Missy - 2/25/2001

Missy Harrison

1994 (assuming, as that's the date the zoo recieved her) - 2/25/01

Animals die all the time. We've had to put down several since I began working at the zoo. Some have been brought to us by concerned townsfolk, hoping we can help. Some we can send to the Emergency Clinic, where they will be fixed, and either released or returned to us to become a zoo animal, or sometimes sent to another facility that needs the animal...... others we know are so severely injured ("My dog found it first" "I found it by the road, I think it got hit by a car") that we know there is little hope. Since one of our keepers is a vet tech (at the Emergency Clinic, no less), we are able to put the animals down instead of making them wait and suffer another few hours before it happens at the Vet. We have had to put down some of our own because of old age..... the disabilities which allowed us to house them were taking their toll, then animal was no longer without pain unless on medication, then the medication would work well enough for it to be completely without pain and forget it was crippled, therefore hurting itself more, requiring even more meds because it was causing more damage..... the quality of life was down to nil.

Those are mercy killings.

When you are doing morning rounds with a coworker, and find a pile of feathers outside of a Harris Hawk's cage...... that's something else. We thought she had finally gotten that Raven that had been hanging around. You could tell she wanted it bad *chuckles soft* Then I noticed that we couldn't hear her. Missy was always vocal when you approached, always talking to us. I was the one that lifted the tarp off the front of her cage, just as we do every morning to let her have some sun but protect her from the weather at night..... and find out that pile of feathers was grey, and not black. All that was left was a wing, that couldn't be pulled out of the cage because it was stuck on the fence, and her skull. The chainlink had been pulled up and -out- six inches. Sometime during the night, a medium sized dog, by the tracks, had climbed the 6' fence to get into the area within which her cage was situated. She was notoriously aggressive about her territory..... we think she was trying to fend off the dog, and made a mistake. After a few quiet moments, I called another keeper, John, over, on the radio....... doing what I could to keep my voice from cracking, Kelly for some reason couldn't get through...... she was also known as "John's Bird."

*sighs softly* I'm sorry it happened, John.