Animal obituaries
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2001:
King Institute mule #291, renamed Tarun in his final days by People For Animals rescuers Prema Veeraraghavan and Shiranee Pereira, died on January 25, soon after Indian minister of state for empowerment and social justice Maneka Gandhi visited the King Institute to see for herself the conditions which allegedly caused the deaths of more than 70 of the 350 equines used in snake antivenom production during 2000. ANIMAL PEOPLE recounted the plight of the King Institute herd in “Showdown at the Not-Okay Corral,” January/February 2001, and of Tarun in particular: “An elderly mule with long hair and overgrown hooves was down and evidently unable to rise. When ANIMAL PEOPLE pointed this out to the vet, he ordered the stable hand to make the mule rise. The stable hand pulled the mule’s tail. ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett asked him to stop, begged the vet to make him stop, and finally stopped the tail-pulling by entering the stall herself.”