Animal Rights Advocates Call Shelter 'Holocaust'

For the third Tuesday in a row, area animal rights activists staged a silent demonstration protesting the increasing euthanasia rate of cats and dogs at the local animal shelter.

Wearing animal masks and carrying signs painted with slogans like Eat The Meat, Kill The Breeders, and ASCMV=Treblinka, the demonstrators have been peaceful and do not speak, but have been dispersing flyers, buttons, and stickers to passersby. The group's website is www.lcdeathcamp.com.

Last week, in a move that critics are calling "risky" and "offensive", demonstrators handed out brochures to the public stating the Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley (ASCMV) and the New Mexico Holocaust and Intolerance Museum in Albuquerque had joined forces to open a satellite museum in the Las Cruces shelter. The brochure stated the ASCMV was planning to change its name to Treblinka, the infamous World War II Nazi death camp, due to similarities in extermination methods.

The shelter has been frequently branded a "death camp" by the animal rights community, who suggest the solution lies in going to the source of the problem and educating or punishing the people allowing their pets to breed uncontrollably rather than euthanizing dozens of animals every day.

The ASCMV currently processes over 1,200 stray or abandoned animals every month ñ a very small number of which are adopted by area residents. The remainder are put to death by lethal injection or other method within 3 days of capture and buried in a mass grave in the Corralitos landfill.

"We are faced with the fact that there is a massive domestic animal overpopulation problem throughout New Mexico, especially in the Southern Doña Ana County region," explained ASCMV director Seth Tabasco-Mofar. "We believe education is crucial in exterminating the overpopulation problem and ending the killing."

Tabasco-Mofar had to cut our interview short after being informed that "some guy in a Dodge truck" had just dumped a box of 8 pit bull-Chihuahua mix puppies on the front doorstep of the shelter, and because there were no available cages the puppies had to be euthanized immediately.

Last November, the ASCMV came under more scrutiny after a local woman reported her cat missing, later learning the cat had been picked up by the City's "death squad", taken to the shelter, and killed in under five hours.

"I didn't even have the chance to go look for him," cried local woman and former cat owner Dolores Axelrod. "What is this place, like Treblinka or something?"

In another recent incident stemming from a complaint about a dog bite, the "death squad" removed a dog from its owner after it was decided the well-trained 6-year-old pet was actually a wild animal. The dog was euthanized and beheaded so its brain could be tested for rabies in a Santa Fe lab. The test came back negative, along with the cremated remains of the dog.

The City has taken a Catholic stance on the problem by suspending funding for a county-wide spay/neuter program that offered mobile and affordable sterilization services for pet owners unable to pay for private veterinary care. ASCMV is preparing for the predicted increase in abandoned animals by ramping up their euthanasia department to run 24 hours a day and by teaching volunteers how to kill cats and dogs.

The lcdeathcamp.com website outlines some suggestions in controlling the animal overpopulation problem: diligently punishing known animal breeders and hoarders, suspending food stamp benefits for people with pregnant dogs tied to trees on their property, processing the cat and dog meat "Chinese style" for human consumption, and letting stray animals run free so they can learn how to dodge traffic and live off dumpster scraps.