From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

Miriam Rothschild, 96, died on January
20 in Northamptonshire, England, recalled by
The Times of London as “Beatrix Potter on
amphetamines.” Like Potter, Rothschild
performed dissections and vivisection early in
life, but became a strong animal advocate later
in life. The daughter of banker Charles
Rothschild, who as a hobby identified more than
500 flea species, Miriam Rothschild catalogued
more than 30,000 flea species between 1953 and
1973. Her uncle Lionel Walter Rothschild also
encouraged her interest in biology, collecting
more than 2.3 million butterflies, 300,000 bird
skins, 300,000 birds’ eggs, several pet
cassowaries, and 144 giant tortoises. Miriam
Rothschild followed them into entomology,
working with Nobel Prize-winning chemist Tadeus
Reichstein to decode the relationship between
insects’ consumption of toxins to deter predators
and their protective coloration. She also became
a leading expert on parasitic flatworms. After a
World War II air raid destroyed her seven years’
worth of flatworm research, she broke codes for
British military intelligence, while housing 49
Jewish children who had escaped from Nazi
Germany. Eventually she began to think about the
ethics of her scientific work. “I was once taken
aback,” she wrote in her 1986 book Animals and
Man, “by an unusually able assistant of mine
suddenly deciding to quit zoology. Apparently
she had been given a live, instead of a dead
mouse, to feed to a stoat. Not having the
courage to kill the mouse herself, she hurriedly
pushed it into the cage. She watched fascinated
while the animal crouched terrified in a corner,
facing the tense, bright-eyed stoat preparing
for the kill. To the girl’s consternation she
then experienced a violent orgasmŠ Looking back
at the first half of my life as a zoologist,”
she continued, “I am particularly impressed by
one fact: none of my teachers, lecturers, or
professors, none of the directors of
laboratories were I worked, and none of my
co-workers, ever discussed with me, or each
other in my presence, the ethics of zoology. I
know several zoologists,” she added, “who have
admitted that they suffered from the fear of
being dubbed ‘unmanly,’ and struggled to
overcome their dislike of causing animals pain,
or killing them.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

Bear, dog of Rockinghorse Ranch riding stable owner Dale
Stone, of Big Baddeck, Nova Scotia; Tio, Great Pyranees of Brian
Cherry and Peg Klouda of Victor, Montana; and Bubba and Savannah,
mastiffs of Marcela Egea of Belton, Missouri, all strayed recently
into traps near their homes and were killed. Tio, Bubba, and
Savannah all could have been released but were shot instead. Cherry
and Klouda have formed an organization, Trapping Information
Offensive, in memory of Tio. Trapper Michael Kartman, 39, who
admitted killing Bubba and Savannah, was cited by Missouri
Department of Conservation agent Phil Needham for failing to label
his traps with his name and address and for improper disposal of the
remains of a raccoon, two opossums, and a skunk.

Kumba, 35, the first western lowland gorilla born at the
Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, was euthanized on February 12 due to
acute kidney failure.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

Leone Cosens, 52, a native of New
Zealand who moved with her husband Tim Cosens Jr.
to Phuket, Thailand, in 1992, on December 26
responded to a call from nine British guests that
water was flooding into the guesthouse the Cosens
ran at Yanui Beach, near Laem Phromthep. Unaware
that the high water was the result of a tsunami,
Leone Cosens apparently ran right into the
highest wave. Tim Cosens Sr., visiting from
Slidell, Louisiana, found her remains in a
nearby rice field the following day. Of the nine
guests Leone Cosens was trying to help, eight
survived, seven with serious injuries, while
one is still missing. A cofounder and former
director of the Phuket Animal Welfare Society,
“Leone was fired because she was treating and
sterilizing too many dogs! Wow, do we miss her!
I’m so incredibly sad!” e-mailed Margot Park,
founder of the Soi Dog Foundation, also in
Phuket. Recalled the Phuket Gazette, “Leone
worked with her Thai helpers selflessly,
tirelessly, and very often at her own expense,
to help strays in the south of the island, and
around Nai Harn Beach in particular. Leone
Cosens was also an outspoken critic of puppy
mills in the Phuket area, citing a “mounting
number of pedigree dogs appearing at veterinary
surgeries with signs of distemper, hip dysplasia
or calcium deficiencies” in a recent letter to
the Phuket Gazette.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

Bolo, a right whale known to have calved six times,
1981-2001, was found floating 78 miles east of Nantucket on January
11, 2005, dead from unknown causes. She was the fourth North
Atlantic right whale found dead in six weeks. During her lifetime
the projected life expectancy of female right whales dropped from 50
years to 15, and expected birthings from five to just one, due
largely to more collisions with high-speed ships and more
entanglements in fishing gear.

