Apples and Oranges. The garden is outside in the open. A house has locks anyway and we humans know it is wrong to enter someone's house uninvited. A deer does not know the difference between the plants in a garden and plants in the wild.
Irrelevant. It's her house. Her property.
Termites can cause irrevocable damage to a house which can cost thousands to repair. The deer (we don't know if the fawn was even eating her plants) were only eating plants. Plants can be replaced for a very affordable price. Whether or not you consider a deer a pest, it does not make it right to beat it's head in with a shovel.
Also irrelevant. You don't know how much she has to spend on her garden and can't begin to place value on someone else's possessions.
I don't see how taking a shovel to a fawn's head is in any way, shape, or form reasonable. It is wrong, unreasonable, and irrational.
Because you're not a scared seventy-six year old. It obviously seemed reasonable and rational for her at the time.
It is in the same town. Unless she lives in another state called Ohio, then it's close enough for her to contact them. How about this for another solution: waiting for the fawn to leave.
Towns have varying sizes. If it's on the other end of town it could take an hour for them to arrive. If I feel threatened by an animal I probably won't be willing to wait for an hour.
Again, she felt threatened enough to act in defense of her life and property.
They don't hunt fawns though.
So it's wrong because the deer is young? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. What makes killing an adult deer different than killing a baby deer?
She'd also need a hunting license and you can't just shoot deer in a residential area. She'd still be wrong if she shot it.
Which is why I would've charged her with hunting violations. But she can shoot in residential areas (in some of them anyway) as pest control.
Um...that's inaccurate. It's still theft, even if you made it really easy for the thief. It's still grand theft auto.
Which was my point. Regardless of whether or not she had a fence the deer was still being a pest.
Got it. OK, I wasn't aware of these kinds of laws. I wonder what is considered "damage" or if it matters at all. I'll have to research that a little more.
It's tricky. In West Virginia damage can be anything that damages personal property while inside of the property line and there's very little law to mark specifics as to what is considered reasonable damage.
No, it's not unreasonable. But this is a fawn who is still probably nursing from her mother. It wouldn't be eating from her garden. Of course, it's also not unreasonable to assume the old lady simply didn't have that knowledge. It seems like common sense to me......but some people lack that.
This is true. Like SN said earlier, stupidity isn't a crime.
Again, if it's the law as you stated above, then I guess she was within her rights. With me, it was never that the deer required a "right to trial" but that her actions seemed extreme and unnecessary. It's a fawn, no more dangerous than toddler, laying motionless in the grass. She hit it with a shovel, it screamed, she hit it again till it was dead. I can think of ten other ways to fix this problem just off the top of my head without killing anything. However, I would assume that if they are pursuing charges against her that perhaps these laws are not applicable or they do not have those laws in that area. Otherwise it would seem like an open and shut case to me.
My guess is media attention as well as the questionable nature of her story. We can't necessarily verify that it went down the way she said it went down but we're all working off that assumption for the most part.
In reality it's possible that she really did hunt down the fawn to kill off of her property and with much malice or that the fawn was not in her garden to begin with.
Has she actually even been charged? Even if they are going for the maximum is unlikely they'll throw the book at her. IF anything happens I expect it'll just be a small fine. If the law you describe above does apply in this area, I would expect nothing would come of this at all cause she seems within her rights.
The article stated she's being charged with animal cruelty violations but it didn't specific which violations she was being charged with to my knowledge.
I lost my empathy for the woman when she stated she wanted to throw the body out on her lawn as a message to other deer.
Really? It's common practice here for farmers to take the bodies of predators or their fur or skin and put them on scarecrows to prevent crops from being eaten.
In fact for a few months there was a dead bear head on a pike in a farm on my way to work.
Go back and read my posts. I've stated a couple of times that if she was genuinely scared and just freaked out then that is understandable. She's an old lady, she may be a bit senile. In which case obviously jail time and a fine is inappropriate. But that in itself makes me uneasy. If she is so frightened by a motionless fawn to the point that she has to hit it with a shovel, then maybe she is past the point of being able to care for herself. What happens if it was a little kid hiding in the garden? You mentioned the lady that tasered you at the market...what if it had been a gun and she killed you? Would have still been OK cause she's old and gets frightened easily? Of course not. It would be an unnecessary overreaction due to being senile, paranoid, or whatever. In any case, at the very least it would be time to evaluate their ability to live on their own at that point. And no, jail time/fines wouldn't be the answer if that's the case.
I see your point and it is possible that she's not able to care for herself and her decision making abilities are not perfect, but it's hard to gauge whether or not this is an overreaction really. In my opinion it's not necessarily an overreaction and if I knew the lady I would've probably just said, "Jesus... You killed bambi." and went on about my day with out much more thought to it.
However it could, like you said, be something more dangerous. In either case jail time wouldn't be appropriate though. Proper care would be the best resolution for senility.
[qupote]
Obviously the Vick comparison was absurd. The activity can be illegal depending on the season, the method, the area, and I don't know for sure, but in some places I don't think you're legally able to kill a fawn or doe. Did your cousin kill deer (bucks) or a fawn? Did he have a hunting license? Cause those are vastly different situations.[/quote]
Oh yeah he was within the law, but hunting laws weren't designed for deer protection and prevention of animal cruelty. My point was that most places in the US hunting in some form or another is legal and therefore the killing of deer isn't really taboo.
But that's why people are upset. If it was a rabid dog, a mountain lion, or even a fully grown deer, people wouldn't be so up in arms....or at least I wouldn't be. It's the fact that it was a FAWN. A 25 lbs baby deer, laying motionless in the grass. From the witness statement it was laying there and she hit it with the shovel. She didn't try to shoo it away, throw some water on it, call the humane society, scream at it, hit the shovel near it, call a neighbor, throw a stick, nothing. She just decided to kill it. And then instead of making some "I'm sorry it had to come to this" kind of statement it was "I wanna put it's maimed body on my lawn as a trophy of my conquest." That's what pissed me off. And if the law is on her side, as you describe the laws above, then that's fine. I still think it was unnecessary, but my opinion is just that and there's nothing else I can do about it at that point but just shake my head.
Oh I agree with why people are upset for sure. That's what irritates me. Fawns shouldn't die because they're young and cute. Rabid dogs on the other hand... Who cares.
If the system of measurement for the value of life is dependent on cute then I'm ****ed pretty massively.
we used to be such good friends.
It was a 25 lb fawn, not a grizzly bear.
