The Choking Doberman: And Other Urban Legends by Brunvand Jan Harold

Author:Brunvand, Jan Harold [Brunvand, Jan Harold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2003-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

ANIMAL GROUP HEAD SAYS ORIENTALS EAT PETS

By Mary Anne Shreve

Journal Staff Writer

The local president of a humanitarian organization has accused Oriental residents in Springfield of catching—and eating—neighborhood pets.

Though he acknowledges his “information” is “second and third hand,” Jerry Southern, President of the Metropolitan Washington Branch of United Humanitarians Inc., has made his accusations public in a letter to Fairfax County Supervisor Marie B. Travesky and a press release to local media….

Southern said he first heard the rumor from his wife, who in turn had heard it from a friend. His wife’s friend “either lives in the area or has a friend who lives in the area,” he said.

The Journal was aware of Southern’s charges at the time but could find no support for them from police, trash companies, or other animal protection officials, all of whom denied any knowledge of the alleged incident.

Now Southern has repeated his charges in a press release, and The Journal still can find no support or direct evidence of pet eating.

Southern, a former Fairfax County Humane Department employee, wrote to Travesky last month:

“It is alleged that employees of a trash collection service operating in the North Springfield area (specifically in the vicinity of Heming Ave.) discovered what appeared to be the pelts of a number of dogs and cats in the trash containers at a particular residence known to be occupied by a family of Oriental extraction .

”This information was then reported to the Fairfax County Police Department. The police supposedly then obtained a search warrant, entered the house in question and found the bodies of a number of small animals in a freezer…. The family quickly vacated the premises and apparently no further action was taken by the FCPD.”

Southern’s letter concluded: “Why has this entire matter been hushed up?!!!”

His press release claimed that United Humanitarians Inc. conducted “an exhaustive investigation” that revealed that Fairfax police and the health department were “called into the matter by employees of a trash collection service that found animal pelts in a trash container.”

… A spokesman for the Fairfax County Police Department denied such an incident ever occurred; he called Southern’s account “a far-out story that someone has concocted and foisted on the world.”

Police Public Relations Officer Warren Carmichael said: “None of our people has ever heard of anything remotely related to it, and we have had no increase in reports of missing animals….”

“Something that big,” he said, “I’m sure would have been heard by at least a few people. And no one in any of our stations had heard about it. In fact, they asked me what I’d been smoking.”

Carmichael said the police had not searched a house for pet meat and that there was no “cover up.” …

Officials at both the main and Springfield branch offices of the health department said they had heard about the rumor, but their departments had not been involved in any cases of pet snatching.

Spokeswomen for the two major trash companies that serve North Springfield—Woodbridge Trash Co. and BFI Industries—said they had not even heard the rumor….

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