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More Dead Animals Than the LP Zoo!

By Rachelle Bowden in Miscellaneous on Apr 4, 2006 11:51AM

2006_04_mr_yuk.pngChicagoist read this story about all the dead animals that showed up at the Kickapoo Forest Preserve and thought, oh, if only Andrew Peerless were still here. You see, he used to write a lot about animals, and around that time Lincoln Park Zoo was having a problem keeping them alive. We used to joke he had the "Dead Animal Beat." But alas, he's moved up and on.

If you haven't heard the story, a guy was walking through Kickapoo Forest Preserve in Riverdale with his little 6-year-old daughter when they spotted a dead dog. And then another dead dog. And then a few dead raccoons. Oh, and then some dead possums. More than 12 dead animals were found bleeding from their mouths and noses within 100 feet of each other. One raccoon was even dead up in a tree! If that's not a 6-year-old's nightmare, we don't know what is. The man, an environmental activist, thought, "Poison!" Not the band, dummy. The stuff that kills ya! And his little girl understandably freaked out and was crying.

Tests will be run on the dead animals to see if it was pesicides, rabies, toxins, insecticides, pharmalogicals or what exactly killed them. Just when we were thinking that wild animals had a better chance of surviving than those in the zoo ...