PETA to Mauling Victim: Grin and Bear It

On December 13^th, PETA "Special Projects" Division Manager Alicia Woempner lived up to the group's reputation for bizarre extremism when she sent a letter scolding 18-year-old hunter and bear mauling victim Camille Bomboy. In the dispatch, Woempner urges the recovering teen to "reflect on [the] incident" and "abandon hunting."

Earlier in the week, Bomboy had been the victim of a vicious bear attack while hunting on her family's farm, suffering bites to her arms and a severe injury that almost resulted in the loss of an ear. The attack was only halted when Bomboy's stepfather frightened off the bear by firing a rifle.

Throughout the letter, Woempner equates human beings with animals, as is characteristic of PETA. Woempner writes, "This seems to be a good opportunity to put yourself in the place of the individuals you and the rest of your hunting party were trying to kill." (Emphasis added.)  Woempner continues the lecture: "Now that you've experienced the horror of an attack –although this one was in self-defense – we hope you will choose to enjoy nature in only nonviolent ways."

One might think a letter taunting a seriously wounded teenager would be new low for PETA, but it's unfortunately par for the course. This is an organization that equates the terrorist Animal Liberation Front with the "Underground Railroad and the French Resistance." This is a group whose president, Ingrid Newkirk, told Washingtonian magazine in 1986, "there is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights.  A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." Worse, according to the Washington Post, in a 1983 interview Newkirk remarked, "Six million people died in concentration camps, but 6 billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses."

Bomboy appears to be handling her run-in with the bear and the animal "rights" radicals in stride. According to one news report, Bomboy plans to continue hunting, undeterred by the recent maulings, physical and written.