Charlie Brown, watch your back — a plague of vicious wild beagles has struck Long Island!
These floppy-eared terrors are no lovable Snoopys — they’re abandoned hunting dogs that live in packs and have gone from humble pets to hounds from hell.
Mattituck resident Dot Faszczewski came face to face with the canine menace two weeks ago, when she was set upon by a group of crazed, hungry beagles as she walked her pet dogs near her parents’ Orient Point home.
She said it was like a scene from a werewolf movie.
“They were barking so ferociously that I thought they were going to attack my dogs,” she said of the Jan. 16 scare.
Her dogs — who are much bigger than be agles — were too scared to even bark back.
“I grabbed the two dogs and ran inside,” she said. “I just closed the door when they jumped at the door, and they broke that aluminum portion underneath.”
The attack happened in a flash. It was only when the 61-year-old dog lover was safely inside that she made the shocking realization her howling attackers weren’t coyotes or Rottweilers, but were three frothing, short-legged, brown-and-white beagles.
“I thought ‘Why would they be so ferocious?’ The bark that they were barking, like they really wanted to eat me up!” she told The Post.
They “were probably cold, hungry and desperate,” she said.
The angry beagles that attacked Faszczewski are part of a huge community of feral beagles that roams the woods and fields of eastern Long Island after being abandoned by hunters who used them to track down rabbits.
According to local activists, some hunters act like small-time Donald Trumps, firing the dogs that don’t do well during the November-to-February hunting season. One told a shelter worker, “If you don’t take the dog, I’ll shoot it in the head.”
“If they don’t perform, they don’t have a use for them,” said Pam Green, who runs Kent Animal Shelter in Calverton.
Despite the beagles’ small size and normally playful dispositions, they normally group up in vicious packs to hunt for food once they are on their own.
One year, as many as 30 or 40 beagles were abandoned, and two were found dead.
Green said five dogs have been picked up on the North Fork so far this hunting season. She expects to see more when the season ends in a month.
But animal activists are trying to help by publicizing the plight of the wild beagles and trying to find homes for them.
It’s a challenge. While purebred beagles can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars, most dumped hounds are young, poorly trained and not housebroken.
“They’re certainly not treated as a pet,” Green said. “They’ve lived in crates.”
Most are also not spayed or neutered because hunters believe “fixed” dogs lose their hunger for prey.
Two shelters now have five former feral beagles up for adoption between them. And they said that with love and care these abandoned hounds can become loving pets once again.
