10,000 mink at large in Ohio as vandals free the small carnivorous mammals and swear ‘We’ll be back’
Vandalism freed thousands of mink at a rural northwest Ohio farm and left an estimated 10,000 of the small carnivorous mammals missing Tuesday night, the local sheriff said.
So many mink were killed crossing a nearby road that a plow was brought in to clean up the carcasses, said Van Wert County Sheriff Thomas Riggenbach.
The property owner originally estimated that 25,000 to 40,000 mink were freed from their cages at Lion Farms, Riggenbach said. But he said farm workers were able to corral many of the animals remaining on the property, which is less than 15 miles from the Indiana state line.
He declined to discuss a possible motive for the night’s vandalism or say whether a suspect was identified during his office’s investigations.
An operations manager told WANE-TV that someone had left a spray-painted message with the letters “ALF” and the phrase “We’ll be back”.
A group known as the Animal Liberation Front had previously dumped much smaller numbers of mink on the farm in a previous incident years ago, the Times Bulletin in Van Wert reported.
Calls to a phone number listed for the farm went unanswered Tuesday and no messages were accepted.
The sheriff’s office initially warned area residents to be wary of flocks of poultry, small pets, and koi ponds that the mink could attack, but later said the freed mink are considered domesticated and likely lack the skills to to survive in the wild.
The sheriff urged people who spot them to stay away from them and to contact the farm or trappers to recapture them. He said residents wishing to hunt or capture mink must ensure they understand what rules and exceptions apply in their area.
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