Snorri, Pyranean mountain dog of Mick McDonnell, famed for
greeting visitors to the Viking Tour boat at Lough Ree, Ireland,
including the Irish national rugby team, was found dead on railway
tracks near Athlone on January 5, 2005. The Irish Sun reported
that police were investigating the death, after another dog was
rescued from men who allegedly discussed tying him to the tracks.
Lacumba, 15, jaguar mascot of Southern University at Baton
Rouge, Louisi-ana, died on December 26 due to kidney failure. PETA
asked Southern U. to stop having live jaguar mascots, a practice
begun in the early 1970s, but chancellor Edward Jackson told the
Baton Rouge Advocate that the university is raising money to build a
memorial to Lacumba, and will probably begin fundraising to build a
$500,000 habitat for a successor.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

Terry Melcher, 62, a board member of both the Doris Day
Animal Foundation and the Doris Day Animal League since inception,
died of cancer on November 19, 2004 in Beverly Hills, California.
“The son of actress and singer Doris Day and her first husband, the
trombonist Al Jorden, Melcher was known for his role,” primarily
as a record producer, “in shaping the sounds of the folk and surf
music scenes in California,” wrote Jeff Leeds of The New York Times.
Melcher worked with the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Mamas & the
Papas, and Ry Cooder at various times; was executive producer of
The Doris Day Show, 1968-1972, and a later program called Doris
Day’s Best Friends.

Francis Lynn Holland, 56, animal control supervisor in
Fallon, Nevada, died suddenly on December 3, 2004 at the Washoe
Medical Center in Reno.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Ann Cottrell Free, 88, died on October 30, 2004, of
pneumonia, in Washington, D.C. Born in Richmond, Virginia, Free
debuted in journalism with the Richmond Times Dispatch in 1936. On
April 9, 1939, Free interviewed African American contralto Marian
Anderson just after she delivered her historic free concert for
75,000 people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The Daughters
of the American Revolution had banned Anderson from performing in
Constitution Hall. Relocating to Washington D.C. in 1940, Free
became the first full-time female national capitol correspondent for
Newsweek, the Chicago Sun and the New York Herald Tribune.
Post-World War II, Free traveled in China as a special correspondent
for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration;
witnessed the ceremony that transferred India from British rule to
the home government formed by Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru;
narrowly escaped the Moslem/Hindu riots that followed; joined the
Marshall Plan in 1948 as a special correspondent, reporting on U.S.
efforts to rebuild western Europe; interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt
during the former First Lady’s successful effort to win the 1948
adoption of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights; and
covered the last days of French rule in Vietnam for the Herald
Tribune and other newspapers. As a roving foreign correspondent,
her stories also included datelines from the Sinai desert,
Palestine, Vienna, Paris, London, and Berlin. In February 1950
she married James S. Free (1908-1996), the longtime Washington D.C.
correspondent for the Birmingham News. James and Ann Cottrell Free
during the 1960s co-wrote a syndicated political column called
Washington Whirligig. Ann Free also wrote for the Washington Star,
Washington Post, Defenders of Wildlife, This Week, the North
American Newspaper Alliance syndicate, and the Women’s News Service.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Kato, 11, the dog of Nicole Brown Simpson whose howling
helped investigators to establish the time of her murder and that of
her friend Ron Goldman on June 12, 1994, died on October 21, 2004
at the home of Nicole Simpson’s parents, Louis and Judith Brown,
in Dana Point, California. Ex-football player and sportscaster O.J.
Simpson, estranged husband of Nicole Simpson, was acquitted of the
killings but lost a civil suit brought by her parents when the jury
found “probable cause” that he was responsible.

Cannelle, 15, the last reproducing female brown bear in the
western French Pyrenees mountains, was killed on November 1 by boar
hunters, whose dogs chased her orphaned cub. The hunters had been
told to stay out of the area. The killing came 10 days after a a
government ranger shot an 18-month-old female wolf near the Italian
border, the first wolf killed in France in 70 years.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Christopher Reeve, 52, died on October 10, 2004 in Mt.
Kisco, New York, from a severely infected pressure wound, a
complication of spending prolonged time in a wheelchair. Best
remembered as the star of the 1978 film Superman and three sequels,
Reeve “used his popularity and influence to support human rights,
animal rights, the environment, and other causes,” wrote
biographer Laura Lee Wren in 1999. Reeve was loudly booed, however,
when as a speaker at the June 1990 March for the Animals in
Washington D.C. he told the 24,000 assembled participants that, “If
you want to get things done, the worst thing that can happen to you
is to be identified as the fringe.” Reeve had nothing further to do
with the organized animal rights movement, but had just starred in a
documentary film about grey whales when in May 1995 he entered a
three-day riding competition. His horse, a thoroughbred named
Eastern Express, balked at the third jump. Reeve suffered a
severely broken neck, rendering him a quadruplegic for the rest of
his life, but recovered his ability to act and direct films. He
became a prominent spokesperson for animal use in biomedical
research, in counterpoint to the 1996 March for the Animals, and
merged two older organizations in 1998 to create the Christopher
Reeve Paralysis Foundation, raising more than $46.5 million for
spinal cord research.

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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.

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