By Polly Keary, Editor
It’s not unusual to find dead animals dumped in the woods.
But it is unusual to find so many.
A resident of Old Pipeline Road area last week reported to police that she had spotted the carcasses of dozens of animals along the road that runs east-west between Bollenbaugh Hill and Woods Lake Roads northeast of Monroe.
“Found cats, a bob cat, cow, lots of ducks and a sheep,” the woman reported. “They’re all spread out along the trail.”
Among the people who arrived to investigate was an animal cruelty investigator from Pasado’s Safe Haven, an activist animal shelter and rescue near Sultan.
Kim Koon, cruelty investigator at Pasado’s, corroborated the report.
“One was a domestic cat that appeared to have been hit by a car. The larger animal was probably a bobcat,” she said. “It had a bullet wound, it was skinned, and its eyes and ears removed, like a taxidermy thing. Then there were 60 dead ducks, the breast and back meat taken, and the intestines of probably a small cow or goat.”
The problem is that the only law clearly broken was illegal dumping, she said.
“It could have been a duck hunter who had gone out 15 times and got his limit each time legally,” she said. “From an investigative standpoint, there’s little we can do.”
And right now it is legal to hunt bobcat with a license in Washington.
Illegal dumping is not uncommon in the wooded areas of east Snohomish County, Koon went on.
What is unusual about the pipeline area is the number of times illegal dumping of animal bodies have been reported.
“For dead animals, the pipeline has been a dumping ground for a long time,” she said. “Live and dead animals, very heinous cruelty cases or roadkill; the full spectrum.”
Finding the culprits is difficult, she said, because of the relative remoteness of the area.
“It makes me sick,” she said. “It’s beautiful out there and then you see these dead animals.”
(See Animal Photos. Be aware the photos are really, really unpleasant.)