A zoo system in Massachusetts is more or less resorting to hostage-taking in response to proposed budget cuts. The Boston Globe reports that after Gov. Deval Patrick decreased funding for Franklin Park Zoo and Stone Zoo from $6.5 to $2.5 million in a line-item veto, the zoo officials wrote the governor saying that the steep budget cuts would render them unable to take care of the animals, and that many of them would have to be euthanized. 

In other words, give us our money or we’ll start executing defenseless animals, beginning with the cutest ones first (or at least that’s where I would start, just to ratchet up the pressure).

This is a bold step. It’s uncharted territory, because none of the other services that work with actual humans could make the same aggressive move, but with animals you can take the hard line. Will Gov. Patrick really let them haul out the pandas to be shot with a humane killer, as the public watches?

I hope that it works out for the zoos, because Franklin Park Zoo was my zoo growing up, the first place I ever saw a lion. Either way, though, I feel like we’re in for an exciting finish.