Death of Pet Drives Crusader Against Animal Traps

NISKAYUNA, N.Y. — Meg Massaro was training for a 100-mile bicycle race when she passed a crumpled heap of skin and bones. She circled back.

It was a dog, nearly dead beside the sweltering Texas highway. The mottled mongrel was crawling with ticks and infested with mange and worms. Its shoulder was broken.

Another person might have turned away in revulsion. But as she stood there in the 103-degree heat, Massaro’s heart melted.

“The tail went thup thup, the eyes looked up at me, and it was all over,” she says. “I promised her then and there, ‘You will never be hurt again.’

“It turned out to be a lie.”

Massaro took home the dog, a 45-pound brindle boxer mix, and nursed her back to health. She called her Valentine. The dog excelled at obedience training. She earned a Canine Good Citizen Award from the American Kennel Club.

“She was just magnificent,” Massaro says. “I think she knew she’d been saved and she was grateful. She was totally devoted and loyal.”

Last Christmas, four years after she found the dog, Massaro sent out cards with a photograph of Valentine and Phaedra, a second stray she adopted.

Two weeks later, she watched in helpless horror as Valentine suffered a gruesome death.

Massaro had just moved to this upscale suburb near Albany. She was taking her daily run with the dogs along a paved bike path when Valentine darted after a squirrel. Seconds later, the dog was howling in agony. Her head was clamped in the steel jaws of a Conibear 200 trap.

“Her eyes started to glaze,” Massaro said. “She was just looking at me, as if to say, ‘Do something.’ ”

Massaro, her husband and passersby tried frantically to spring the complex trap, which is designed to kill beavers instantly. By the time an animal control officer removed the device, Valentine was dead.

Now Massaro is on a mission to make sure other pets don’t meet a similar fate. She and some like-minded women formed the Trail Users Group, or TUG. They want the state to ban trapping within 500 feet of the bikeway that runs 42 miles along the Mohawk River northwest of Albany.

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In response to the outcry over Valentine’s highly publicized death, the state Department of Environmental Conservation is drafting statewide changes in trapping regulations.

The new law would target kill-type body-gripping traps such as the Conibear, as opposed to leg-hold or cage traps.

The law would probably be applied to high-use recreational areas, said Gordon Batcheller, a wildlife specialist at the DEC. It could ban the traps on land or make changes in how they can be used.

The trap that killed Valentine was legally set in all respects except that it wasn’t labeled with the trapper’s name and address, Batcheller said. Officials were unable to track down the trapper.

The state doesn’t compile records of how often traps kill or injure animals other than the intended target, Batcheller said. About four years ago, another dog died the same way Valentine did when it was caught in a Conibear trap along the Genesee River in Rochester.

“That’s the only case I know of,” Batcheller said.

The DEC says a nationwide search for records of human injuries resulting from legal fur trapping turned up only three incidents in 20 years, none serious.

Animal rights advocates present a different picture. Holly Cheever, an Albany-area veterinarian, said she sees domestic animals maimed or killed in traps every year. Marion Stark, a representative of the Fund for Animals, gave Niskayuna officials four reports of children hurt by leg-hold traps.

At a Niskayuna Town Board meeting on whether to ban trapping within 100 feet of the bike path, three people spoke against the idea and about a dozen supported it. Among the opponents was Tom Conto, a trapper who said his nuisance wildlife control business gets 4,000 calls a year from people wanting animals removed.

“Trappers suggested fencing the bike path,” said Erika Scott, a TUG member. “They said if Valentine had been on a leash, she’d be here today.”

“We’re not against trappers as a whole,” said Jane Anclam, a licensed day-care provider who brings her young charges to a riverside park on the bikeway. “We’d like to get trappers off this recreational area. It’s not compatible.”

Dave Miller of the New York State Trappers’ Assn. said the various interests can coexist, with increased awareness.

This year, there are about 10,000 licensed trappers statewide, an increase from recent years because fur prices have been rising, Miller said. Nuisance trapping has grown in the last 10 years as well, he said.

Miller expects to see new regulations concerning body-gripping traps in recreational areas.

“I think banning outright is unlikely because there’s a need for the ability to control wildlife in those areas,” he said. But Massaro sees no such need.

“I’m opposed to trapping,” she said. “But I’m not an ideologue. For me, this is an act of love, grief and retribution.”