‘Worst Roadside Zoo’ in U.S. Gets Lumps of Coal for Christmas

Plight of Animals at Waccatee Zoo Leads to PETA Special Delivery

For Immediate Release:
December 14, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

This morning, to push the Waccatee Zoo to release the animals held there in substandard conditions to reputable facilities, PETA has sent a fitting Christmas gift to the “Worst Roadside Zoo in America”: 11 bags of coal, each with the names, photographs, and stories of animals suffering there. These include the ailing tiger Lila, and the message about her reads, “Tigers’ unique coat patterns offer them excellent camouflage, but Lila no longer looks like a tiger. She’s almost completely bald and spends her days pacing in a deplorable cage.”

“As families celebrate the holidays, the animals at Waccatee Zoo will be staring out of dismal, barren cages as usual—suffering and sick with misery,” says PETA Foundation Associate Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Michelle Sinnott. “PETA is calling on the Waccatee Zoo to give Lila the tiger and all the other animals there the best Christmas present ever by sending them to reputable facilities, where they could experience peace on Earth at last.”

Other messages on the bags of coal include the following:

• “Long-tailed macaques are excellent swimmers and enjoy sleeping in trees that hang over rivers, but Tucker and Hope live in a small cage and have been seen attacking their own limbs, likely out of frustration or desperation.”
• “Lions have the ability to work together to solve tasks, and females form highly stable maternity groups, but Princess lives alone in a cramped, dismal enclosure.”
• “While black bears communicate by biting, clawing, and rubbing on trees and other objects to leave messages for each other, Care Bear and Spook have nothing to do but pace or sit in a shallow pool of dirty water.”
• “In nature, red foxes have a large main den with additional burrows for sleeping and hiding, but Ernie and Maxine live in a small, barren cage with nothing to do and only plastic barrels for shelter.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.