The British alpaca made famous by his owner’s dogged high-profile attempts to save him from being killed despite testing positive for bovine tuberculosis, has finally been put down. It ends his owner’s four-year-long legal battle with authorities over the validity of the test. The Department of Rural Affairs on Aug. 31 announced that Geronimo the alpaca had been killed by vets—with a police escort—under a court order, after being removed from his home at a farm in near Wickwar, South Gloucestershire. A positive test for bovine tuberculosis automatically triggers a death sentence for animals as part of a policy to stem the spread of the disease. Last year alone, some 27,000 were slaughtered after being diagnosed with the disease. Geronimo’s owner, veterinary nurse Helen Macdonald, however, had insisted that the test was fundamentally flawed and that it was picking up a TB protein derivative she had given him. He had …