PETA looks bad after two arrests

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What's going on in the offices of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals? The same sanctimonious animal-rights group that pleads for donations so it can stop us "blood-thirsty" hunters and fishermen once and for all is in the middle of a smelly affair involving the euthanization of pets picked up at animal shelters. Incidentally, they were pets PETA reportedly promised it would find good homes for.

The Associated Press and the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk have reported that two Hampton Roads employees of the Norfolk-based PETA were charged in Ahoskie, N.C., with animal cruelty after dumping dead dogs and cats in a shopping center garbage bin.

Investigators staked out the bin after discovering dead animals had been dumped there every Wednesday for the past four weeks, Ahoskie police said.

Police found 18 dead animals in the trash bin and 13 more in a van registered to PETA. The animals were from shelters in North Carolina's Northampton and Bertie counties, police said. The two were picking up animals to be brought back to PETA headquarters for euthanization, according to PETA president Ingrid Newkirk.

Police charged Andrew Benjamin Cook, 24, of Virginia Beach, and Adria Joy Hinkle, 27, of Norfolk, each with 31 felony counts of animal cruelty and eight misdemeanor counts of illegal disposal of dead animals.

PETA euthanizes animals by lethal injection, which it considers more humane than gassing groups of animals, as some cash-strapped counties are forced to.

However, veterinarian Patrick Proctor said authorities found a female cat and her two "very adoptable" kittens among the dead animals. He said they were taken from the Ahoskie Animal Hospital.

Barry Anderson, Bertie County's animal control officer, identified nearly all of the dumped dogs as ones Cook and Hinkle picked up, even though PETA representatives "told him they were picking up the dogs to take them back to Norfolk where they would find them good homes," according to the Bertie County Sheriff's Office.

No chronic wasting disease in Maryland -- The Maryland Department of Natural Resources says there was no sign of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in whitetailed deer and sika deer shot by hunters during the 2004-2005 muzzleloader and firearms deer hunting season.

A total of 872 deer (861 whitetails and 11 sikas) were tested out of the nearly 75,000 deer bagged by hunters during the season. The state's sampling effort is designed in such a way that if only 1percent of the deer in either population has CWD, there is a 98 percent chance the disease will be detected. CWD is fatal to deer and elk species.