A dog and a bird formed an unlikely friendship. Their separation has infuriated followers

Brisbane, Australia –

“Peggy and Molly” were a match made for the internet.

Peggy is a stout and muscular Staffordshire bull terrier, and Molly is a magpie, an Australian bird best known for swooping on humans during breeding season, not for befriending dogs.

In the four years since their unlikely bond was posted online, the odd couple has attracted almost two million followers on Instagram and Facebook.

But in an emotional video posted online Tuesday, Peggy’s owners, Juliette Wells and Reece Mortensen, announced that the animals had been separated.

“It breaks our heart to make this announcement today,” said Wells. “We had to surrender Molly to the DES – Department of Science and Innovation – as we had a small group of people constantly complaining to them.”

Fans online were quick to demand justice.

“This is a classic example of bureaucracy over common sense and humanity,” one user wrote on Instagram. “Our tax-payer funded departments should be using their resources to help out the community and save mis-treated wildlife, not harm them!!” said the comment, which attracted more than 1,000 likes.

However, a spokesman for the Department of Science and Innovation (DESI) said in a statement the bird had been “illegally” taken from the wild and been kept with “no permit, licence or authority.”

“Animals in rehabilitation must not associate with domestic animals due to the potential for them to be subjected to stress and the risks of behavioural imprinting and transmission of diseases,” the statement added. “Animals from the wild, must stay wild.”

Prominent bird expert and behavioral ecologist Darryl Jones from Griffith University said magpies are highly intelligent and sociable birds. He told CNN there’s no question as to what should happen next: “That animal now thinks it belongs to that family… It should go back to the people.”

An abandoned baby bird

Wells found Molly in a local park, apparently abandoned as a chick, according to a long post on Facebook.

“We were very concerned because the park was an off-leash dog park in the afternoons and up to 30 dogs of all breeds run around crazily we knew this little bird would not stand a chance. So, we did what any animal lovers would do and made the decision to bring him home and care for him,” the post said.

“Over the next few months we nurtured this magpie, taught him how to feed, fly and put him outside as much as possible because our goal was to get him back out into the wild.”

But Molly didn’t leave, and bonded with their dog Peggy.

During the pandemic, Wells posted images of the animals together to social media with motivational slogans – “Days spent with you are my favourite days” and “You are my Happy Place.”

The animals attracted a huge online following.

T-shirts were printed, calendars sold, then a deal was signed with one of the country’s biggest publishers.

The resulting book, “Peggy and Molly,” was marketed as “heart-warming photos and simple life lessons about what it means to be a true friend and how we can all learn to be kind, humble and happy.”

But not everyone was happy about the development.

Wildlife officials worried that others would follow their lead of domesticating wild animals in the hope of profiting online.

It’s unclear if Wells and Mortensen made any money from the related merchandise. But in 2022 around $66,000 was raised for them through a GoFundMe campaign to help buy the property they’d been renting. CNN reached out to the couple for comment but did not receive a response.

Online campaign

Wells and Mortensen are now mobilizing an internet campaign to pressure authorities to give back the bird, a protected species in Australia.

An online petition to reunite the animals has attracted around 70,000 signatures.

“We are asking why a wild Magpie can’t decide for himself where he wants to live and who he wants to spend his time with,” the couple said in their online post.

In its statement, the DESI said there was no option to release the bird to the wild as it had become “highly habituated to human contact.”

It would be placed in a facility, the statement said, which could be a long stay – magpies are known to live up to 30 years.

Jones, from Griffith University, who has written a book about his own experience raising a magpie, said taking the chick home was “the worst possible thing that [the couple] could have done.”

He said feeding birds is not uncommon in Australia – “every second person you meet is feeding a magpie somewhere” – but there was a difference between allowing them to roam in your garden and taking them into your home.

“It’s not a good thing to take animals from the wild and turn them into pets. It’s not something to be recommended, and that’s why there are strong rules about that sort of thing,” Jones said.

But now that Molly has become a family pet, the best thing would be for the DESI to return it, he added.

“The authorities could say on reflection, with the welfare of the individual magpie in mind, we have decided that the best thing to do for that magpie is to return it to the family,” he said.

Bernard Ashcroft, CEO of Wildlife Rescue Australia, said the law prohibits people from taking wild animals as pets, for good reason.

“It’s not appropriate that people have a magpie simply because it appeals to them. If they don’t know what they’re doing they can cause a bit of harm,” he said.

“Different birds have different nutritional needs.”

The department released another statement on Thursday acknowledging that Molly’s surrender was an “emotive issue.”

“Our number one priority is the ongoing welfare of the magpie, and the bird is safe, undergoing rehabilitation and has full access to veterinary care,” the statement said.

The department said it was investigating options for Molly’s future living arrangements within the boundaries of the law.

A fight to protect the dignity of Michelangelo’s David raises questions about freedom of expression

FLORENCE, Italy –

Michelangelo’s David has been a towering figure in Italian culture since its completion in 1504. But in the current era of the quick buck, curators worry the marble statue’s religious and political significance is being diminished by the thousands of refrigerator magnets and other souvenirs sold around Florence focusing on David’s genitalia.

The Galleria dell’Accademia’s director, Cecilie Hollberg, has positioned herself as David’s defender since her arrival at the museum in 2015, taking swift aim at those profiteering from his image, often in ways she finds “debasing.”

