Owners fear for health of lemurs, marmosets,
monkeys, birds and tortoises removed from Miami site in incident police are
treating as theft
Richard
Luscombe in
Miami
Mon 5 Mar 2018 21.31 GMTFirst published
on Mon 5 Mar 2018 20.48 GMT
The advertisement on Craigslist was specific:
“Free exotic animals. We’re a sanctuary going out of business. Go around back
and help yourself.”
Early on Sunday morning, somebody did just
that, driving a truck up to the rear gate of the We Care
Wildlife Sanctuary in Miami and loading up seven ring-tailed lemurs, five
marmosets, four monkeys, seven birds and 13 tortoises.
The internet posting, however, was a fake.
Now the sanctuary owners want their animals back, fearing they could die in
days without the specialist care they need.
“We’ve been violated,” a sanctuary volunteer,
Cindy Robert, said of the disappearance of the valuable animals, which is being
treated by the Miami-Dade police department as a theft.
“I don’t think these animals are going to be
taken care of. The stress alone could give some of them heart attacks.”
Detectives are looking into the theory that
the entire episode was carefully planned, targeting those animals that would
bring in the best return from dealers or collectors who trade in exotic
species.
“They
took the dollar animals. They knew exactly what they wanted,” said Robert,
adding that the combined value of the lost animals would run to “thousands” of
dollars.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!