ihazquail

PA laws prohibit the inhumane treatment of captive wildlife, but when the laws also state that a 10x20 foot cage is perfectly legal for bears and even smaller for lions and tigers. And people with menagerie permits are allowed to own wild animals in PA. It's disgusting. Had this case gone to court, what do you think the chances of winning would have been?

How can these laws be changed? It seems in many other states, the laws don't change until someone gets their face ripped off by a chimp or mauled to death by a tiger. If people aren't getting hurt, they have no motivation to change them.

2 liter of Coke. Apparently, they thought they were doing Ricky a favor.

The owner did genuinely love Ricki, but he just had absolutely no clue of the needs of a bear. I highly doubt he was deliberately mistreating her. He was also concerned the move would be traumatic for her. That being said, it was wrong to keep Ricki in that terrible cage like that. There was an article from a few years back in our local paper where he was quoted that he watched a documentary on wild bears, and that bears have to roam for miles and miles in the wild to get food. He talked about how Ricki had it made, all she had to do was sit there by a tube and people would give her food.
Wild animals are not pets, and it's scary to think someone who has a menagerie permit knows so little about the natural behavior and needs of bears.

To every person who helped free Ricky- thank you from the bottom of my heart!!! :)
I know people have tried to help Ricky in the past. What in the past have they sued Jim Mack's for and what prevented them from being successful in the past vs. now?

I was following the story like crazy. Initially, the online comments were very very positive. The trolls came out hard when people of York decided the plaintiffs were tree hugging liberals and vegans. They were the same people trolling over and over in the comments.

There were some people that seemed to agree that her living conditions were horrible, but were genuinely concerned that transporting Ricki would do more harm than good.