PHOTOS: Adams County Sheriff’s Dept.
ADAMS COUNTY, Miss.–A tip about some llamas in trouble, with no food and no way to get any, led Adams County deputies to an address that they had visited before. They found two dead llamas and a whole petting zoo’s worth of animals, most in bad shape.
“The address was where several years ago we had dealt with a very large puppy mill,” said Deputy Karren Ewing, who also serves as the county victim’s officer.
“They had stopped doing the puppies and had more so started doing the exotic animals.”
But, apparently, the practices had not changed. Some animals were in cages where they could not get to grass, like a pygmy goat. Some animals were starved, said Ewing.
INTERVIEW WITH EWING
Other animals on the property included another llama, three sheep, a mini potbellied pig, several exotic fowl such as McCaws, geese, swans, ducks, roosters, guineas both caged and not caged, and a few cats and dogs.
The owners, Clyde Leblanc and Kevin Harrigill, were asked to surrender the animals to the Natchez Adams Humane Society, said a news release from the sheriff’s dept.
“We are very grateful to the neighbors who alerted the authorities to this situation,” said Ewing, “and we encourage anyone who sees anything suspicious or unhealthy concerning animals to please call right away. We will investigate every call. If we find that it is a false alarm, then we are relieved. Every call is important and worthy of investigation.”
