Wichita kitten violence start of a bad week for animals (+videos)

Eagle readers were shocked to learn Monday that a man who had been arrested on suspicion of shooting someone in the head may have also thrown his girlfriend’s kitten against a wall. The news about the kitten violence and the accompanying video received roughly eight times as many views on Kansas.com as the original news that the suspect had been arrested in the shooting of a human.

And there was other bad news in the animal kingdom this week.

▪ Thousands of visitors flocked to the Sedgwick County Zoo on Tuesday for its July “Twilight Tuesdays” series. Families of up to six get in free when they pick up vouchers at any Cox Solutions store. The zoo was packed with eager children running from one rare animal to another and parents chasing after them.

A few zoo exhibits had signs posted saying they were empty, and the lions stayed inside where there is air conditioning, according to one worker. Several children were seen posing for pictures with statues of lions because the lions themselves were nowhere to be seen. This was before the proposed cuts by the Sedgwick County Commission have been implemented. The cuts could hamper the zoo’s ability to hire zookeepers for its upcoming elephant exhibit, an animal that has been endangered by hunters in Africa.

▪ The hunter who killed Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park was Walter Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota. Palmer lured the lion out of the park, where it would’ve been illegal to kill it, and shot it with a crossbow. Then Palmer tracked Cecil down for more than 40 hours, shot him with a rifle, skinned him and cut off his head.

Palmer said he didn’t know he was killing a beloved lion or that what he was doing could be illegal. His two local hunting guides, who were paid around $50,000 by Palmer, have now been arrested.

A 2009 profile of Palmer said he was rumored to “be capable of skewering a playing card from 100 yards with his compound bow” and “has cultivated a purist’s reputation for his disinclination to carry firearms as backup.” He had recently paid $45,000 for the right to shoot a rare elk and had served a year of probation for false statements about the location of a black bear he killed in Wisconsin.

▪ Cecil isn’t the only famous wild cat right now. Milwaukee is on edge as a large “catlike animal” – perhaps a cougar, perhaps an African lion – has evaded the police department and other government agencies.

A cellphone video has gone viral, and the animal has its own Twitter account, @Milwaukee_Lion, and hashtag, #MKELion. The feline itself seems unperturbed, walking through densely populated areas, sitting under bridges and strolling by cars, according to 14 reports given to the police. Although some locals have questioned whether the animal deserves all the resources that have been put toward its capture.

▪ Kipenzi, a famous giraffe at the Dallas Zoo, died only a few months after its birth was broadcast online across the world.

▪ In Kentucky, a man died after being bitten by a snake at a pentecostal church service after refusing medical assistance, according to police reports in the local news.

▪ In New York, a bunny hoarder has been ordered to pay $50,000 to care for the 94 surviving rabbits that were taken from her home. Prosecutors say the bunnies were sick with syphilis and injured with bite wounds. The defendant tried to marshal evidence that any harm done was by the animal-control officers who confiscated the animals. “It was extremely violent,” testified Glorianna Cabassa, a neighbor of the animal hoarder, according to the New York Post. “They were grabbing them, carrying them out in handfuls at a time.”

▪ Actress Jane Birkin just asked Hermes to take her name off the Birkin Croco, a luxury bag made of crocodile skin. Birkin was shocked by a Joaquin Phoenix-narrated video that showed reptiles being skinned or sawed open for luxury products. The Croco typically sells for more than $20,000, although one with a diamond-studded clasp recently sold for more than $200,000. The company has denied that its handbags are being produced on the Texas reptile farm in question.

Birkin, whose film credits include “Animal,” “Romance of a Horsethief,” “Seven Dead in the Cat’s Eye” and “Red Fox,” said Phoenix’s video inspired her to sign his Mercy for Animals petition to “shed exotic skins from your wardrobe.”

▪ In other corners of the Internet, goofy animal videos continued to rack up thousands and millions of views, such as a video of the happiest elephant in the world playing with a ribbon.

Or the video of a dog failing to catch objects tossed slowly in his direction.

This story was originally published July 30, 2015 at 6:49 AM with the headline "Wichita kitten violence start of a bad week for animals (+videos)."