Veterinarian: Remove all animals from Cricket Hollow Zoo

A northeast Iowa zoo that’s come under fire for deaths of tigers and lemurs in its care should have all its animals “rescued” and sent to sanctuaries, a California veterinarian told a judge on Monday.

The testimony opened the trial in a federal lawsuit against the owners of Manchester’s Cricket Hollow Zoo brought last year on behalf of several Iowans who reported seeing animals suffering in small pens filled with feces and buzzing with flies. Tom and Pamela Sellner, the zoo’s owners, have argued in court documents the claims against them are exaggerated.

But Jennifer Conrad, a Santa Monica veterinarian, testified to Chief Magistrate Judge Jon Scoles in a Cedar Rapids courtroom that the Sellners regularly fail to take steps to protect their animals from disease and injury. Conrad testified that five tigers have died at the zoo since June 2013. None of their bodies were lab-tested to find a cause of death.

Such an exam, known as a necropsy, is crucial to detecting and protecting other zoo animals from potentially fatal infections, said Conrad, who primarily works with big cats and exotic animals who work in Hollywood. That oversight, combined with reports of things like animals drinking putrid water, makes it “predictable” that the hundreds of animals at Cricket Hollow could be injured, she said.

“I think that (the Sellners) have proven over and over again that they do not care about these animals any more than to have them as trophies,” she said.  “It’s a shame to have these animals subjected to such a terrible situation.”

Editorial: Why is this zoo still in business?

Conrad flew to Iowa to testify against the Sellners for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the group whose attorneys are representing the Iowa plaintiffs. One of Conrad’s famous patients is Schicka, the tiger fictionally stolen from Mike Tyson by Alan and company in 2009’s “The Hangover,” she told the judge.

The animal rights group is asking Scoles, among other things, to issue an injunction stopping the Sellners from keeping species like lemurs, tigers, wolves and lions. The group estimates around 300 animals live at the zoo, though the Sellners claim in court documents that count includes animals like birds and livestock.

Much of Conrad’s testimony focused on a list of animal deaths at Cricket Hollow dating back to 2005 that was turned over as part of the litigation. In Nov. 2014, a 10-year-old tiger named Casper died after spending four months at the zoo and being observed with an untreated 6-square-inch wound on his left front leg. The cause of death was listed as pneumonia, but such an infection in an animal’s lungs can be caused by a virus, bacteria or even from inhaling food, Conrad said.

The veterinarian said she believes the middle-aged tiger likely died from some sort of “inadequate care” in his new  home. Similarly, when another tiger, Rajah, died in 2005, the diagnosis was listed simply as “old age.” That isn’t scientifically acceptable as a cause of death, Conrad said.

“It seems to me these animals are dying without an adequate diagnosis and no one’s interested in actually finding out the real diagnosis,” she said. “Without a diagnosis of what’s causing this animal to die, you’re not protecting it from happening to the next animal.”

Conrad also read from multiple inspection reports by the U.S. Department of Agriculture citing buildups of feces and old food in enclosures where tigers and wolves lived. That sort of waste can become a growing ground for dangerous parasites, as well as attract flies and rats — all disease carriers that could threaten the Cricket Hollow animals, she said.

Conrad admitted that she’d never actually visited the zoo or seen conditions first-hand during questioning from Cedar Rapids attorney Larry Thorson, who represents the Sellners. Thorson quizzed the veterinarian on several facts that she could not speak to, like what code section of the Animal Welfare Act spells out rules for animal enclosure sizes and what surfaces animals at Cricket Hollow are fed off of.

The Sellners have argued in court documents that enclosures animals are kept in have always complied with USDA requirements and that the oversight agency has never expressed concerns with regular veterinarian used by the zoo.