…Oh, Sure, Paris Is Beautiful and Rich with History, but Can You Get a Little Man-on-Mouse Action while There? Point, Washington State.”

A Whatcom County man's friendship and aggressive support for a man convicted in the infamous Enumclaw horse-sex case led to his arrest this week for allegedly operating a bestiality farm just south of the Canadian border, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Douglas Spink, 39, a one-time dot.com millionaire, convicted drug smuggler and horse trainer, was quietly living on rural property south of Sumas when he connected with James Tait, who was in a Tennessee jail on a bestiality charge.

Tait had earlier been convicted of trespassing in 2005 in the Enumclaw case, in which a Gig Harbor man died after having sex with a horse.

The two men's communications set in motion an investigation that resulted in Spink's arrest Wednesday at the Sumas farm for suspicion of violating his federal probation for drug smuggling. Federal prosecutors and Whatcom County sheriff's officials say Spink also allowed people to come to the farm and have sex with animals.

He was "promoting tourism of this nature for bestiality," Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo said Friday.…

On Wednesday, authorities took several animals, including horses and large-breed dogs, found on Spink's property into protective custody, Elfo said. Several mice were euthanized, he added. "At this point, we don't know how many people visited this location or how many engaged in illegal conduct," the sheriff said. "We'll see as the federal investigation unfolds."

The property, Exitpoint Stallions, is reportedly owned by Spink's mother.…

"These are just allegations," Spink's attorney, Howard Phillips, said after the hearing. "My client said he has not been engaging in bestiality at all."

Reporting on a Washingtonian for bestiality or anything related to it amounts to reporting a dog-bites-man story. Well, it's more like a dog-bites-man-and-man-gets-a-throbbing-erection story, but why quibble over that when there are more important things to quibble over—namely, the reporting of the matter of the mice.

Ms. Sullivan, Jennifer, if I may, I don't mean to tell you how to do your job. I'm sure you went to one of the finest schools of journalism in the nation. Upon graduation, you, no doubt, honed your investigative and writing skills working on the staffs of the most reputable newspapers in the country. Kudos for your hard work and accomplishments; but, with all due respect to your education and training, you dropped the ball on this one.

How so? Well, I don't know if they dropped the ball at j-school or if your editors didn't mentioned it when you were a cub reporter just learning your beat, but when you're reporting on bestiality and you're told by the police that they had to euthanized several mice, you don't just leave that comment hanging. You, my friend, have follow-up questions to ask.

For future reference, you can start with these:

“Did you say, ‘Mice?’”

“You know they're such a lesser species that scientist regularly subject them to otherwise intolerable abuses in the name of progress, right?”

“So, knowing what little regard we have for rodents in general and knowing what little consciousness is available to them, what, possibly, could Mr. Spinks and his Johns have been doing that could traumatize a mouse so much that you would have to put it down?”

“This doesn't involve a hollow, wooden dowel, a vat of lube, and Richard Gere, does it, because that guy…?”

Whatever it was, dude, that must have been some fucked up shit right there, and the public has the right to know the gory details (and by “the public,” I mean “I do.”).