Dawn: My grandfather Ash Bellwether was elected the Mayor of Zootopia in the 1976 election. At the time tensions between predator and prey were starting to rise at the time due to a grisly series of murders that had thought to have been the work of a large predator. Several prey politicians used it to re-enforce their own 'predator' prejudice, and feed the rhetoric into a dedicated voter base. It was that sentiment that my Grandfather rode into all the way into the Mayors office in 76', and he continued to spout that rhetoric during his tenure. Pushing for all sorts of 'suppressive' policies for predators that were 'for the good of the city'. This included predator only curfews, screenings of predators coming into and out of largely prey populated spaces, and of course most infamously, the 'Tame Collar' system. Of course, out of those he had only ever successfully gotten the curfew last in a few districts, and for only a few weeks before the...'scandal'.
As you probably know by now, Tame Collars were already in heavy use over at the Cliffside Asylum to keep both predator and prey patients 'under control'. While my Grandfather pushed for the collar, and a lot of the he stoked into fearing predators did as well, the public hadn't actually seen the extent of how the collars work. So when an expose by ZNN exposed the horrible practices being conducted by the staff at Cliffside in 78', it gave the public a look at just how awful and unmammalian the actual collars were. It was an expose so explosive, and so stomach churning to most Zootopians, that it caused the rising anti-predator sentiment to shift dramatically practically overnight, evaporating the base politicians like my Grandfather had been grooming in the blink of an eye.
Although the collars had been in use at the asylum under multiple mayors, the fact that the current Mayor had not elected to clean up the asylum, but worse yet had pushed to enforce one of their torture practices on the citizenry spelled doom for Ash's political career. Actually, pretty much any career. He was ejected from office within days, as well as his Assistant as a safety measure, and the next in the line of succession were placed into the roles. I'm pretty sure that was...Mayor Greenly, and Assistant Mayor Mustlee. Yes, yes that was the replacements. Sorry, I've been out of the political sphere for a while so I've started to forget all the names.
At that point, the Bellwether's still had a family fortune to coast of off, so my Grandfather was able to spend the bulk of the 80's in the old family mansion in the North Meadowlands until the money finally ran dry. After he was voted out and publicly shunned, he never left the premises, opting to send my father out for supplies. Despite being blacklisted though, he still groomed my father to take up the mantle of Mayor eventually, hedging his bets that the public scorn would be limited to him and him alone. But as you well know, my father never succeeded in gaining political office in any capacity. He had always been more of a science mammal according to my Mother, socially meek....which is hard to believe considering...how he treated us. It was that failure, as well as the fact that my Grandfather had lost the family home, and had to die in a shabby two story town house was what probably prompted my Grandfather to curse my father on his death bed, calling him a 'miserable failure' before passing away. My mother often cites that at my father's...breaking point.
Vernon: Was that the Apex killer case? The one where it turned out it was some prey mammal who wanted desperately to be a predator?
Dawn: Yes, that's the one. Ironically caught about a year after the whole “Cliffside Asylum” expose, and showing the public that prey could be just as capable of the same brutalities they feared of predators.
Vernon: Amos Horeamnos, the Apex Killer. I remember Yuri tellin' me he watched a special on that guy once. Apparently this mountain goat had first like, sheared off his horns and tried filin' his teeth into points. He ended up making false pred teeth and claws to commit his crimes with.
Dawn: That's what had made him so hard to find. The anti-predator sentiment clouded the investigation to some degree, and because of that they were looking for a mystery predator rather than prey. One of the biggest issues of the case was that the claws and teeth marks didn't match any style of predator on record, which, of course they couldn't because they were custom parts dreamed up by a mad mammal.
Vernon: I remember Yuri talkin' about the 'trophy room' the cops found, and how it turned his stomach. Turned mine too, and I didn't even see the photos.
Dawn: Yes...if I recall he liked to take portions of his victims back to turn into furnishings....*shudders*. What a monster.
Vernon: I know Cliffside was a terrible place and all...but Sweet Sawgrass...I think a place like Cliffside woulda been too good fer a mammal like Amos...
(WT: Warning, some of this content will more than likely be covered in “The Family Vulpes”, That said, don't get too married to this answer...it may change when it's infused into the story. As I say, the Ask Blog is what I like to call 'soft cannon'.)
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