Justin Bieber’s Monkey Business
Pop star says he “loves” animals … buys exotic wildlife … starts “sanctuary” (a private zoo) … takes animals with him when he travels … soon gets distracted (or worse) … animals languish … the star goes bankrupt, his zoo collapses, and the animals are left in the lurch.
Sound familiar?
Michael Jackson’s Neverland is the most notorious case in point. But a similar mess is going on right now in Las Vegas, where Wayne Newton has gone bankrupt and the exotic animals at his ranch are being sold off by the creditors for whatever they can get for them.
Witless teen singing star Justin Bieber is heading down the same sorry trail.
The pop idol is pouting over pet monkey Mally being taken from him by customs officials when he landed in Germany. Bieber insisted on taking Mally with him when he left L.A. on his private plane and landed in Munich. When he couldn’t show German customs officers a health certificate, the monkey was taken into quarantine. Bieber, facing prosecution, made a big scene and is said to be “heartbroken”, according to a “source” who talked to the U.K.’s Sun:
“Justin has been acting like a right diva. He is out of control and lives in an alternative reality to the rest of us. He didn’t think about the potential risks of flying a monkey from one continent to another.”
Here at Earth in Transition, we don’t care what reality Bieber lives in … except when he starts abducting unconsenting animals into his pet reality, too. And this could be a real problem because, just like Michael Jackson, Bieber is already talking about wanting his own “sanctuary”:
“Justin has become such a diva he doesn’t care if he faces prosecution over the monkey incident and wants to start building up a collection of even wilder animals. He has been saying he loves the way Michael Jackson had an amazing collection of beasts and he wants his own zoo, including chimps, a llama, emu and camel. Justin seems to be living in the same fantasy world as the King of Pop. It is part of his mad behavior and hero worship of Jacko. And that is very worrying considering the mess Jackson created for himself.”
Jackson’s Neverland was a disaster for the animals he collected. The four giraffes were evacuated, along with the parrots, to the desert lands of Page, Arizona, to live with people who didn’t know how to care for them. The alligators and snakes went to the GW Exotic Animal Memorial Park in Oklahoma. And the two tigers, Thriller and Sabu, were accepted by the Shambala Preserve in California.
Bubbles, Jackson’s chimpanzee, began his life at a Texas vivisection facility, then went to Hollywood, where he was a favorite at Elizabeth Taylor’s parties, and then to Neverland. When Jackson died, Bubbles went to the Center for Great Apes in Florida, but the Jackson estate only provided half of what it would cost to care for him.
Penguins in the desert home of bankrupt Vegas performer Wayne Newton
What is it with these people? Two weeks ago, in Las Vegas, a judge had to rule on what to do with five penguins, a sloth , 150 lovebirds and more than 100 other exotic animals being abandoned by the extinct species known as Wayne Newton, whose entire estate is in bankruptcy.
The judge approved the sale of the 280 animals to the Zoological Wildlife Conservation Center and Sloth Captive Husbandry Research Center of Rainier, Oregon, for $27,300.
That’s a lot less than Newton paid for them. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the estate paid $10,500 in 2010 for a single penguin. Today, however, penguins go for $1,000 each. That’s because they’re overbred by the likes of greedy, irresponsible animal “lovers” and wildlife “centers”.
In fact two of the sloths from Newton’s collection originally came from that same Oregon breeding center.
“We are absolutely ecstatic to be getting them back,” a staffer there told ABC News. Sure they are. They can breed them some more and sell the progeny to another morally bankrupt celebrity.
And now we get to watch watch Justin Bieber go down the same road. And when, as usual, it all goes sour and the fans desert him, the animals, as usual, will be left in the lurch.