a bit as it nursed on a small bottle of formula and, in another, it seemed to be sitting up in a box under its own power. Such things caused most everyone involved to think the cat was on the mend.

“They thought wrong,” Loewen said, citing his biology degree and 12 years of experience as a game warden.

“It was weak. It was not moving around. It was lethargic … when I became involved, the animal obviously couldn’t survive,” he said.

All parties seemed to agree the best possible scenario would have been if none of this had ever happened, but it was too late for that. All that was left were a few less-than-ideal options. They were just outside the rehab center’s doors and, since Howser and O’Brien felt the cat was getting better, they saw rehabilitation as the obvious choice. Loewen didn’t think the cat had a chance, so he saw a very different set of options: a gunshot or exhaust.

He explained that he didn’t like the former because it didn’t seem as humane.

“It’s a very difficult position to be in,” Loewen said. “It’s not anything I enjoyed.”

***

As for using exhaust, Loewen said he followed AVMA guidelines.

“Several different methods are acceptable, including carbon monoxide,” he said.

It is important to remember that wardens in the field don’t typically have the luxury of using the AVMA’s preferred methods. However, while carbon monoxide does appear in the guidelines as one acceptable tool of euthanasia, the specific method Loewen used is explicitly discouraged.

The relevant passage from the guidelines lists three common sources of the gas that people have used for euthanasia in the past: gas produced from certain chemical interactions, exhaust from idling combustion engines and commercially compressed gas in cylinders. It goes on to read, “The first 2 techniques are associated with problems such as production of other gases, achieving inadequate concentration of carbon monoxide … therefore, the only acceptable source is compressed CO in cylinders.”

Warden Captain Sam Shephard said in a telephone interview that he trusted Loewen’s assessment of the cat’s health.

But when asked if Loewen had been reprimanded for anything related to the incident, Shephard said no, or, more specifically, that “it didn’t rise to the level of a reprimand.”

But they did talk about the choice to use exhaust.

Shephard explained that FWP enforcement is always looking at policies and making sure they are up to date. Here, he said, they sat down for “corrective counseling” and decided “this form of euthanasia was not the way we wanted to handle these situations.”

Given another situation like the one Loewen faced in May, Shephard said they decided, “We would contact our (state) vet and if our vet is not available then we will take it to a local vet to have it put down.”

At one point during the interview with Loewen, he echoed Shephard’s statement: “I could have maybe communicated with a local vet to see if there was a better way to euthanize the animal, but the end result was the end result and there was no way around it.”

***

The chain of command used this incident as a means of clarifying unwritten policy with regard to euthanasia practices. But what kinds of levers has the enforcement department installed to steer candidate wildlife toward the rehabilitation center in those rare moments when conditions do permit?

Communications director Ron Aasheim offered the Helena Vigilante a copy of FWP’s “Policy on Intake, Rehabilitation, Holding and Disposition of Wildlife.”

The policy, which is dated January 2010, lists mountain-lion cubs up to six months old as being candidates for rehabilitation and permanent placement. This means the center can—and could at the time—accept injured or orphaned mountain lion cubs, but it also indicates that manager Rhodin must try to place them in zoos or educational facilities rather than release them in the wild. (Mountain lions would require long internments before they were mature enough to fend for themselves, so biologists generally agree the large cats would become overly comfortable with humans during that time.)

During the interview, when asked how his own department’s policies interact with those of the rehab center, Loewen explained that wardens in the state’s seven enforcement regions don’t have rigid written policies for what to do with every kind of wild animal in every kind of situation, precisely because every situation is different.
“We are sort of decentralized,” he said.

When asked how such unofficial warden policies might overlap with the rehab center’s intake policy, he said, “As far as trying to connect (regional policy) with the center there’s no connection there … you might get seven different interpretations.”

He explained the reason using an example: a warden who finds an injured black bear a short distance from Helena might be able to make a quick trip to the rehab center, but to drive from Kalispell with a similarly injured bear might be unrealistic or cause undue harm.

But what are the department’s baseline positions?

Assistant Chief of Wardens Mike Korn said there is no separate written policy that enforcement officers follow when it comes to whether or not to take animals to the rehab center.
“We try to operate off the rehab center’s policy,” he said, “but we rely on our officers’ judgment and experience.”

