OBITUARIES (APRIL 2013)
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2013:
Obituaries
“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.” ––William Shakespeare
Dianna Hanson, 24, a volunteer/intern at Cat Haven in Dunlap, California, was killed on March 3, 2012 by a five-year-old African lion named Cous Cous, who apparently lifted a gate with his paw and attacked Hanson while she was cleaning another part of his cage and talking with a co-worker on a cell telephone. Sheriff’s deputies shot Cous Cous when he would not leave Hanson’s body. A private zoo, not accredited by either the Association of Zoos & Aquariums or the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, Cat Haven had operated since 1993 without previous accidents, founder Dale Anderson told media. A biology and anthropology student at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, Hanson had previously gained experience helping to look after four exotic cats at a private facility near Bellingham.
Bland Hardison, 1922-2008, a longtime dairy farmer near Bremen, Kentucky, who often donated dog food to the Muhlenberg Humane Society, left a surprise bequest of $1,432.47 to every county-run animal shelter in the state, distributed in March 2013.
D. Padmini, 55, a forest guard at the Kurumbapatti Zoological Park in Salem, India, was seized, thrown to the ground, and stomped on January 31, 2013 by a 62-year-old elephant. Mrs. Padmini was reportedly sweeping the park entrance when mahouts Palanisamy and Kalippan lost control of the elephant. According to The Hindu, “The elephant, suffering from tuberculosis, was brought to the zoological park in 2009 from the Madurai Sri Kallazhagar Temple. She was first taken to the Mudumalai sanctuary, where officials denied her entry because TB is contagious. She came to Salem on orders from the Madras High Court, based on a writ petition filed by Chennai animal welfare activist and lawyer G. Rajendran.”
Hobart Muir Smith, 100, died on March 4, 2013 at his home in Boulder, Colorado. Born Frederick William Stouffer, in Stanwood, Iowa, Smith was orphaned at age four, separated from his five older siblings, whom he never saw again, and adopted by Charles and Frances Muir Smith. A postal worker and a teacher, the Smiths died while their adopted son was studying entomology at Kansas State University, but they left him enough money to complete his degree. Upon graduation in 1932, Hobart Muir Smith joined University of Kansas zoology department head Edward Taylor on a herpetological collecting expedition to Mexico. Earning a Ph.D. by 1936, Hobart Muir Smith was in 1937 elected vice president of the American Society of Ichthyologists & Herpetologists. He married fellow herpetologist Rozella Pearl Beverly Blood in 1940. They spent the next two years collecting 20,000 specimens in Mexico for the Smithsonian Institution. After spending World War II teaching anatomy for the U.S. Navy medical training program at the University of Rochester, Hobart Muir Smith authored Handbook of Lizards: Lizards of the United States & Canada (1946), co-authored the Golden Nature Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians (1953) with Howard Zim, and produced 27 other books, as well as more scientific papers than any other herpetologist, while teaching at the University of Illinois, 1947-1968, and the University of Colorado, 1972-1983.
