To the Editor:

My Meeca, a dachshund-hound mix, died Sunday night, Nov. 6, when she ran approximately eight feet from the town meadow toward me as I was bringing her to my car. Three policemen and an officer from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation all saw me holding her body on the town side of the fence….

I have been trying for over five years to get the town to place “No Hunting” signs on its property at Nott Road, both by the sporting fields and behind the water treatment plant.  Recently, Superintendent of Parks Greg Wier walked the town land, trying to determine boundaries and if the deer stands there were legal….

None of us even knew that steel traps were being used, too. To landowners adjacent to town parks: Please stop putting treacherous dangerous traps out. To the town of Guilderland: Please warn people. I lost my Meeca, who was like a daughter to me, but what if it had been your son or daughter?  This is now a highly populated suburban area, where people jog and walk with their dogs.

And children play sports and walk to the creek there, too.  Please care about these people more than you care about killing animals.

If animals are getting on your land, put up fences, not steel traps. If you feel you have to kill deer because you are starving, please don't do it where children can wander into the woods and be shot….

My dear Meeca is dead and I truly loved her, which you no doubt don't care about, but how will you feel when a child is crippled or killed by one of your steel traps?

Christina Diamante

Guilderland

Editor’s note: See related story.