The general-policy section of the intake document, among other things, authorizes humane dispatch of animals “with little chance of recovery” and outlines the official position on what FWP officers should do if someone presents them with a wild animal “with injuries that are not life threatening and or/does not require treatment.”

The latter passage explains a few conditions under which an animal in such a situation should be returned immediately to the wild. Two relevant conditions are that “the animal is not injured in any way and appears in good health” and that it “has been out of its natural environment for less than twelve hours.”

However, there is no explicit statement about what should happen if an animal fails, in a warden’s judgment, to pass such tests. There is the line earlier in the document authorizing euthanasia if necessary. Other than that, after the list of tests, there is only a paragraph break, followed by the subheading for Montana Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.

Here, among other things, one finds a list of animals that cannot be accepted under any circumstances; another for those that can be accepted for rehabilitation and release in the wild; and yet another for animals (among them, mountain-lion cubs under six months) that can be accepted for rehabilitation and permanent placement in a zoo.

If indeed this is the only policy document on the subject, there is no explicit statement saying FWP personnel should—or even could—attempt to take candidate animals there in those instances when field conditions permit. There is only the inference created by a paragraph break and a new subheading for the rehab center, as if drafters assumed the very mention of a rehab center made such an explicit statement unnecessary.

Such an assumption would make state vet Ramsey’s earlier statement—“hopefully they use good judgment”—ring that much truer.

***

Almost a year has passed since some well-intentioned people found a mountain-lion cub in the Lubrecht Experimental Forest. In that time, Montana’s wardens have cited scofflaws and poachers. They’ve helped injured animals and they’ve been in situations where they had to make snap judgments about whether to put some of those animals down. This bears special mention because almost every FWP employee interviewed said something to the effect that this one little cat, big as it may have become in the eyes of those involved, was one piece of a much larger picture.

Back in Helena, Wildlife rehab center manager Rhodin had a busy year, too. In the past few months, she has placed six orphaned mountain-lion cubs in zoos in New York, Mississippi and Idaho.
That they were orphaned might not be a pleasant thing to think about. And any question about whether people should be happy about wild cats living out their lives in zoos is a topic for another discussion.

But FWP wardens transported all six cubs to the rehab center.

http://helenavigilante.com/archives/6930    Shane Castle   April 5, 2012

And so he did on Oct. 18, when, distraught over the declining state of his farm and the marriage he treasured, he freed most of the 56 animals living on his 76 acres just outside the city line and fired a single bullet into his mouth, killing himself and leaving his body for his animal children to feed upon.

“I described him as a guy that kind of pushed the envelope, a liked-to-live-on-the-edge type of person,” Muskingum County Sheriff Matthew Lutz said seven months later, when the media frenzy was finally starting to dwindle and when the few surviving animals had been returned to the farm. “There’s a lot of stories out there about the wild things he did. I wouldn’t say that he’s a legend, but I would say that he’s well known.”

The world learned about Terry Thompson after his gruesome death, while sheriff’s deputies ran around the hillside property for hours shooting lions, tigers and bears. Longtime Zanesville residents learned of him in the 1950s, when his parents moved the family, their horses and a dog to a home on Airport Road on the east side of town, not far from the municipal airport.

“We did a lot of stupid things,” said Gary Brock, who befriended Terry as a boy and remained close to him until November 2010, when Thompson went to a federal penitentiary on weapons charges. “Terry was Terry — he always had something that we were doing — not breaking the law, but always on the line.”

Terry once persuaded Gary to eat poison ivy by telling him that if he ate the toxic plant he’d never get a rash from it again. The day after was miserable, Mr. Brock said, “but he was right.”

Terry joined the Boy Scouts and eventually earned his Eagle Scout award. He drove around town in a 1964-1/2 Mustang but was more likely to be spotted in a plane.

“He had his pilot’s license before he had his driver’s license,” said Christine Perone, who dated him for a spell in high school. Terry sometimes buzzed Christine’s house with his plane, angering her father, who adored him nonetheless.

A tailback on the football team, Terry “loved girls” and was often surrounded by many of them, Ms. Perone recalled. “He was not unattractive at all. He was fun. He was nice.”

But Mr. Brock remembered Terry’s attraction to only two girls — Christine and the woman he would eventually marry — Marian Sharp.

