Letters to the Editor can be sent to: Letters to the Editor Melville-Fremantle Community, 16 Essex Street, Fremantle Western Australia 6160 Fax +61 8 9239.1711 Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******************************************** Melville Fremantle Community Newspaper Western Australia (A weekly newspaper) 25th August 1998 Elusive Brenda to be "bride" for rodeo bull. ******************************************** A fugitive heifer's exploits in the wilds of Piney Lakes Reserve have ended in bovine bliss. She is to be "bride" to champion rodeo bull Silver City. The happy ending came after a four-hour round-up by 20 Melville State Emergency Service volunteers on foot and horseback as well as Melville Council workers, police and rodeo riders. Named Brenda Abbat(oir) by SES personel, she was reintroduced to domestic comfort at the Murdoch University farm before being moved to her new home at Grant Edward's Mogumber farm in Armadale. University livestock manager David Brockway said Brenda was remarkably well after five earlier capture evasions and nine months of survival in the dense bush after escaping from a truck rollover. "I was amazed how she survived and how quickly she has adapted back," he said. "She had helped herself to a paddock of cereal rye which was growing next to the reserve and was in much the same condition as nine months ago." Stampede Arena rodeo promoter and Grant's partner Ross Waddell said Brenda had been successfully lassoed after being flushed out of the undergrowth. "But it was a hard job because she was so streetwise and didn't want to be caught," he said. "Brenda is a beautiful heifer and will be a nice breeding cow." If anyone wants to see the 650kg groom he will be performing at Brigadoon State Equestrian Centre on September 5 at his first rodeo in 7 years. There is a $2000 prize for the cowboy who can stay on the beast. OUTCOME UPSETS ACTIVISTS ************************ Several groups against cruelty to animals want to rescue Brenda, local activist Marguerite Wegner has said. They are horrified that the heifer is to spend its last days at a rodeo stud. And Marguerite said a new group, Animal Rights Advocates, would be taking up the issue of cruelty to animals in rodeos. "International animal activists have followed Brenda's story on the internet and many people wished her a happy ending,"Marguerite said. But they were unhappy that the heifer was being delivered into the hands of someone who ran rodeos. "Yet Melville council apparently made a deal to let the captors of the cow keep her," Marguerite said. It was morally and ethically unacceptable to those who campaigned for better treatment and respect for animals to see Brenda handed over to the rodeo she said. Members of the Humane Society and Animal Liberation had found the cow a compassionate home on a farm where it could live out its life in peace. "But an offer of $400 (market value) to buy her and save her from the rodeo was declined," Marguerite said. "It is a sad end for Brenda, to be forced into breeding offspring which will probably end up exploited as rodeo victims or as meat for the table of meat eaters." End Letters to the Editor can be sent to: Letters to the Editor Melville-Fremantle Community, 16 Essex Street, Fremantle Western Australia 6160 Fax +61 8 9239.1711 Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] =========================================================================== /`\ /`\ RABBIT INFORMATION SERVICE: _ _ (/\ \-/ /\) P.O.Box 30, Riverton, Western Australia 6148 (.\_/.) )6 6( http://www.wantree.com.au/~rabbit/rabbit.htm \6 6/ >{= Y =}< VEGETARIAN PAGE =\ /= /'-^-'\ http://www.geocities/RainForest/4620 /O\ / (_) (_) / \ ( | . | U U ) | |} Pity the human race its illusion of permanence (| |)/ \_/^\_/ w'-'w ===========================================================================
