SASCHA WIL­SON

Vil­lagers of Fuller­ton Vil­lage, Ce­dros are con­cerned fol­low­ing the deaths of sev­er­al an­i­mals with­in three days in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Be­tween Thurs­day and yes­ter­day, two dogs and two goats died while oth­ers are sick. A bird car­cass was al­so dis­cov­ered.

Be­cause the an­i­mals were froth­ing and vom­it­ing, some res­i­dents sus­pect that they were poi­soned. Call­ing for im­me­di­ate test­ing of the an­i­mals, Ce­dros Coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh said they can­not take any chances be­cause on a dai­ly ba­sis il­le­gal an­i­mals are be­ing smug­gled in­to the coun­try.

“I on­ly got the re­port to­day. I don’t know what is hap­pen­ing the Min­istry of Health and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture need to look in­to this im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Com­plain­ing that that Ce­dros po­lice are un­der-re­sourced and un­der­staffed, he said the bor­ders were not be­ing prop­er­ly manned.

“Just re­cent­ly 37 il­le­gal Venezue­lans were found in Ce­dros. Just like hu­man traf­fick­ing, there is an­i­mal traf­fick­ing. I am again call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Prime Min­is­ter to at least tight­en the se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures along the south-west penin­su­la. Our com­mu­ni­ty is be­ing ex­posed to so much.”

A res­i­dent, who did not want to be named, said on Wednes­day her neigh­bour’s goat got sick and died. “We did not take it on, we say some­thing was wrong with the goat. This morn­ing we hear­ing a bang­ing and groan­ing noise. When we look we see the dog drop­ping down, groan­ing and froth­ing.”

Think­ing the dog may have been poi­soned, she ad­vised her neigh­bour against let­ting their goats loose. But, she said a preg­nant goat which was sick since Thurs­day died, while two oth­ers are sick.

“The goat was froth­ing and groan­ing They though it was in labour.”

She said oth­er dogs were al­so sick.

“It is very fright­en­ing. We don’t know what cause the death of these an­i­mals. It have a lot of kids around here. We don’t want the chil­dren to go out­side be­cause we don’t know what mak­ing the an­i­mals vom­it. Next thing a child have a sore on his foot and they go out to play and mash the an­i­mal sali­va and get in­fect­ed.”

She said even more cu­ri­ous is that yes­ter­day morn­ing they left the dog’s car­cass for the vul­tures, but the scav­engers did not feed on it. Teelucks­ingh said he has in­formed the pub­lic health and the min­istry of the sit­u­a­tion and re­quest­ed that tests be done to de­ter­mine the cause of the an­i­mals’ sick­ness.