Marian, now Marian Thompson, and her attorney did not respond to requests for interviews.

Family friends suspect the two met at horse shows, where Marian stood out as an elite equestrian. “I always thought that was the odd thing,” Mr. Brock said. “She was the rich girl in town and he was the average guy.”

Nevertheless, Ms. Perone said, “they were crazy about each other. You didn’t see one without the other.”

Thompson, like many other men from his generation, would never recover from what was about to happen next. In 1967, shortly after he graduated from high school and shortly after he tried to persuade Mr. Brock not to enter the armed forces, Thompson was drafted. He deployed as a gunner to Vietnam, where he fought near the Cambodian border.

“It was like he never returned,” said Fred Polk, who knew Mr. Thompson when he was a boy and lived next to him on Kopchak Road, where Thompson would later build his collection of exotic animals.

Thompson recounted for Mr. Brock fairly frequently that “he had to pick up a lot of his dead friends that had crashed.”

Decades later, in secretly taped conversations with a confidential informant the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Thompson frequently talked about the war, using his experience as a way to boast of his gun knowledge but also expressing some veiled remorse for the lives lost.

“This is a 308,” he told the informant, whose conversation led to his conviction on gun charges. “So I could have killed you when you came in the front gate. But, of course, I’ve never killed anyone in civilian life.”

Thompson was “different” after he returned from the war, several people said, but few could easily pinpoint how. Even more so than before, Mr. Brock said, “everything kind of went with speed. I think he just had to be on the edge because he was on the edge in Vietnam and he just never got off it.”

Around town, people heard rumors that Thompson had once flown beneath the Y-Bridge, the city’s claim to fame and a landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. Some said he touched down on golf courses or flew over horse shows. Some said he drove his motorcycles and boats so fast police couldn’t catch him. Few people knew whether these stories were true and Thompson seemed to enjoy the mystery.

Asked about the many stories, Thompson “never said he did and never said he didn’t” do many of the things attributed to his name, Ms. Perone said.

When Thompson returned from the war, he took a job selling cars in Muskingum County, Mr. Brock said. In 1977, the same year he married Marian, then a sixth-grade teacher, Thompson opened a motorcycle shop called T’s Harley Davidson, using his nickname. Years later, sheriff’s deputies would jokingly call his farm “T’s World” in reference to the rundown business and Thompson’s eccentric habits. The couple ran the shop until the early ’90s. At some point, they received a license to sell firearms, a license that they eventually returned.

As the years passed, friends and neighbors noticed a change. While the two retained their kind demeanors, “they became unusual,” Ms. Perone said.

About 1997, the couple attended an exotic animal auction, where Thompson bought an ailing baby lion for Ms. Thompson as a birthday present.

“Once you have an exotic animal, you’re somewhat tagged as someone who will take unwanted or abandoned animals. And that’s how it grew,” Ms. Thompson testified in court years later.

Sheriff Lutz said his deputies had been called to the property off Interstate 70 between 30 and 35 times since 2005, most frequently for calls that the horses had escaped. They charged Thompson with animal cruelty or a similar offense after a buffalo on the farm died, he said.

“We did not have a lot of issues with the exotics other than people calling and complaining about how they were being kept and how they were being fed,” the sheriff said. “And then we would take some state agencies with us out there — the department of agriculture and the humane society — we had some veterinarians from the Columbus Zoo … out there with us, and there were never any animals that were being starved.”

The exact contents of the farm remained a mystery to most Zanesville residents, glimpsed only when the Thompsons brought a bear cub or lion cub to the county fair or when Thompson drove around town with one of the exotic cats in the passenger seat of his car.

Neighbors said a bear once chased a girl down the street, but they were not able to confirm whether the animal came from the Thompson farm or elsewhere. Thompson told Mr. Brock he and his wife slept with a leopard until it grew too big.

Neighbors heard the lions roaring at night. Mr. Polk said he slept with several loaded guns in his house, worried that the worst would happen.

It was luck, neighbor Sam Kopchak said, that he had bought a Pinto-Arabian named Red nine days before the release — a horse that would know before any human that something was amiss on the Thompson farm.

