Star comment: Poisoning of animals is so cruel
Two cases of poisoning have caused heartache in separate and, on the face of it, very different, incidents in the Newport area.
You feel for farmer Bob Lane who has had 16 of his herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle die through a tragic contamination of lead into their feed. And he has had the horror of watching them die every day since April 18.
The lead gets into the nervous system of these huge beasts. They start smashing into things. They go blind. And they die.
This is his livelihood. The animals are, though, more than business to a farmer.
"I don't know whether I'll be able to continue, to be honest. It's a lifetime's work just gone.
"I've watched them being born and grow up. They all had names.
"Farming is such a cruel business. I don't know why I do it sometimes," says 66-year-old Mr Lane, of Edgmond.
He sources his animal feed from outside, and he thinks that a battery had been chopped into bits and that the lead had got into the feed.
It is a sad case in which animals have suffered and a farmer has been left heartbroken.
You do not need to be somebody who knows about farming or the countryside to appreciate just how heavy a blow it is.
It was an accident and if there is anything good to be drawn from it, it is an increased awareness of the potential dangers of old batteries and the care which must be exercised in disposing of them.
Not far away, a woman returned to her home in Newport on Sunday to find her 18 beloved Koi Carp fish, worth £2,000, floating dead in her pond. The indications are that somebody climbed in and poured some sort of detergent into the water.
Different creatures, different circumstances, but a similar story of hurt and pain.
"They were my babies. They all had names and I found them company," says devastated owner Ellen Tough.
If it was indeed a deliberate act, it was a shameful act of cruelty. What sick satisfaction could anyone get by climbing into a garden to kill fish which mean so much to their owner?
Fish do not bother anybody. They are contained in their own world, they do not make a noise, and right-thinking people appreciate them for their beauty.
The culprit has achieved nothing good. The person responsible has demeaned themselves and their humanity.
