Heroic... But STILL...

What do you do when dozens of wild animals go on the loose and citizens aplenty, ill-equipped to deal with such an unexpected threat, are endangered?  You apparently do as the sheriff in Zanesville, Ohio did - you put them all down.  The two tragedies are not comparable, of course, but after Newtown, Connecticut, this, in Zanesville, Ohio...  No comparison possible except in one aspect: both times, it was man's inept, inadequate legislature that allowed for this to happen at all.  And who pays with their lives but innocents. Both times.  If gun control wasn't what it is, maybe unstable people (or their mothers) wouldn't have access to multiple firearms - and the Newtown tragedy is avoided. Maybe if the state of Ohio didn't allow loons to own wild animals on top of firearms - maybe he doesn't commit suicide quite the same way and maybe this Zanesville massacre of wildlife is avoided, too.

Not sure what happened in Zanesville, Ohio, exactly? Here is that trustworthy (for decades) news anchor with the most sex appeal (for decades too) of all, Diane Sawyer, to tell you all about it...

If the video above is no longer available - you may google ''Zanesville'' - and google ''Newtown, Connecticut'' too, while you're at it.

These animals had no shot at life at all - if their delusional owner thought he was setting them free as one final act of goodness before blowing his brains out (which, we assume, is the way he went about it) well - he was totally out of his mind. Tigers and lions simply do not belong in Ohio. Not even the bears; in fact, none of those wild ''pets'' were prepared to live in the wild, having been fed all their lives in an enclosure, by a human caretaker.  They were not going to feast on everything that moved either - but they would have listened to their natural instincts sooner than later... Other (more urban shall we say) pets would have been hunted down, then... As a matter of fact, one of the 50, a monkey, is assumed to have been devoured by one of the big cats upon their release by their deranged owner... What an animal lover he turned out to be - for, even the most deluded mind could have predicted how this ''release'' would end up, since it is most definitely not a release back into the wild but into a populated area, one that has an All-American, gun-toting, trigger-happy sheriff and all... 

And the ensuing carnage gave way to this most horrible of scenes, a short time after that: 

Animal-lovers, such as Scott Hanna, will feel this loss forevermore. Again, one does not even attempt to compare this to the loss suffered by 30-odd families just before Christmas time, further up north from there - but, in this day and age, that both of these tragedies could not be avoided simply boggles the mind.  Alas, in this case, even Hanna, a true connaisseur, admits that what was done had to be done. Tranquilizer guns could not be used for so many targets - there was simply no time. Plus, the use of a tranquilizer is a tricky thing, according once again to the expert Hanna: 

"There was no choice but to kill 49 animals, including tigers, lions and bears, that were released from their enclosures in Zanesville, Ohio, wildlife expert Jack Hanna told ABC News' Diane Sawyer. "I'm sorry to say, but what the sheriff did had to be done," Hanna said. "Otherwise, we would have had carnage out here in Zanesville, Ohio. "Tragedy-wise for me," he added, "[it's] probably the worst thing in 45 years of history of working with animals. ... I've seen poachers kill in the wild. I've seen animals killed right in front of me with their horns cut off. I've seen a lot of things happen in my career, but nothing like this have I ever witnessed." Hanna said tranquilizing wild animals is not as easy as many people believe. "I've been out all over the world tranquilizing animals," he said. "Can you imagine trying to tranquilize an animal in the dark. Fine, we have a spotlight. We hit it. You don't know exactly: Did you hit a muscle? Did you hit a bone? If you hit the bone, the plunger might not work and put the medicine in. So what do we do? Then we send a veterinarian or the sheriff up there to see if the animal is down, right? What's gonna happen if the animal is just sitting there not even asleep? You're dead.""

These animals had done nothing wrong yet, though - their only guilt was being born with wild instincts; and having been raised in some farm by an unstable, unreliable and in the end suicidal man. 

The sheriff and his deputies ''did what they had to do'' - but still...