Mr. Kopchak had slowly been introducing Red to the pasture behind his home and went to check on the horse shortly before 5 p.m. Mr. Kopchak spotted a bear running up the side of the Thompson farm and realized that one of the animals had gotten loose.

“I never really thought of the animals to tell you the truth,” he said. He thought to call the Thompsons, as he and his mother had done the other times an animal had escaped.

Moments later, “I just felt like something was looking at me.” He turned around and spotted an African lion sitting yards away, just on the other side of a wire fence meant to keep back only the horses.

“He’s not gonna get me and he’s not gonna get my horse,” Mr. Kopchak thought, steering his horse back toward the barn where he took shelter, listening as the deputies later shot animal after animal in an action he described as heroic.

Mr. Kopchak picked up his cell phone and called his 84-year-old mother, Dolores, who calmly called first the Thompsons — to no avail — and then 911.

What happened next was “like a dream state,” said Dolores Kopchak, who remained alone in their home while much of the action unfolded.

Moments after Ms. Kopchak called 911, Deputy Jonathan Merry knocked on her door. As she opened the door, a gray wolf charged toward Deputy Merry, who shot it dead not far from her front door. Around them, two black bears, a Bengal Tiger and an African lioness roamed about — the first of dozens of animals to stray from their broken or opened enclosures.

The sergeant in charge, Steven Blake, contacted his captain, Jeff LeCocq, who in turn called Sheriff Lutz, who had just finished eating supper at his home in the nearby town of Philo.

Sheriff Lutz agreed to come to the farm. When he learned that dozens of animals were loose, he gave the order to kill.

“Everybody says that it had to be a hard decision, but it really wasn’t for me. I knew from being there what kind of animals he had and I knew what those animals could do,” the sheriff said.

The frenzy began. For nearly seven hours, many in the rain, deputies, Special Response Team members and other officials tried to hunt the animals.

Up a hill in the center of the property, not far from some animal cages and the family home, deputies stumbled upon a body. Blood marks in the dirt suggested it had been dragged. The head had a bullet wound and bite marks from a cat. The pants were down and the genitals were missing. Blue bolt cutters and a Ruger .357-caliber revolver sat feet away. Chicken parts were strewn about the nearby driveway. Gunshot residue covered parts of the left hand, a sign, authorities said later, of a suicide.

“Terry was kind of cocky when he would go in and open the pens up in front of you and feed the animals. I just thought at some point that one of the animals would maul him or kill him kind of by accident,” the sheriff later said.

But detectives would learn that Thompson’s death was likely well planned. Thompson had been out of federal custody on weapons charges for three weeks when he cut the cages and killed himself.

His federal probation officer, Joe Moore, told detectives later that Thompson was “overwhelmed” by the condition of the farm when he returned and worried about how he would bring it back up to his standards while on electronic monitoring. The couple owed more than $12,000 in taxes on the property (a foreclosure notice has since been filed by the county).

John Moore, who had been hired to care for the animals six days a week, told officials that Ms. Thompson had not been living at the home since April or May that year, when she left to show horses at state and county fairs. He said Ms. Thompson frequently sent him money and stopped by the farm two or three times a week.

The day before his death, Thompson told the caretaker that he “had gotten a letter about Marian cheating on him while he was away,” according to a report from the sheriff’s office. He then said, “I have a plan to find out and you will know it when it happens.”

Retrieving Thompson’s body was no easy task. A large tiger guarded it for several hours and deputies had to fight off other animals before they could safely approach.

While trying to secure the area, a team of deputies searched some nearby lions’ cages, and Drake Prouty, an unarmed auxiliary deputy, reached inside each cage and closed the doors in what fellow deputy Anthony Angelo called an “unselfish courageous” act.

But the chain-link cages had been cut so the animals could escape despite the closed doors, so the deputies had to shoot some of the lions.

The action dwindled shortly before midnight, when Sheriff Lutz sent many of his men home. Several returned the next day to clean up the animal carcasses, which were later buried on the property. That morning, with help from a zoo worker, they tried to save a hiding tiger by tranquilizing it, but the tiger “jolted” and a deputy shot it for fear it would kill the zoo worker.

Six animals — three big cats, two monkeys and a bear — survived the release either because Thompson didn’t set them free or because sheriff’s deputies were able to contain them.

