Woman’s Skunk Rescue Nets PETA Award

After Tanya Krasuin Frees Skunk From Plastic Cup, Group Reminds Everyone to Protect Wildlife by Crushing Cups and Cans

For Immediate Release:
April 2, 2019

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

A Compassionate Action Award is on its way from PETA to Mission resident Tanya Krasuin, who sprang into action on March 13 when she spotted a skunk whose head was stuck inside a plastic Burger King cup outside her home. Video footage shows her tugging at the cup until the skunk was able to pull free and run off to safety. “People keep asking me if I was afraid of getting sprayed,” Krasuin told PETA. “No! I did what I had to do to save an animal from suffocating. I think any person would do the same.”

“If Tanya Krasuin hadn’t intervened, this skunk could have easily experienced a miserable death by starvation, dehydration, or being hit by a car,” says PETA Vice President Colleen O’Brien. “PETA hopes this story will inspire everyone to come to the aid of animals in need and always crush cans and cups before throwing them in the trash.”

PETA has tips on its website for living in harmony with wildlife and disposing of trash properly, including by tightly sealing all garbage in chew-proof containers, rinsing out aluminum cans and dropping the pop-tops inside so that they can’t cut an animal’s tongue, crushing cans and cups, putting the tops back on bottles, and cutting open empty cardboard and plastic containers so that small animals can’t get their faces or heads trapped inside them.

Krasuin will receive a framed certificate, a box of delicious vegan cookies, and copies of PETA’s posters reminding everyone to replace lids and crush all cans and containers, which she can put up in her community.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist view that other animals are disposable. For more information, please visit PETA.org.