(July 20) -- Police in Russia are investigating reports of animal cruelty after a parasailing company attached a donkey to a parasail and dragged him hundreds of feet above a beach as part of a live advertisement, The Moscow Times reported.
This was no joy ride. Russians were frolicking below when they began to hear the donkey screaming in fear as a motorboat pulled him across the skies above the Sea of Azov.
"The donkey screamed and the children cried," Larisa Tuchkova, a police spokeswoman for Russia's Krasnodar region, told the Russian paper RIA-Novosti, according to a translation in
The Moscow Times.
Tuchkova said witnesses snapped photos of the frightened donkey with their cell phones instead of calling the authorities.
"No one had the brains to call police," she said.
The four-legged, no-winged animal survived, but was dragged along the water until it was rescued by sympathetic beach-goers. According to a report in the Russian newspaper Taman cited by the Times, some children were asking their parents, "Why did they hitch a doggie to a parachute?"
Russian police did not appreciate the publicity stunt either. They are
investigating the men involved on criminal charges of animal cruelty, according to a report in RIA-Novosti cited by BBC. Their names have not been released by police.
Kimberly Wells, a spokeswoman for the Brooke, a British animal-rights organization, said the donkey was likely in pain. "This animal would have been extremely distressed, suffering immeasurable fear and pain," Wells
told Sky News.
