Animal obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Houdini, a wild boar who escaped from the Scottish Borders
slaughterhouse on September 13, was roadkilled two weeks later after
brief residence in woods beside the river Tweed in the Lothian and
Borders region of Scotland.

Bessie, 9, Jersey cow pet of Fayette County SPCA vice
president and beef farmer Samuel Hunt, 54, was shot along with her
month-old calf by an unknown intruder on July 14 in North Union
Township, Pennsylvania.

Miracle, 10, a “white” bison at birth who attracted as many
as 2,000 visitors a day, died on September 19 on Dave Heider’s farm
in Janesville, Wisconsin, her lifelong home. Miracle was widely
associated with the white bison goddess of Native American mythology.
She darkened as she aged, passing through yellow, red, and black
color phases. By maturity she looked like any other bison. None of
her four offspring, all female, had her early-life light coloration.

Precious, among the most popular dogs at the Animal
Orphanage in Bauxite, Arkansas, was shot dead along with another
dog’s puppy on September 20. Peggy Sue, the puppy’s mother, was
wounded, along with another dog named Merlyn. Many pens were
damaged and other dogs released in the same attack, wrote Lynda
Hollenbeck of the Benton Courier. The assailant and motive were
unknown.

Ally, 2, a Rottweiler show dog belonging to Jim and Jacquil
Can of Calgary, died mystriously on September 6 in the cargo hold of
a Jetcco flight home after competing in the Rottweiler Club of
Canada’s Niagara Sieger Show in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

Libby, a four-pound Yorkshire terrier performing dog trained
by Evelyn Galloway, 74, of Orange, California, was killed on
September 23 in a sudden attack by Rafferty, a Bouvier des Flandres
service dog trained by wheelchair-bound Autumn Daniels of Dennisport,
Massachusetts. Both dogs were participants in a show hosted by the
Dennis Senior Center.

Jesse, 32, a female white rhino who lived most of her life
at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk, apparently drowned on October 3
after falling into the 10-foot-deep water-filled moat surrounding the
Okavango Delta African exhibit. Jesse apparently clashed in some
manner with the resident zebras just before her fatal accident. Zoo
director Lewis Greene said the zoo would no longer house rhinos and
zebras together, although other zoos often do exhibit them together
without incident.

Velasquez, 14, a Palomino gelding employed by the Ringling
Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, died from a stroke on September 28
after a stallion charged him as the horses were unloaded from the
circus train in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Lingham, a male lion-tailed mac-aque, died on August 31 at
the Mysore Zoo in India. Ganesha and Roopa, two Mysore Zoo
elephants, died on September 4 and September 7. On September 19 the
zoo suspended six employees and asked police to investigate, after
post mortems discovered that all three animals were poisoned.