In that way, she is a bit of a David herself against the Goliath of unfettered capitalism with its army of street vendors and souvenir shop operators hawking aprons of the statue’s nude figure, T-shirts of it engaged in obscene gestures, and ubiquitous figurines, often in Pop Art neon.

At Hollberg’s behest, the state’s attorney office in Florence has launched a series of court cases invoking Italy’s landmark cultural heritage code, which protects artistic treasures from disparaging and unauthorized commercial use. The Accademia has won hundreds of thousands of euros in damages since 2017, Hollberg said.

“There was great joy throughout all the world for this truly unique victory that we managed to achieve, and questions and queries from all over about how we did it, to ask advice on how to move,” she told The Associated Press.

Legal action has followed to protect masterpieces at other museums, not without debate, including Leonardo’s “Vitruvian Man,” Donatello’s David and Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus.”

The decisions challenge a widely held practice that intellectual property rights are protected for a specified period before entering the public domain – the artist’s lifetime plus 70 years, according to the Berne Convention signed by more than 180 countries including Italy.

More broadly, the decisions raise the question of whether institutions should be the arbiters of taste, and to what extent freedom of expression is being limited.

“It raises not just legal issues, but also philosophical issues. What does cultural patrimony mean? How much of a stranglehold do you want to give institutions over ideas and images that are in the public domain?” said Thomas C. Danziger, an art market lawyer based in New York.

He pointed to Andy Warhol’s famous series inspired by Leonardo’s “Last Supper.” “Are you going to prevent artists like Warhol from creating what is a derivative work?” Danziger asked. “Many people would view this as a land grab by the Italian courts to control and monetize artworks in the public domain that were never intended to be charged for.”

Italy’s cultural code is unusual in its scope, essentially extending in perpetuity the author’s copyright to the museum or institution that owns it. The Vatican has similar legislative protections on its masterpieces, and seeks remedies through its court system for any unauthorized reproduction, including for commercial use and for damaging the dignity of the work, a spokesman said.

Elsewhere in Europe, Greece has a similar law, adopted in 2020, which requires a permit to use images of historic sites or artifacts for commercial use, and forbids the use of images that “alter” or “offend” the monuments in any way.

France’s Louvre museum, home to some oft-replicated masterpieces like the “Mona Lisa” and Venus de Milo, notes that its collection mostly dates from before 1848, which puts them in the public domain under French law.

Court cases have debated whether Italy’s law violates a 2019 European Union directive stating that any artwork no longer protected by copyright falls into the public domain, meaning that “everybody should be free to make, use and share copies of that work.”

The EU Commission has not addressed the issue, but a spokesman told the AP that it is currently checking “conformity of the national laws implementing the copyright directive” and would look at whether Italy’s cultural heritage code interferes with its application.

Hollberg won her first case against ticket scalpers using David’s image to sell marked-up entrance packages outside the Accademia’s doors. She also has targeted GQ Italia for imposing a model’s face on David’s body, and luxury fashion brand Longchamp’s cheeky Florence edition of its trademark “Le Pliage” bag featuring David’s more intimate details.

Longchamp noted the depiction was “not without irony” and said the bag was “an opportunity to express with amused lightness the creative force that has always animated this wonderful city.”

No matter how many lawsuits Hollberg has initiated – she won’t say how many – the proliferation of David likenesses continues.

“I am sorry that there is so much ignorance and so little respect in the use of a work that for centuries has been praised for its beauty, for its purity, for its meanings, its symbols, to make products in bad taste, out of plastic,” Hollberg said.

Based on Hollberg’s success and fortified by improved search engine technology, the private entity that is custodian of Florence’s landmark Cathedral has started going after commercial enterprises using the famed dome for unauthorized, and sometimes denigrating, purposes – including men’s and women’s underwear.

So far, cease-and-desist letters have been enough to win compliance without turning to the courts, adding an extra half a million euros (US$541,600) a year to revenues topping 30 million euros ($32 million), Luca Bagnoli, president of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, told the AP.

“We are generally in favour of the freedom of artistic expression,” Bagnoli said. “When it comes to reinterpreted copies, it becomes a little more difficult to understand where artistic freedom ends and our image rights begin.”

Italy’s cultural heritage code in its current form has been on the books since 2004, and while Hollberg’s cases were not the first, they have represented an acceleration, experts said.

The jurisprudence is still being tested. A court in Venice ordered Germany’s Ravensburger jigsaw puzzle maker to stop using the image of “Vitruvian Man” in the first case to involve a company outside Italy. The ruling implicitly rejected Ravensburger’s argument that the law was incompatible with the EU directive on copyright, lawyers said.

Experts say the aggressive stance could backfire, discouraging the licensing of Italy’s artworks, a source of revenue, while also limiting the reproduction of masterpieces that serve as cultural ambassadors.

“There is a risk for Italy, because you can select a work of art that is not covered by this legislation,” said Vittorio Cerulli Irelli, an intellectual property lawyer at Trevisan & Cuonzo in Rome. “In many instances, it is the same for you to use Leonardo’s painting which is in the U.K. or Leonardo’s painting which is in Italy. You just go for the easiest choice.”

Associated Press writers Nicholas Paphitis in Athens, Greece, and Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed to this report.

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