Cindee Goetz said in the December 1 Michigan City (Ind.) News-Dispatch that when a company hired by the library switched from using a non-kill trap to a kill trap, she asked a friend who owns a humane animal-removal business to capture the squirrel. Goetz said she was then suspended without pay for “not giving the library its just due.” She told the newspaper, “They said I went around the chain of command” and that “I was paying more attention to the animal than I was my job.”
Library Executive Director Judy Hamilton told American Libraries she couldn’t comment on the suspension, stating only that there have been other similar problems with Goetz. “This is not an isolated incident,” she said. “If it had been an isolated incident, the reaction would have been different.”
Last year Goetz, a clerical assistant II, kept an abandoned bird in a garage at the branch and took care of it on her work breaks. The News-Dispatch reported she was reprimanded but not suspended for that incident.
Goetz, who owns an animal shelter, said she feels library officials are indifferent to animals, adding that although the squirrel isn’t someone’s pet, it deserved to get out of the library alive. “I don’t want that squirrel to die, either, but I can’t allow a live animal to be headquartered in that building,” Hamilton told the newspaper. “It’s a severe situation I can’t ignore. I’m not running a squirrel condominium here.”
Posted December 5, 2005.