Minnesota dentist who killed Cecil the lion returns to work

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (AP) — The Minnesota dentist who killed Cecil the lion returned to work Tuesday after weeks away, walking silently past a swarm of media and a handful of protesters outside his small dental practice calling for him to be sent to Zimbabwe to face trial.

A security guard met Walter Palmer in the parking lot of the Bloomington clinic as he walked from a street where police had blocked off traffic, whisking him inside past a barrage of reporters shouting questions.

Palmer announced Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press — his first since the uproar broke over Cecil’s killing during a hunt in Zimbabwe’s vast Hwange National Park in July — that he would return to work, saying his patients and staff need him.

The small throng of protesters gathered outside the clinic didn’t match the furor in the days after Palmer was named as Cecil’s killer, when hundreds held vigils for the big cat with the black mane and forced River Bluff Dental to temporarily close.

Just a few protesters were on site when the dentist appeared shortly after 7 a.m. Cathy Pierce repeatedly yelled “Extradite Palmer!” as he entered the practice.

Pierce said she drove more than an hour from her home in East Bethel to the Bloomington clinic to “fight for animals who can’t fight for themselves.”

She scoffed at Palmer’s suggestion in his interview with the AP that protesters had unfairly targeted his employees and family, in some cases threatening violence.