From Deseret News archives:
Richmond residents in uproar over euthanization of 2 black bears
Two weeks ago, one of the bears was accused of biting a 4-year-old boy who had stuck his hand through the 10-foot-high, chain-link fence that encloses their habitat at Richmond's Maymont Park.
The child was not badly hurt — no stitches were needed. But with his mother unable to peg which bear did the biting, park and health officials decided five days later to euthanize both animals and send their brains to a state laboratory for rabies testing. The episode became public Feb. 23 only after both bears were dead and their headless, chemical-laced carcasses had been dumped at a local landfill.
The outrage was immediate and extreme. Dozens called 911 upon seeing the first news report. City Hall was flooded with calls. So was the park.
Mayor L. Douglas Wilder, the flamboyant former Virginia governor, promised quick action, including consequences for city officials involved in the decision to kill the bears and possible criminal charges against the child's mother. He ordered workers to find the bears and prepare a fitting memorial site. After three hours of sifting through garbage with a backhoe last week, landfill employees recovered the bodies.
And so, on Saturday, Buster and Baby were laid to rest at Maymont.
In a sign of the city's emotion, about 500 attended the funeral, many sobbing loudly and clutching flowers and stuffed bears. A Boy Scout troop escorted a color guard and lowered bronze urns containing the bears' ashes into a hole dug in the soft mud. An Episcopal priest offered a prayer. Wilder gave the eulogy.
"These bears are making a contribution even in their death, because they remind us that they lived, but they were put to death not by their own kind," he told the crowd. "Let us continue to be certain that nature provides us with lessons for how to live."
Maymont is the Central Park of Richmond, a 100-acre oasis of rolling trails and gardens in the heart of the city. The prime attraction of the park has always been its animals, and for 25 years the most beloved of those creatures have been several generations of black bears. They are visited by about a half-million people a year, many of them children.
How, exactly, the 4-year-old was bitten is not clear. This much is known: The park separates bears from people with both the chain-link fence and a shorter, four-foot-high wooden fence. Neither was broken.
