Pest control company charged with animal cruelty

MyWay ^ | May 23, 2009

[Joiseydude]

HAZLET, N.J. (AP) - The owner of a New Jersey pest control company has been charged with animal cruelty after a squirrel was found dead in a rooftop trap.

Chief Buddy Amato says a professional complex hired Critter Ridder to help get rid of the squirrel. He says a trap was set Wednesday for the animal, and no one returned to check on it.

Amato says the squirrel was found "cooked to death on the hot roof" Thursday afternoon.

Buck faces four counts of animal cruelty, including one that cites her for not providing the squirrel with adequate food, water and shelter.

[Caramelgal]

Deal sometime with the damage that a squirrel or raccoon can do in an attic. You will become an advocate for the total worldwide eradication of the species!

Ditto!!! They are in the walls of the condo where I live and are chewing electrical wires! That fact makes relaxing to go to sleep at night an act of Faith!

I wouldn’t go as fair as to be an advocate for “the total worldwide eradication of the species”; in nature squirrels do play their role, but my old house got infested by squirrels.

The chewed their way threw the eves and got into my attic. They destroyed the insulation and made nests in it, got into boxes of papers and books and pictures and clothes I had stored there, shredding the boxes and destroying and pissing and crapping on everything and then started chewing on the electrical wires. Not to mention the racket they made as they got into the walls and underneath the floor boards.

A neighbor recommended to me a professional animal trapper. He was a real good ole boy. Good guy but very “country” if you catch my drift. His name was Lester and I jokingly named him “Lester The Squirrel Molester”. Any way he set several “humane” traps baited with peanuts and peanut butter and came back every day to check on the traps.

This went on for almost two weeks until all the squirrels had been trapped. He went out of his way several times to explain to me that he took the still live squirrels out to the country and set them free. One day I told Lester, “I may live in the city but I’m not stupid. Quite frankly I don’t care what you do to the squirrels once you remove them from my house. You can stew them or use them for target practice. I don’t really care”.

He sort of laughed and said nothing more. Lester became my absolute hero when he removed a dead and rotting possum that got into the crawl space underneath my kitchen.

I’m not advocating animal cruelty. I wouldn’t go out of my way to inflict pain and suffering on any animal without cause but vermin is vermin. I have no remorse over killing ants, flies, cockroaches, bees, mice or squirrels that get into my house.

[maica]

Once squirrels have found a nice warm cozy home in a house, and they are trapped humanely and taken to a park to be released, they have amazing homing instincts! about like those emotional Disney animals who can travel long distances to get home.

Your trapper knew this of course, and ‘protected’ you from their return.

[dbreidenbach]

It costs money to go up and check the traps repeatedly. Maybe next time the traps used won’t be “humane” and will instead kill the animal immediately. It would be better all the way around, the animal wouldn’t suffer, and the homeowner wouldn’t suffer damage.

[Hot Tabasco]

How many times per day do these people think traps should be checked?

I say BS to the charge. I caught a squirrel a couple years ago somewhere between 7:00 a.m. and noon and it was dead in the trap when I checked it. FWIW, the trap was in the shade........

I suspect it died of a heart attack which is just as well since I didn't have to put it down myself.........

[goldfinch]

I hope the guy gets a BIG fine. There is no excuse for allowing a animal to die slowly in a live trap. It is needlessly cruel and I hope he gets stuck with a big enough fine that he learns his lesson.

I understand that animals sometimes have to be removed and/or killed. There is no reason to make it a slow and painful death, however.

[TheOldLady]

We’re talking about vermin here. The trapper’s only mistake was using a humane trap. She should have set a kill trap.

I agree with you completely that we should not torture anything to death.

Animals are animals, and they’re not doing what they do to annoy you but to live their lives as instinct directs them. Being pleased that their seeming mischief is out of your life for good is all right. Taking pleasure in their painful death is not.

[Travis McGee]

There will probably be a greater penalty for roasting granny in an un-airconditioned apartment (as in Paris) than for roasting a squirrel.

[maica]

Was anyone penalized? or did it result in just a giant Gallic shrug?

[Travis McGee]

I don’t know, but I’d guess the bureaucrats were secretly and quietly pleased.

Quite a cost saving for the state.

[NewRomeTacitus]

A lot of the sparks on this thread are being thrown because of Political Correctness (the biggest pest of all). “Humane” traps are actually cruel and kill traps are the most humane. Real life Orwellian.

Only in the last 70 years have most Americans been detached from the distasteful necessities that their lifestyles require as technology allowed a separation between producers and consumers.

“Here Bitsy - take this here knife and send old Porky to heaven so our family may honor his bountiful sacrifice.” That used to be a lesson; not a horror story.

[maica]

I agree with you.

[FBD]

He should’ve waterborded that squirell.
-then they couldn’t complain he didn’t provide it with adequate water. ;^)

[BraveMan]

You certainly wouldn’t like my “Free Swimming Lessons for Chipmunks” plan in effect at the BraveMan abode . . .

[NewRomeTacitus]

Then the wily little bastard took the board and...

[Ezekiel]

Buck faces four counts of animal cruelty, including one that cites her for not providing the squirrel with adequate food, water and shelter.

Bet the greedy squirrel feasted like a king over the winter at the expense of the little birdies who were left with empty feeders.

The poor birds starved to death in the cold and then the squirrel perp fried in the heat. I'd say justice was served.

[TheOldLady]

Exactly.

[TheOldLady]

Is that the bucket pool and sunflower seed lesson?

That’s a mean one because the animal struggles to exhaustion before drowning. Drowning is quick, but being left in water with no rest and no escape is a toughy. Maybe it beats being eaten alive by a raccoon, but it’s slower. Not sure...

Can’t you just use a trap that kills them outright?

BTW, if you’re annoyed enough with them to eliminate them, I have plenty of sympathy for you about all the damage they’ve done to your environs.

[NewRomeTacitus]

LOL. You understand where those who foolishly feed bears do not. Compassion and common sense are separate things that have to be discerned. I love animals probably more than our fellow humans yet recognize we can’t put them above ourselves like PETA does. I’m with Roy where he said don’t kill the tiger but that didn’t mean tigers aren’t dangerous.

Raccoons are dangerous having such a high rate of rabies and are proliferous. Fire at will and good luck hitting the fast SOBs. Shotgun when it’s where you don’t mind things being destroyed behind.

[FBD]

ha! -yeah, Ive seen that little water skiing squirrel.
-Pretty funny stuff.