State officials ordered that they should be placed under quarantine for six months, the time needed to spot signs of rabies in living animals. They were taken to the Columbus Zoo, where one, a leopard-jaguar mix, was euthanized after a cage door fell on its neck, leaving it with irreversible damage.

Ms. Thompson retrieved her animals and returned them to the farm a little more than a week ago.

Sheriff Lutz said authorities might never know why Thompson chose to set his animals free before killing himself.

For Mr. Brock, that answer is clear: “He said he’d feed himself to the animals if he knew he was dying. He told me that at least three times.”

Marian Thompson, threatened with foreclosure on her farm in Zanesville, Ohio, paid the back taxes on Friday morning, a week after five surviving animals were returned to her care, but still owes over $55,000 for two federal tax liens, the Zanesville Times Recorder reports.

It is unclear what would happen to the surviving animals if Mrs Thompson’s remaining taxes went unpaid and officials completed a foreclosure for the 70-acre property.

Debt: Marian Thompson, hidden beneath a coat last fall during a visit to the Columbus zoo, has paid more than $14,000 in her farm’s back taxes but is still behind more than $55,000

Returned: Last Friday five surviving animals were transported back to Mrs Thompson’s farm, seen in pink, after 56 of the animals were released by her late husband last October

Nothing in Ohio law allows state officials to check on their welfare or require improvements to conditions in which they are kept.

The state’s agriculture department has said it would be up to local authorities to be alert to their caretaking.

Muskingum County Prosecutor Michael Haddox sent Mrs Thompson a letter in November warning of the potential legal action but after receiving no financial payment before today, expected to move forward in legal action.

‘We want to be zealous in our pursuit of those not paying their taxes, but also we want to also be fair,’ Mr Haddox told the Times Recorder.

Taxed: A toy bear hangs on the entrance to the Thompson’s property after the animals’ release, which narrowly missed foreclosure today after thousands of unpaid taxes went ignored

Release: The exotic animals which included a mountain lion, grizzly bear and endangered tigers, were released by her husband before committing suicide

Suicide: Terry Thompson, seen after a prior arrest, was separated from his wife and floundering in debt at the time of his suicide

‘We understand the economy is bad right now and understand that people are having hardships. But then there are some people who just refuse to pay. That’s when we have to take action,’ he said.

The foreclosure proceedings filed against her this week on the back taxes owed have been dismissed with her payment Friday, Assistant Prosecutor Ron LaAsmar told the Times Recorder.

Mrs Thompson’s payment comes a week after two surviving leopards, two primates and a bear were returned to her farm.

The five animals were released back into Mrs Thompson’s care after test results shows all five were free of dangerously contagious or infectious diseases.

They had been kept at the Columbus zoo for months under a state quarantine order Mrs Thompson had challenged following their release by her late husband, Terry Thompson, whom she had separated from before his suicide last fall.

Hunted: Animal carcasses lie on the ground at the Muskingum County Animal Farm in Zanesville, Ohio after more than two dozen tigers, leopards and lions from the Thompson’s farm were hunted by sheriff’s deputies

Mr Thompson released 56 of his exotic animals before taking his own life that October. Forty-nine of them were killed in the ensuing hunt, including 18 endangered Bengal tigers.

It has been speculated that Mr Thompson killed himself because of the piling financial debt.

A fellow big-cat enthusiast said last week that Mr Thompson had taken in so many creatures, he was ‘in over his head.’

A Columbus zoo official who helped take in the remaining animals told ABC he had never seen anything like the Thompsons’ farm or the aftermath of the animals’ killing.

Rescued: A rescued black leopard, pictured, is one of the few survivors that were returned to Mrs Thompson last week

 

Babies: One of two macaques, seen, was said by Mrs Thompson to have slept with her while she was still living with her husband

Returned: One of three leopards captured, shown, was returned last week after being housed for months at the Columbus zoo against efforts by Mrs Thompson

‘I’ve been in the zoo business for 22 years and before that I grew up on a farm so I’ve been around animals all my life and I’ve never seen that,’ Tom Stalf said. ‘I don’t ever want to see that again. It was bad.’

Mrs Thompson referred to the animals as her ‘babies’ when she reportedly told Mr Stalf last week that she is especially bonding with the surviving pair of primates.

