First They Wanted To Kill Knut....

Now the Toronto Zoo has killed two male reindeer babies. Why? Beats me. I see absolutely no logic in their actions.

Toronto Zoo brass say ... Rudolph must die!

Wait until Santa finds out. Toronto Zoo starts killing male baby reindeer to manage the herd. Staff are heartbroken -- and furious

Dear Santa: I hope you are sitting down.

The Toronto Zoo is killing baby boy reindeer.

Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now Prancer...

The first was dispatched shortly after his birth April 8.

His mom, Hayzel, bellowed mournfully for two days. You could hear her from Meadowvale Rd.

The second met the same fate at the point of a hypodermic on April 22.

His mom, CUPE, is named for the zoo staff's union.

Both little gaffers were chocolate brown and gangly cute. They had barely begun to nurse.

Both were perfectly healthy.

"Euthanized due to being male," says the keepers' report, terse and angry.

The keepers were so upset they left as the vets moved into the reindeer enclosure and refused to take part.

"This is wrong," the keepers told the vets, who were none too happy either.

Three female babies have been spared.

Where is Greenpeace on this horror? Too busy protesting 500 ducks that died. Yesterday the sky was black with geese returning up north, ducks aren't exactly a scarce commodity. It's sad the ducks died, but it wasn't deliberate like the killing of those two reindeer. That was a deliberate choice made by the Zoo.

Funny, I thought zoos love baby animals.

There's always a fuss when a cute little snow leopard or polar bear comes into the world, out in the wilds of northeast Scarborough.

Two days before Hayzel's son was put to death with sodium pentobarbital, a press release announced the arrival of a baby gaur.

Congratulations to Flower and Hercules. Gaurs are huge, wild Asian cattle.

The baby? A bouncing boy. Doing fine.

Need I add, a week from now is Mother's Day at the zoo. Given what's transpired, I hope they have the sense not to showcase the reindeer moms. Two of them aren't celebrating.

This is okay because the Zoo can't profit from selling the males?

Maria Franke, curator of mammals, tells me the decision to euthanize male reindeer calves was made by something called the Animal Care, Research and Acquisition Committee.

"It was a gruelling process," she assures me. "We do not take this lightly. There is science behind it."

It's especially hard to sell reindeer because of disease fears. There's no room.

Too expensive to release in the wild. If they keep the males they'll be lonely. They yearn for their own harem. We can't even sell the two bucks we have now. No one likes this. It's a necessary evil. Blah, blah, blah.

Science behind it? Oh, like the science behind global warming? Environmentalists, first it's global warming, then climate change, then don't kill the baby seals, then protest duck deaths, but no problem killing two perfectly healthy male reindeer, that's science.

On Mother's Day, I hope to see huge protests against the Toronto Zoo by Greenpeace, if not, it really tells you that they are in it for the money, not to protect the environment and ALL of those who live in it.