Zoo director guilty of drowning wallaby

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FAIRFAX, Va., Sept. 29 (UPI) -- The director of a private zoo in Virginia has been sentenced to 25 days in jail for drowning a baby wallaby in a plastic bucket.

Meghan Mogensen, whose father, Eric, owns the zoo in Reston, Va., was found guilty Friday, The Washington Post reported. Her lawyer says she plans to appeal her convictions for animal cruelty and unlicensed possession of an animal anesthetic.

Ashley Rood, a former curator at the zoo, testified she believed the wallaby, an Australian marsupial, could have been successfully treated after it hurt its eye in January. She said she argued for trying to save the animal but returned from a trip to buy feed to find an empty crate next to a bucket of water and then the animal's carcass in a dumpster.

Rood said she saw other cruel methods of getting rid of unwanted animals at the Reston Zoo, including feeding chickens to pythons and slamming rabbits against walls.

Mogensen reported the wallaby had been killed with a lethal injection but a necropsy found signs of drowning, witnesses said. Police discovered Mogenson had drafts of two reports on her computer giving two different causes of death.