Letter: How did health agent walk away from such suffering?

To the editor:

Some Westporters are expressing sadness over the resignation of James Walsh as the town’s senior health agent. Some have said that what happened on the tenant farm on American Legion Highway was not a big deal. Some have stated the situation was not Walsh’s fault and that he should not be held accountable. These reactions illustrate either a lack of understanding of the magnitude of the animal cruelty discovered and the events that lead up to that discovery or a complete callousness to the need for humane treatment of animals.

I am hoping that these citizens of Westport have not grasped the size and scope of what was discovered on that farm and why anyone who was on that farm (as Walsh admits he was) cannot be considered innocent to the horrors that went on there.

The ASPCA reports there were 1,400 animals on that farm and that the vast majority of those animals were sick, starving, injured or dying.

Fourteen Hundred. That is a very large number. Go and get 1,400 coins or 1,400 rocks. Gather up a full 1,400. Now place them all together in a box. Carry that box around with you. Feel the weight of those 1,400. You cannot ignore their presence. Take your pennies or your rocks and place them all on the same flat surface. Look at them all together. Look at all 1,400 of them and realize how much space they occupy.

Imagine that each of those 1,400 items represents one animal. Try to see them. Visualize 1,400 cows, pigs, horses, donkeys, chicken, ducks, pheasant, quail, peacocks and fish. Imagine that the majority of those 1,400 animals are sick. See how thin they are as almost all are malnourished and many are literally starving to death. Several are wounded from either being impaled by nails sticking out of their makeshift enclosures or worse yet are wounded from having wire twisted around their necks or limbs. Imagine the smell of 1,400 animals living in their own filth coupled with the scents of the only available food sources being moldy and rotten and the water brackish. Finally, imagine 2,800 eyes all looking at you for help.

Now attempt to walk away from that image and not give those 1,400 another thought. Just put your pennies or your rocks back where they came from and go on about your life as if they didn’t exist. Impossible, isn’t it? It is impossible to be blind to the sights and smells of 1,400 suffering animals in one area. That is what James Walsh did. He was on a site where 1,400 animals were suffering and he turned his back, walked away and forgot about it. He reported it to no one. He was our town’s senior health agent. There was disease there. There was suffering there. He reported it to no one. I am not sad he is gone.

Kathy Feininger

Westport