Re: “I’m not going to let her go. I’ll go to jail first,” Jan. 22.

Just because a 70-year-old Ucluelet woman has kept a wild deer for 10 years, because she and her boarder are attached to it, because they may have been ignorant of both the law and the fact that many apparently orphaned fawns are not abandoned, and because the pair’s seemingly straitened circumstances raise our sympathies, does not mean they should be allowed to break the law against keeping wild animals.

Now she has bred the doe and plans to keep the fawns. In other words, this Ucluelet woman has not learned anything about respect for the law or for the inherent wildness of those animals. Feeding the doe cigarettes, cookies and chocolate sounds like animal abuse to me.

I hope the conservation officers develop a solution for removal, the guts to carry it out and respect for themselves in their jobs.

Caroline Mufford

Victoria

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