Animals in a whale lot of trouble..
Creatures that have fallen fowl of the law
A SUSPECTED Chinese “spy pigeon was finally released this week by Indian authorities after eight months in detention — but it is not the first animal to find itself in the clink.
The pigeon was captured by the Mumbai police in May of last year near a port where it was found with two rings on its legs and a message that appeared to be written in a Chinese language.
Investigations by local police found that the pigeon was actually an open-water racing bird from Taiwan that had lost its way and accidentally ended up in India.
The pigeon was then sent to Mumbai’s Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for animals.
Upon clarification of its origins as a racing pigeon, it was handed over to the Bombay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and subsequently released.
It comes in the week in which a beluga whale who defected from Russia’s Naval Army in 2019 may have found a new home in Norway.
The 2,700-pound whale, nicknamed Hvaldimir, was believed to have been conducting military operations for Vladimir Putin after locals found it wearing a harness that read “Equipment St. Petersburg” while it slowly trailed boats.
WILD
Hvaldimir surfaced off the coast of Sweden last May and marine biologists are now trying to integrate him into the wild.
And just yesterday, a Court of Appeal judge here ordered that Belgian shepherd named Cleo which allegedly bit a Garda should remain in kennels pending an application to destroy the animal – despite legal efforts by Cleo’s owner who is in Mountjoy.
Here are other times in history when animals have found themselves on the wrong side of the law :
Sow bizarre: We’re not telling porkies! In December 1457 a sow and her six piglets were brought before a court in France, charged with killing a five-year-old boy.
The mother was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged from a tree. But the piglets were reckoned
to have been led on by their murderous mum and let off on the ‘promise’ of good behaviour. Chickening act: In 1474 the authorities in Basel, Switzerland, sentenced a rooster to death for ‘the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg’ which they took to be the work of Satan. The bird was promptly burned at the stake in front of a large crowd.
The executioner found three more offending eggs inside the unfortunate cock.
Rump deal: When a bull attacked and “furiously killed” a 14-year-old boy in Cauroy, France in 1499, it went on trial for murder.
The authorities showed no mercy and had the offending animal executed.
Rat’s crazy: Rodents in France were ordered in front of a court in Autun during the 16th century for destroying barley crops.
Their wily lawyer managed to get the case adjourned, urging a cat curfew. He said the moggies were making his clients too scared to attend the hearing. The town’s people refused and so the rats went free.
Wing verdict? In 1540, a malevolent moth was brought before a court charged over the destruction of an expensive tapestry. The textile-munching terror was found guilty and ruthlessly beheaded.
Law’s an ass: A donkey in Mexico was locked in a cell after it kicked and bit two men in 2008.
Officer Sinar
Gomez said:
“Around here, if someone commits a crime, they are jailed no matter who they are.” The ass was freed after three days when his owner agreed to pay the victims’ medical bills.
Primate suspect: Legend has it that during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century a French ship was wrecked off the
coast of Hartlepool and that the only survivor was a monkey dressed in uniform.
The locals decided to put the ape on trial, found it guilty of being a spy and hanged it on the beach.
Tusk cruel: When Mary, a five-ton circus elephant stooped to eat some watermelon in Kingsport, Tennessee in 1916 new handler Red Eldridge, prodded her with a hook.
Angry Mary went into a rage, lifted him up with her trunk, tossed him to the floor and then trampled him to death.
It led to her cruel public execution with a crane.
Paw thing: A brown bear called Katya which mauled visitors to a campsite in Kazakhstan was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2004.
She was locked up in a maximum-security compound alongside human murderers. Katya was finally released to a zoo in 2019.