Lee Randall: Won't someone please think of the pangolins?

Published on Friday 8 May 2009 21:45

GRIM NEWS from the USA, where the recession has forced budgetary cut-backs on unimaginable levels. How unimaginable? Animals are receiving pink slips – America's version of the P45.

One story bringing a tear to my eye was the saga of Dixie, who toils in Snohomish, Washington as a drug-sniffing dog. Although she's quite happy to nose out drugs and money for no greater reward than time alone with a squeaky toy, members of the city council wanted her out, concerned about her high overhead. They say the seven-year-old shepherd-collie mix costs $16,000 a year (about 10,607 at current exchange rates) in food, veterinary bills, grooming, kennel and training costs.

I don't know what they're feeding Dixie. Even with pet insurance and posh kibble, I'm running two cats on considerably less, though admittedly they're untrained in all but the fine arts of looking adorable and dragging their "kill" (my tea-towels) under the bed. Is there no-one in the squad room willing to run a comb through Dixie's hair?

But lo! As we went to press the happy news broke: Dixie's been reprieved. So she won't be signing on for unemployment payments and a crash course in creative CV embellishment after all.

It seems that she and her handler, Sgt Jeffrey Shelton, appeared before the council with an impassioned appeal, arguing that she'd never missed a day of work. Even en route to the vet to repair a job- related ear injury, the energetic critter sniffed all the trash cans, in the hope of uncovering stashes of filthy drug lucre. Dedication won the day.

But meanwhile, who'd be a nocturnal animal? At the Bronx Zoo – my hometown animal repository – they're closing the World of Darkness.

A two-toed sloth, a broad-nosed caiman and any number of deer, bats, porcupines, foxes, lemurs, antelopes, plus something described as "the camel-like guanaco", are facing expulsion as part of the zoo's effort to claw back a $15 million (9.96m) cut in budget. Eighty human animals have already been given the chop.

The same is happening in Kansas, Connecticut, Missouri and Maryland, say news reports.

Which begs the question: just what do you do when you're an unemployed hyena? I have a fanciful vision of an ark's-worth of timorous beasties lined up in a row, howling, yowling, barking and chirping the lyrics to Hot Stuff while wiggling their tails. But since animals start out naked, and lack the opposable thumbs so necessary for deftly manipulating a trilby, I don't predict a happy-clappy Full Monty finale in any of their futures.

The articles delicately tiptoe around this sensitive question. While none has hinted that surplus-to-requirements creatures are marked for destruction, I can't help wondering and worrying.

Perhaps it's time to launch an international appeal for adoptive families willing to offer these innocent animals a chance to get off benefits and make something of themselves? (Hey, we all know Madonna's looking for more kids, and branching out into new species sounds like it has the requisite novelty value for Brangelina…)

Naturally I'm willing to do my bit. My flat's on the small side, but I'm sure I could employ the sedentary sloth as a coffee table. I'd happily house a pangolin, for the sheer pleasure of explaining that what looks like a Jerusalem artichoke ambling about the kitchen is actually a pet. And with our climate, who doesn't need a porcupine boot scraper?

Now, how to break it to the pusskis?