Animals

Bathsheba Birman relocates worms from the sidewalk after a storm in her Sauganash neighborhood. She flips over bugs that are stranded on their backs.

But she says saving creepy-crawlies and other assorted creatures does not mean stepping on humans or being an extremist.

“I’m not interested in flinging paint on people or certainly not stripping naked,” said the 37-year-old founder of the Urban Wildlife Coalition.

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It takes three to four seconds for an animal to die from lethal injection, while it may take over 30 minutes inside a carbon monoxide chamber.

"It's the humane way," Nadine Walmsley, spokesperson for the Anti-Cruelty Society in Chicago, said of lethal injection.

The issue surfaced again when State Sen. John Fritchen (D-Chicago) recently outlined his plan to introduce a bill banning the use of carbon monoxide to enthanize cats and dogs.

Most Illinois shelters use lethal injection. However, there are still a few shelters Downstate that use carbon monoxide, according to Jordan Matyas, an attorney for the Chicago English Bulldog Research Group. And it is difficult to know how common a practice it is because there is no law requiring shelters to report what method they use.

Walmsley also said that in order for the lethal injection drug to be used by shelters without veteranarians, a special liscense must be issued by the state. Illinois began issuing that liscense two years ago.

Another factor is that enthanasia by injection is less costly that carbon monoxide.

Ken Intino, the director of animal sheltering issues at the Humane Society of the United States, said animal shelters began euthanizing animals using carbon monoxide chambers about 40 or 50 years ago, before the animal control field became professionalized.

"Carbon monoxide was considered the most humane method at the time," Intino said.

But over the last 20 years, lethal injection became the most humane and thus the prefeeed way to euthanize animals.

Euthanizing by carbon monoxide require less work for the person, since he or she can simply place the animal in the chamber and close the door. The person can step away for 20 minutes or so and leave the animal unattended.

"Injection euthanasia requires more handling of the animal," Intino said, "--looking into the animal's eye and actually injecting the drug."

Regardless, euthanasia by injection is the humane and professional method promoted by the Humane Society of the United States and animal activist groups.