She revealed to him that when she was still living at the farm the surviving female Macaque would sleep with her.

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 19:12 EST, 11 May 2012 | UPDATED: 20:23 EST, 11 May 2012

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2143276/Farm-owner-released-exotic-animals-wild-killing-face-foreclosure-widow-owes-thousands-unpaid-taxes.html#ixzz1uf8drsXC

The widow of Terry Thompson, the Zanesville, OH man who released 56 exotic animals from their cages before taking his own life, will be getting 5 of the surviving animals back.  The court ruling, handed down April 30th, is shining the national spotlight back on exotic animal laws.  Authorities had to kill 48 of the animals as a safety precaution, evidence that private citizens shouldn’t try to house these creatures according to Birmingham Zoo Mammal Curator Marcia Riedmiller.  “That’s a big risk, caring for animals like that.  You have to have the knowledge, and the background, and the vet care to be able to care for them properly, because there’s always that possibility.  A lot of times private individuals may not have that expertise available to them,” she explains.

Carolyn Atchison has those resources.  As the owner of the Animal House in Moulton, she has animals ranging from big cats, like tigers and lions, to lemur monkeys and grizzly bears.  “We try to get them as early as possible, six or seven months old.  I don’t like to take them any older than that if I can.  Then, they are never afraid or scared or frightened or anything,” she says.  According to her, what makes an animal “wild” is the presence of pain, fear, and hunger.  “You can become an animal if you have those symptoms or problems.”

Under Alabama state law, her pets are completely legal.  Alabama is one of seven states in the country with no laws regulating ownership of exotic animals.  Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin are the others.  Atchison says she’s never been bit by any of her big cats or bears.  Riedmiller thinks it’s still not enough to validate exotic animal ownership.  “They’re dangerous.  They’re built to kill, they have those instincts.  They’re not domesticated,” she says.

Every habitat at the Animal House has two gates which are both locked at all times to try and prevent a similar situation to what happened in Zanesville.  Atchison adds that she has an array of firearms and other mechanisms in case one of the animals breaks free on their own.  “I have blow guns, dart guns, high powered rifles, and everything to prevent that from happening.  This man [Thompson] didn’t have anything.  He was there alone fighting a bunch of people,” she says.

While Atchison and Riedmiller disagree on the Moulton Animal House, they both agree that Alabama needs legislation governing who can and can’t own such animals.  Despite her sanctuary in Moulton, Atchison says, “I don’t think a lot of people should.  I think they should be able to do provisions and check into things before this is done.”

In the aftermath of the Zanesville debacle, the Ohio state legislature is looking into laws restricting new exotic pet ownership.  Current owners would get to keep their animals.

MOULTON, Ala. (WIAT)   Reported by: Chris Womack    Email: cwomak@cbs42.com     Published: 5/08 6:14 pm

http://www.cbs42.com/content/special/story/Exotic-Animal-Laws/fLDBNb6oM0yS7eIFWTvS-g.cspx

Ohio’s captive wildlife crisis, and the tragedy occurring there, is grabbing everyone’s attention. Sadly, for the Wildcat Sanctuary in Sandstone, MN, it’s an issue they deal with every day.

As a rescue facility for wild cats in need of refuge, the Sanctuary is hoping to end the notion that wild animals can ever be kept as pets. Now, thanks to the international firm LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics, they’ll be getting some much-needed help.

When LUSH assistant manager Stacy Taylor learned about the life-saving work of The Wildcat Sanctuary, she thought they’d be the perfect recipient for the company’s Charity Pot program. Knowing LUSH “likes to look after those who look after others, and is committed to supporting small, grassroots charities,” she felt The Wildcat Sanctuary would be a perfect fit and so deserving of the company’s fundraising program.

With over 800 stores in 49 countries, Stacy shared “how excited we all are that The Wildcat Sanctuary was chosen and will be our first local charity to benefit from sales of our Charity Pots!”

LUSH Charity Pots are filled with a hand and body lotion made with vegan and non-animal tested ingredients. For every Charity Pot sold, 100% of the price (less taxes) will be donated to a variety of handpicked charities including The Wildcat Sanctuary.

Besides the sorely needed funds these sales will bring, LUSH is also putting the Sanctuary’s logo on selected pots so their hard work can be acknowledged and appreciated.

