Ohio man must spend two days in jail for petting zoo cougars

[IceWizard]

Wed Jul 29, 2015 1:19pm EDT
By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) -
An Ohio man who posted a video of himself petting cougars at a Columbus zoo appealed no contest to a trespassing charge on Wednesday and has to spend two days in jail and pay more than $200 in fines, court documents said.

Joshua Newell, 35, jumped an outer fence to
gain access to another fenced-in enclosure and called the cougars to him in order to pet them, the documents said. Newell then posted a nearly two-minute video of the encounter on YouTube where he enticed the animals by calling "Here, kitty, kitty" and "That's a good kitty."

Newell was charged last week with criminal
trespassing, a misdemeanor. He was sentenced to four days in jail, with two days suspended.

A representative for the Columbus Zoo and
Aquarium was not immediately available for
comment.

This is the second time this year that a zoo
patron in the state was charged with
trespassing.

In June, Michelle Schwab was sentenced to a year of probation for a similar charge after dropping her two-year-old son into a cheetah exhibit at the Cleveland zoo in April.


(Reporting by Kim Palmer in Cleveland; Editing
by Mary Wisniewski and Andrew Hay)


**Opinion**

This is a prime example of I consider to be a complete and utter idiot! What part of "wild animal" do they fail to understand! Hey an ordinary house cat can make you real miserable in a flash, with this in mind add a few hundred pounds and "voila" you have youself a real serious problem.... Possibly even death! I just don't know the thinking (if there even was any) behind something as stupid as this.