432 Animals Seized from a Single home in FL!

[MunchkinsMom]

This happens to be right in my tiny town! Thought I would share it, it is farm related, since many of the animals seized were farm animals, and this is a farm town.

http://www.ocala.com/article/20090828/ARTICLES/908289958/0/NEWS

Be sure to watch the video. At least from the story, it says the animals are not in bad shape (amazingly), but the house will most likely have to be condemed, and it was a brand new home!

[<3OTTB]

I'm speechless. :eek:

[MunchkinsMom]

Me too! I just shake my head because I think it was just last year they seized something like 120 mini's and ponies from another farm not too far from here also.

But 432!!!! I can't even begin to imagine it. Hopefully it was a lot of small animals!

[<3OTTB]

it must be so overwhelming for the people working that case. imagine how unhealthy that house must have been? she was probably knocked out from the ammonia.

[MunchkinsMom]

it must be so overwhelming for the people working that case. imagine how unhealthy that house must have been? she was probably knocked out from the ammonia.

I was thinking the same thing! UGH, I cannot even begin to imagine what the inside of that house must be like!

[JSwan]

Holy Moly.

That's a lot of poop to scoop. :eek:

Could you ever get the smell out?

[KrazyTBMare]

Wow. Just wow. I bet the owner has some type of upper resp. issue with all the feces and urine in the house.

I drive through Citra on my way to Ocala. Cute little town lol.

[harveyhorses]

Where are the fruitbats? It's hard to believe none of the neighbors called, even just to ask.....:eek:

[MistyBlue]

Yikes, according to the news video the air was only 30% air inside the house, possibly the rest ammonia fumes. Could be why the owner was passed out.
No, there isn't a way to make that house totally odor free. Possibly stripping it to the studs and removing floors and subfloors...then treating it might work. However the 1/2 acre lot is most likely contaminated deep by now also and would require more than a few feet of topsoil removal and that treated as hazardous waste.
All in all more expensive to try to save the house rather than condemn and remove it. Probably will still require hazardous removal of exterior topsoil...much like a septic failure.

[JanM]

It usually is better, and safer for all involved to bulldoze it. I can't imagine having over 400 animals of any kind on a 1/2 acre lot.

[MunchkinsMom]

Where are the fruitbats? It's hard to believe none of the neighbors called, even just to ask.....:eek:

Well, sometimes here, folks just sort of "live and let live" unless it is directly impacting them, or is blantantly obvious there is a problem. Especially if it was on one of the back dirt roads out here.

I can't even imagine 400 hamsters, never mind pigs and turkeys and snakes and exotic birds. . .

[ReSomething]

A woman by the nameof Marylin Barletta (sp) had over 200 cats living in a house in Petaluma CA, from what I understand the house was able to be rehabilitated - cost a mint and wouldn't have been worth doing if the market in that area didn't support it. Supposedly the building inspectors were betting it couldn't be done and got a pleasant surprise. But over 400??!! Unless that new home was built out of concrete block with a slab there is no way they are cleaning that up, My God, the poor EMT's probably couldn't get the smell out of their sinuses for days.

ETA No, they couldn't get the smell out, I did a little googling after I wrote the post.

[JanM]

Re-I google it too and was surprised that the case was dismissed because she was a few too many sandwiches short of a picnic (and apparently was rich too). She had bought the house just to keep the cats there, and had two other houses also. She rented one in Novato, kept 50 cats there and it cost about $75,000 to rehab. She had a lein placed on the Petaluma home by the landlords of the Novato house too. She had a history of this type of thing back to the early 70's. The Petaluma house was rehabbed for over $50,000 and never sold--after a year on the market the new owner who rehabbed it took it off the market because the potential buyers were grossed out by the smell, and when they found out the history they ran for the hills. Apparently being a nut with money gets you privileges the rest of us don't get and allows you to repeat the same crime to hundreds of animals over the years. I guess she'll never stop preying on helpless animals and hapless landlords. She sounds like a lot of the horse cruelty/hoarder cases that just go from one location to another and repeat the same abusive patterns.

I've never heard of a serious animal hoarding case where the house was able to be rehabbed. I wonder if any of the horse properties with numerous abuse/hoarding cases are rehabbed and resold. I can't imagine what that property was like, and how stupid it is that you can't report something like this anonymously-of course, in a time where you have caller id on everything I guess it would be difficult to stay anonymous. I only wish the animals had been rescued a long time ago.

[Foxtrot's]

I sure wouldn't be buying a house with that history!

[ReSomething]

Actually, JanM, the neighbors did complain, lots. IIRC it took somebody breaking out a window on the Petaluma "cat house" and then the cops showed up etc etc.