Since LUSH started their Charity Pot program in 2007, they’ve raised over $2.6 million while partnering with more than 150 organizations in 16 different countries. As a proponent of ethical consumerism, LUSH has won a string of Vegan awards.

As part of the partnership, LUSH is donating an $8700 grant toward The Wildcat Sanctuary’s No More Wild Pets educational campaign. With their helping hand, more and more people will learn how they can prevent another tragedy like the Ohio massacre from happening.

The Wildcat Sanctuary Charity Pots will be launched at a special event on May 19th, from 1:00 – 5:00 pm at LUSH’s Mall of America store in Minneapolis. The Wildcat Sanctuary will have an information table and representatives there to share videos of the wild animals they’ve rescued and handouts about their programs.

Tammy Thies, The Wildcat Sanctuary’s Executive Director, said, “it will be nice to see people walk out of the store with our special Charity Pots. They’ll have soft skin and a warm heart knowing they’ve helped so many wild cats in need.”

The Wildcat Sanctuary (TWS) is a 501c3 non-profit, no-kill big cat rescue located in Sandstone, MN. TWS provides a natural sanctuary to over 120 wild cats in need and inspires change to end the captive wildlife crisis. TWS is funded solely on private donations. The Sanctuary is a home for animals, not a zoo for people and is not open to the public. Combining natural and spacious habitats with a life free of exhibition and exploitation, TWS allows all residents to live wild at heart. As a true sanctuary, we do not buy, breed, sell or exhibit animals.
More information can be found at http://www.wildcatsanctuary.org/

Peoria family gets a frequent visitor – a bobcat: MyFoxPHOENIX.com

A Peoria woman thought it was a stray cat lurking in her back yard — but it turned out to be a bobcat.

And that bobcat kept coming back day after day. At one point it stayed in her yard for 5 hours.

We’ve all been warned to be on the lookout for wild animals coming out of the desert into neighborhoods and this is why — sometimes they’ll just show up in your yard.

Now this video is pretty cute, the bobcat is just about a year old, but keep in mind the animal can be very dangerous!

The Sunrise Mountain Preserve is a breathtaking sight and its home to a lot of Arizona wildlife.

“We have coyotes and javelina and a lot of different wildlife but never a bobcat,” says James Patterson.

In his 7 years at living at the bottom of Sunrise Mountain, James Patterson and his wife Kim never saw a bobcat until last week.

“My wife went out to clean the fountain in the front yard and the cat was about 15 feet away and she didn’t see it til after about five minutes,” he says.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department says wild animals often come to houses for water. That seems to be the case here.

“He looks like he’s just trying to find a place to get cool, he drinks out of the fountain.”

The water wasn’t the only thing the bobcat came for, he kept coming back to see his new friend Buddy the desert tortoise.

Were the Pattersons worried about Buddy?

“At one time I was but every time I saw him swat at it, it was more out of curiosity. Like right there, he’s not trying to harm it so much as he’s just curious just wants to know what it is so he does that then goes over and sits down he never had any intention of harming it.”

Even though he’s cute, the Pattersons did the right thing, and didn’t try to pet the feline.

“We stayed in the house after we saw it. Obviously it’s a wild animal so we didn’t go out and try to get close to it or do anything other than watch it through the window.”

Arizona Game and Fish warns that many bobcats have rabies — so definitely never go near one. If you are approached by a bobcat they recommend scaring it off with loud noises or spraying with a hose.

http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/offbeat/peoria-yard-bobcat-5-4-2012

Updated: Friday, 04 May 2012, 9:20 PM MST
Published : Friday, 04 May 2012, 9:20 PM MST

PEORIA, ILLINOIS

A woman suffered severe injuries to her arm after her boyfriend’s pet lynx got loose and attacked her in their Bellevue home.

The incident happened around Friday afternoon at a house in the 1900 block of 160th Avenue NE. The 21-year-old woman was cleaning when the animal escaped its cage.

“There was a lynx cat – a pet that lived in the house and a girlfriend. The cat got jealous of the girlfriend, who was vacuuming, and it jumped on her and bit her,” speculated Jenee Westbend, King County Animal Control officer.

