Editorial: Dumping animals dumps responsibility on others

Animals in the wild deserve respect for their place in the environment.

Animals in our care deserve the responsibility implied when taking them on.

That means humane treatment of working animals or livestock. It also means that animals taken into the family as pets are treated with the same kind of decency afforded to humans.

It’s a fairly simple concept. So why do we so often see proof that people can’t grasp it? Recently, there have been multiple examples.

Last week, an alligator was reported in the Kiski River. Alligators are commonly seen in rivers — but in Pennsylvania they don’t get there naturally.

Police don’t know exactly how the 4-foot-long reptile made its way into the waterways and trails around the Apollo area; alligators aren’t native to Pennsylvania. Their northernmost natural range is the southern and coastal areas of North Carolina.

The assumption is the predator was a pet and released when it became too much work — or perhaps too scary.

“That makes me angry,” said Dominic Hayward, a local man who keeps (accounted for) reptiles.

The supposed explanation is similar to the recent case of five snakes ranging in length from 1.5 feet to 7 feet that police said were released by their owner in Ross.

Then there is the person traveling via Pittsburgh International Airport on Friday. Airline officials said the French bulldog needed a crate to fly. That’s pretty common when traveling with a pet.

But this person didn’t like that answer. Instead of doing as asked, police said, the pet owner abandoned the dog in a stroller near short-term parking and hopped on a flight to a resort. Police plan to file charges for abandonment.

Pennsylvania sees plenty of cases of animal hoarding — people who collect cats and dogs and other animals, often in such numbers that they are neglected.

The flip side of that is dismissing the animals when they are inconvenient.

Both are unfair and uncaring to the animals. However, abandonment carries the additional burden of being potentially dangerous or expensive to the community.

It is bad enough to discard animals like trash. It is even worse to shirk responsibility by dumping it and the animals on others.