ANIMAL OBITS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

Major, 33, the oldest polar bear in
captivity, was euthanized on June 3 due to
liver cancer. Born in Siberia, Major was captured
in 1966, imported to the Worcester
Ecotarium in 1971, and transferred to the
Stone Zoo in Boston in 1975. The thenseverely
substandard zoo was closed in 1990
and the animals dispersed. “Public outcry
would not allow him to be euthanized, even
though there was no place for him to go,”
recalled his longtime friend and zoo volunteer
Carol Rocci, of Medford, Massachusetts.
Major’s presence and popularity eventually
won funding to reopen and improve the zoo.

Tyrone the Terrible, a chimpanzee
rescued from a traveling circus in 1985 by the
Michigan Humane Society, died from a heart
attack on February 16 at Primarily Primates,
his home ever since. As a circus performer,
remembered Primarily Primates president
Wally Swett, “Tyrone had cold water thrown
in his face, and endured a fibreglas rod pounding
the side of his tiny cage, with constant
heckling from his handler, until at each show
he began bashing his body against the walls
and pounding his feet on the steel floor. His
hands were often bloodied from hitting the
wire mesh, and he was always soaked in
water. “ Despite the abuse, at Primarily
Primates he was always, “The first to display,
the first to run over and comfort frightened
newcomers, the first to protect the weakest,
and the first to offer friendship,” Swett continued.
“He was no longer afraid of his caregivers,
often extending his hand in a sign of
trust. No other chimpaznee at Primarily
Primates has ever been as bighearted.”
Mr. Chips, 15, Chihuahua of
Connie Sies, 79, of Corvallis, Oregon, was
euthanized on June 5 due to heart trouble. Mr.
Chips in December 1999 bumped Sies’ car into
gear while she was buying him Chicken
McNuggets, and drove it, paws on the steering
wheel, across a busy street to a Taco Bell
restaurant. There, after a minor fender-bender,
he was given a chalupa.