Animal obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July-August 2013:

Bijlee,  58,  a female elephant who spent 54 years appearing at weddings and in parades,  and begging on the streets of Mumbai and Thane,  India,  died on June 30,  2013,  nineteen days after collapsing on the Mulund-Bhandap Link road in eastern Mumbai. Suffering from severe chronic arthritis,  Bijee was allegedly abandoned by her mahouts. People for Animals,  the Thane SPCA,  Animals Matter to Me,  Wildlife SOS,  PETA/India,  the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations,  and the Plants & Animals Welfare Society combined efforts to try to save her,  five years after saving her once before.  “In 2008,”  recalled Vijay Singh of the Times of India, “Bijlee,  then known by her alias Ramkali,  had to walk over 100 kilometers to Alibaug to attend a wedding of a politican’s son. On her way back to Mumbai,  she fell in a ditch and a crane could pull her out only after nine hours.” Read more

Obituaries [May-June 2013]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  May/June 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

Bowatte Indrathana Thera,  a Buddhist monk of the Porambe temple in Pelmadulla,  Sri Lanka,  died on May 26, 2013 at the Colombo National Hospital,  two days after setting himself on fire outside the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic.  “The monk had been heard making a statement saying his effort was not to take his life,  but to sacrifice it,  in a bid to end cattle slaughter.  Indraratana Thera had been an active campaigner against cattle slaughter, and had launched a number of animal rights campaigns,”  Ceylon Today reported.  Added the news portal Ada Derana, “Certain media aired videos of the monk issuing demands such as putting an end to the killing of cattle for meat and Buddhists being converted to other religions.  Indrarathana Thera informed those media of his intentions before committing self-immolation,  while they recorded the incident.”  The fiery suicide,  apparently the first on record by a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk,  was followed by conflict among Buddhist factions over which would perform last rites for Indrarathana Thera.   Read more

Rhino conservationist Anna Merz dies in South Africa

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  May/June 2013:

Anna Merz,  83,  died on April 4,  2013 at a hospital in Melkriver,  South Africa,  her home since 1996.   Born in England,  Merz was among the many London children who were relocated to Cornwall during the Nazi bombing attacks of early World War II. Studying politics and economics at Nottingham University,  she read for the bar at Lincoln’s Inn,  but instead of practicing law,  she relocated to Ghana with her first husband.  There,  recalled The Times of London,  she “owned a crankshaft grinding workshop,  developed a love of riding,  worked as honorary warden in the game department and took off on expeditions across the Sahara and around Uganda and northern Kenya.” Read more

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. Read more

World’s oldest tiger dies at Popcorn Park Zoo in New Jersey

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:

 

FORKED RIVER, New Jersey––Bengali, 24, believed to be the
oldest tiger on record, died on January 18, 2013 after undergoing
surgery to remove a tumor from his pancreas. Bengali had spent the last
decade of his life as the emblematic animal at the Popcorn Park Zoo, a
sanctuary for wildlife and large domestic species operated since 1977 by
the Associated Humane Societies of New Jersey.
Reportedly bred and raised to be shot at a Texas hunting ranch,
Bengali was said to have escaped that fate when in 1990 the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife Service cracked down on “canned hunts” featuring species
listed as endangered or threatened by the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species.

Read more

Suzanne Saueressig, DVM, worked 55 years for the Humane Society of Missouri

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:

Suzanne Saueressig, DVM, 89, died on February 8, 2013 in
Richmond Heights, Missouri. Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Saueressig
“grew up with cats and dogs,” remembered St. Louis Post-Dispatch
reporter Michael Sorkin. “One day a cat went missing. Suzanne,
then 10, suspected the family’s maid, who hated cats. Suzanne
caught a collection of mice and put them in the maid’s drawer. After
that, the cat returned. Saueressig’s great-grandfather founded a
construction business and behind it built the family home. Suzanne, the
eldest of four siblings, was educated at a Catholic cloister. She
rebelled at having to wear a school uniform. At 17, she attended one
session of a typing school. That evening, the Allies bombed the school.

Read more

Obituaries (March 2013)

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  March 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

C. Everett Koop,  96,  U.S. surgeon general 1982-1989,  died on February 27,  2013 in Hanover,  New Hampshire. Born in Brooklyn,  Koop was admitted to Dartmouth College in Hanover at age 16.  He studied medicine at Cornell Medical School in upstate New York,  served an internship at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia and a surgical fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania hospital,  then studied pediatric surgery for a year at Boston Children’s Hospital.  Becoming only the seventh pediatric surgery specialist in the U.S.,  Koop returned to Philadelphia to become surgeon-in-chief at Children’s Hospital.  Founding the first neo-natal surgery unit in the U.S. and cofounding the Journal of Pediatric Surgery,  Koop in The Right to Live,  The Right to Die (1976) warned against “a progression of thinking in this country from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia,  indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz,  Dachau and Belsen.”   Read more

Rainforest activist drowned in surf

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2013:

Rebecca Tarbotton, 39, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network since August 2010, drowned on December 26, 2012 at a beach near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where she was vacationing with her husband and friends. Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, she interned with the David Suzuki Foundation before joining the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network.

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