Police and medics were called to the scene, but the lynx was still roaming inside the house. Medics waited outside until the lynx’s owner came home and kenneled the cat.  Animal Control crews then went in and took the lynx away to a vet’s office in Bothell, where it is currently quarantined.

Meanwhile, the woman is expected to be okay.

Neighbors said they have often seen the lynx roaming behind the front windows in the house.

“I kind of felt sorry for the cat living in a house, pacing back and forth, back and forth,” said Bruce Walker, neighbor.

It is currently illegal to have a wild cat in your home in most cases. Animal control workers said they will be investigating that while the lynx is being examined at the Bothell vet clinic. They do that every time a pet bites someone, but very rarely is the pet a lynx.

A toy bear hangs on the entrance to Terry Thompson’s property, where exotic animals were kept, in Zanesville, Ohio

The Columbus Zoo on Friday reluctantly turned over two leopards, a bear and two monkeys to the widow of a man who released them and more than four dozen other dangerous animals into the Ohio countryside before he committed suicide last October.

“We are saddened to watch the tragic return of the survivors of the Zanesville massacre to Marian Thompson.  Had Ohio lawmakers acted fast enough in passing much-needed legislation or had there been protective, more restrictive exotic animal laws in place to begin with, these animals would not be facing a return to the former place of their captivity.  This is a difficult, emotional day for us all.”  Tammy Thies, Executive Director, The Wildcat Sanctuary

An Ohio zoo on Friday returned five surviving exotic animals to a woman whose husband released dozens of wild creatures last fall before he committed suicide.

Two leopards, two primates and a bear have been held at the Columbus zoo since October. State officials had ordered that the animals be quarantined on suspicion of infectious diseases.

Marian Thompson of Zanesville had been appealing the order, and on Monday it was lifted by Ohio’s agriculture director.

Thompson, distinctive in a bright pink shirt and black pants, arrived at a loading area at the zoo around 10:30, driving a pickup truck pulling a silver horse trailer.

Two animals were loaded by hand into the horse trailer in wooden crates, and roaring from the leopards could be heard coming from the crates. A forklift loaded a steel cage, likely carrying the bear. Thompson put her hand on the cage and appeared to be talking to the animal inside as it was put into the trailer.

The monkeys were transported in dog carriers and loaded inside the cab of the truck, with the windows rolled down. Thompson ignored shouted questions from nearby reporters.

Several zoo staffers, including veterinarians and keepers, watched the transfer, with some taking video and still photos. Two United States Agriculture Department inspectors were also on hand with cameras.

Medical results released last week showed all five animals are free of the dangerously contagious or infectious diseases for which they were tested.

Thompson had previously tried to get the animals back from the zoo, but the quarantine prevented her from taking them.

Once the animals are returned to Thompson, nothing in Ohio law allows state officials to check on their welfare or require improvements to conditions in which they are kept. The state’s agriculture department says it will be up to local authorities to be alert to their caretaking.

Thompson is the widow of Terry Thompson, who released 56 animals — including black bears, mountain lions and Bengal tigers — from his eastern Ohio farm Oct. 18 before he committed suicide. Fearing for the public’s safety, authorities killed 48 of the animals.

Three leopards, two Celebes macaques and a bear survived and were taken to the Columbus zoo. One spotted leopard had to be euthanized at the zoo in January. The macaques are small primates; the female weighs about 6 pounds, and the male weighs more than 10 pounds.

The zoo said it raised $44,000 in online donations to help care for the animals, though the actual cost was not known.

It’s unclear whether the animals were headed back to the Zanesville farm, though live TV helicopter video of the trailer appeared to show them heading east toward Zanesville.

Thompson’s attorney has told the state’s agriculture department that his client has adequate cages for the surviving animals.

Others have questioned conditions at the farm, including Tom Stalf, the Columbus zoo’s chief operating officer.

Stalf has said in a sworn statement that he was at the Thompsons’ property the day the animals were released. He said he saw two primates held in separate, small bird cages, along with a brown bear that was kept in a cage that wasn’t fit for its size.

Terry Thompson’s suicide, the animals’ release and their killings led lawmakers to re-examine the state’s restrictions on exotic pets, which are considered some of the nation’s weakest.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By The Associated Press

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/04/11540438-ohio-zoo-returns-surviving-exotic-animals-to-widow?lite

May 4, 2012