What soulless numbskull would kill a creature like this?

Ella the Cemetery Deer is dead, shot by "someone with a hard heart and a confused mind," according to Elmwood Cemetery board member Bruce Mathews.

Ella's body was found Sunday, and the details and shocked reactions were reported yesterday by Matt Campbell in The Kansas City Star. Mr. Campbell has followed Ella's story--which has mostly been a happy one--since at least early last December. On December 6th The Star published this article that tells of Ella's growing friendship with a stray dog that had taken up residence in the cemetery.

A follow-up piece on December 11th told of cemetery officials' decision to have the dog, then called ET (short for EpiTaph), taken to an animal shelter for medical treatment and to await adoption, since she would have a hard time surviving the winter outdoors. Both of Mr. Campbell's December articles were the subject of my New Year's Day blog post called "The True But Unfinished Story of a Deer and Her Dog."

On March 14th of this year, television station KCTV5 continued the Ella-and-ET saga by reporting that the dog had been adopted by a local family and renamed Moxxie. (Note: In the original TV news transcript, and therefore my post about it, the name was spelled "Moxie." But a shelter spokesperson tells Mr. Campbell that "Moxxie" is the correct spelling.) The story also said that Ella was still thriving in the 43-acre cemetery despite having been attacked by wild dogs. (It's unfortunate, but just as there are human ass-hats with more bullets than brains, there also dogs that don't know how to behave.) Cemetery board member Mathews expressed hope that Moxxie could come back to Elmwood in the near future to visit her old friends. These events were passed along to my blog followers in my "Good news!" post of March 26th.

And now "The True But Unfinished Story of a Deer and Her Dog" is finished--at least the deer part. Unless, as Elmwood supporter Anita Gorman says in Campbell's latest article, someone with information on the shooter comes forward. Please, Mr. Campbell, try to find the information that will nail this dirt-bag to the wall. Don't let him get away with it.

PS - For a wonderful slideshow of Ella and ET, most of the pictures courtesy of Bruce Mathews, follow this link.