One of the things I really don't like about this is that I don't want to be minding my neighbor's business, but there is a limit as to how far one's personal rights extend. Which is I suppose why this woman got left alone - her animals were in decent weight, as far as anyone could tell. Just an awful lot of them, and 170 birds like canaries don't take up much room. Still a bad situation all around.

[MunchkinsMom]

OMG - I'm watching it on the news right now, what a disaster area, they are showing video of the house! They just showed a ferret, geese, parrots, and a rather nice looking husky dog.

[JanM]

I'm all for minding my own business, but when you look at hoarding cases and the kidnapped girl in California where the neighbors saw people living out back in tents and 'minded their own business' ,and the sheriff's deputy who had a complaint about zoning violations about three years ago and never went in the backyard to see the problem or do a check on the address to find the resident was a registered sex offender and might have rescued the girl and her children several years ago I am nauseated. There is a difference between ignoring a person who's different from the norm, and ignoring obviously disturbed behavior that should at least be investigated. Maybe if you don't get attention from zoning or animal control then you should call your rep on the city or county board. Someone having an extra dog doesn't bother me, but someone with tons of animals over the limit is a definite problem. I try to notice who the rental management people are and notify them if there's something going on with their property that I would want to know about if I owned the property (there are lots of absentee owners renting out houses here). Unfortunately, I have found the property managers to be more concerned about renting a property than in the fact that the person is doing illegal things there. I can't help but think about the poster on here that rents her house near Fredericksburg to the people that have all of the dogs, and the foreclosed house where they have the cats-next off topic day I hope there's an update.

I really don't think that people like this are capable of changing-they are so fixed on their own needs that they ignore reality. As long as hoarders are able to go back to hoarding animals they will. Or whatever else they hoard-multiple types of hoarding seem to go together-animals, trash, junk just piling up endlessly. I can't stand that there seems to be no national registry of people who have done this, like a sex offender database. Hoarders and abusers seem to be free to relocate and start all over again.

MM-I doubt that anyone's homeowner's insurance covers this. I had a fire last year and it made me virtually uninsurable until I prove (I have the Fire Dept report showing I didn't do it so I'm OK with most companies-some won't insure you if you had a claim, which I think is what insurance is for) that I wasn't at fault, so I hardly think that damage from an animal hoarder or other type of bad renter or destructive homeowner will be covered because it's deliberate.

[MunchkinsMom]

Well, there is the pet abuse (http://www.pet-abuse.com/pages/home.php)website/database, but honestly, until recently, I would not have thought to do those types of background checks if I were the owner of a rental property. Granted, that is not an official government sponsored database, but the information there is based on news reports, so it is backed up by some facts. Might be a good thing for a landlord to add to their check list when reviewing potential renters.

It also makes me wonder, would the landlords homeowners insurance cover something like this? I hardly thing so.

[cowgirljenn]

Based on similar hoarding cases, they'll have to condemn the house. And the owner is probably suffering severe health issues as well as dementia from the high ammonia levels. When the ammonia clears her senses and she returns to normal, she's probably going to feel absolutely awful that she did this. It probably started off innocently with her wanting to save animals and over time it became overwhelming. As ammonia levels climbed, dementia probably set in, fueling more hoarding. It is an ugly cycle... :(

[JSwan]

I agree - but I'm rather surprised that so many birds were found in the home. Alive.

I wonder if she had an aviary or a well ventilated room in which the birds were kept. Because I'm pretty sure birds get really sick and die from breathing ammonia - and it doesn't take much to do it.

[Lori]

I've never heard of a serious animal hoarding case where the house was able to be rehabbed. .

We had one in Sterling, VA a few years back. The house was totally full of cats. No one lived there. It was a 2-story house with attached garage. The owner would throw large bags of cat food in the garage and some had even landed on cats and killed them. The house was trashed beyond belief. Whoever took it over completely gutted it and it was resold as a residence.

[MunchkinsMom]

I agree - but I'm rather surprised that so many birds were found in the home. Alive.

I wonder if she had an aviary or a well ventilated room in which the birds were kept. Because I'm pretty sure birds get really sick and die from breathing ammonia - and it doesn't take much to do it.

I wonder if the A/C would help in recirculating the air up to a point, but I can only imagine what the air filters look like.

I have not seen any updates on the news or in the paper about the case.

[JanM]

Lori-I bet a lot of people could still catch a whiff in that house. A friends brother had a cat that ruined one room-he took up the flooring (concrete slab under) and all the trim work, door and repainted-it still smelled. He then ripped out the drywall halfway up and redid it-and it still smelled. I think that cat really hated him.

[scrtwh]

Interesting about ammonia levels and dementia ... at least the animals were in relatively good shape ...