Their 40-year-old pet black bear, Archie, was euthanized by a local veterinarian later that morning.
“It was a hard thing to do,” Debbie Gillium told The Gazette in an interview. “We’ve both been upset the whole week. I hardly got any sleep last night.”
She said Archie died peacefully after a hearty breakfast of a cream-filled doughnut and dog food mixed with tapioca pudding.
“He usually doesn’t get stuff like that, but today was a special day and he loves his sweets,” Gillium said. “He licked the tapioca off my fingers. He was nice and fat before winter.”
Archie, one of the oldest known black bears living in captivity, had lived with the Gilliums for more than 30 years. They rescued the 600-pound, 6-foot bear from a “terrible situation,” after finding him, skin and bones, in a tiny cage with no water, Jeff Gillium said.
In August, Jeff Gillium told The Gazette that the bear was in declining health. “I think this is his last year,” Gillium said at the time. “If he doesn’t die in hibernation or before that, I’ll be surprised.”
“He’s still a good old boy, though. Never offered to bite or hurt me ever. That old boy’s got heart.”
For the past year, the Gilliums had been involved in a legal dispute with the Ohio Department of Agriculture over whether they could keep Archie.
The Department of Agriculture threatened to seize the bear because of Ohio’s Dangerous Wild Animal Act, which banned the possession of a dangerous or exotic animals without a permit in 2012.
The Gilliums never renewed their permits after the law was passed. They believed they had been grandfathered into the new law because they had the proper permits before its passage.
“He wouldn’t have wanted to be yanked out of that cage and taken away,” said Debbie Gillium. “He’s never harmed anybody.”
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| RIP Archie |
Archie outlived three of the Gilliums’ dogs and all of their other exotic rescues that they took in over the years. Although they no longer take in potentially dangerous or exotic animals, at one point they had 130 mammals on their property, Jeff Gillium said.
They had 2 1/2 acres of cages and enclosures with a 10-foot-high fence around the property so they could rescue animals from zoos, circuses and other situations all over the country. Archie was the last one.
“It’s been hard on us physically,” Debbie Gillium said. “We got too attached to Archie. I can say that I never regretted one day of taking care of him ’cause he was just so sweet and loving.”
(Medina Gazette - Dec 19, 2015)
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