‘I liked my chicken’: French woman kills lynx to save bird and case ends up in court

Chicken Photo by Magda Ehlers The criminal court in Strasbourg, in eastern France, analyzed this Friday (27) the case of the death of a lynx cub beaten by a woman in a town in northern Alsace, after the animal attacked her chicken, Marie Thérèse. The lynx is an endangered and protected species in the country. On the morning of October 18, 2024, the feline, a 4.2 kg female, entered an enclosure where five chickens lived, in the garden of a residential area in Niederbronn-les-Bains, a town of 4,000 inhabitants. The owner of the property says she “panicked” when she saw one of her birds, Marie-Thérèse, being attacked. “I was shocked, I screamed, but he wouldn’t let go. I hit him to let my chicken go,” he told the court, where he faces charges of destroying a protected animal species. The woman claims she mistook the lynx for a cat. See the videos that are trending on g1 After trying to scare away the predator, the attacker, who says she is sorry, took a piece of wood and hit him on the head. He then called the municipal police, who contacted the French Biodiversity Office (OFB). “I was ten minutes away. I came to see what could be done to save the dying cub”, said Claude Kurtz, lynx specialist and OFB representative in Alsace. The lynx was weakened and hungry. “I tried to provide first aid and quickly took him to the veterinary clinic”, but “two hours later, he was dead”, added the animal defender, who represented the SOS Falcão-peregrino Lince association. Read also: Chicken takes 25 hours to produce an egg; understand the process Endangered species Lynx Photo by Omar Ramadan According to the autopsy report, the feline suffered “several blows”, in addition to two skull fractures and a bruise. Lynx defenders had not yet chosen a name for the cub, but they knew her lineage: her parents, Taïga and Filou, were from the “second generation” of lynx reintroduced in Germany between 2016 and 2021. The woman and her husband only alerted the authorities when the animal was already in agony. “They could have called sooner”, laments Kurtz, who denounces “acts of cruelty”. Marie-Thérèse, the chicken, did not survive. But, according to Kurtz, if the owner had not attacked the lynx, “she would have been compensated for the loss of the chicken.” The species is threatened with extinction, according to animal protection associations, which point out alarming numbers: there are only around 150 lynxes in the whole of France and just ten in the mountains of the Vosges region, close to the border with Germany. In this context, “each individual counts for the survival of the species”, highlights Sandrine Farny, responsible for the topic at the Northern Vosges Regional Natural Park. She remembers that lynxes are often victims of being run over. ‘I liked my chicken’ “Do you realize that, when you tried to save one animal, you ended up killing another?” asked the judge, Valentine Seyfritz. “It was my pet, ma’am. I liked my chicken, like you like your cat or your dog”, replied the accused. “Self-defense” does not apply to the case, said the prosecutor, Priscille Cazaux, who requested four months in prison with conditional suspension of the sentence for the woman “sincerely shaken by the facts”. But the claim that she mistook the lynx for a cat is difficult to believe, according to the prosecutor. For the defendant’s lawyer, Juliette Isaac, the sexagenarian is neither an “experienced hunter” nor an “illegal hunter”, but a person who faced a “stressful situation that she did not know how to manage”. The one who “saw her five chickens grow” simply “reacted to the aggression towards a loved one”; and, since then, he has had difficulties with grief and has not “replaced Marie-Thérèse”. Also know: Honey that can cost R$600 per liter: understand why the stingless bee product is more expensive The price of carioca beans rises almost 20% with a smaller harvest and low stocks; see when it should fall Without bathroom and water: truck drivers report days in line at a port in Pará

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