Thanks all for the feedback.
I was worried about being too harsh because this player gets his back up if he feels that he is being unduly punished for his actions.
I neglected to point out that this is the 2nd animal companion killed by the druid. The first was a fighting rooster that he befriended through animal friendship (I'm running a modified 3.0 game) and, upon realizing that it wasn't effective in combat (?????), killed it and ate it.
I've asked him to stop playing a druid but, sadly, this behavior is par for the course with my group.
It's one thing to push your animal hard and have it die. it's another for the druid to kill the animal needlessly. Now he could argue some survival of the fittest mentality (the chicken wasn't fit), but he's the idiot who tried to make a combat chicken, rather than a combat dog.
Seeing that your from NY, I'm going to guess most of you don't have a lot of exposure to animals. As such, lack of exposure breeds lack of empathy, especially for an imaginary game animal.
In real life, a good rule of thumb is, don't be friends with anybody who doesn't like animals (i'm not saying hates, cats, I mean does not like ANY animals). There's just something off in somebody who doesn't like any kind of animal.
the PC is certainly fitting that bill.
a real druid or ranger is generally somebody who prefers nature over humans or society. If an animal companion and fellow PC were drowning in a swimming pool, the druid wouldn't miss the PC.
Your player doesn't seem to understand that. He's playing a class with a pretty basic constraint, be nicer to animals/nature.
He's already on his second companion, so whack his animal companion power as the start of loosing his class. He's tainted the friend of animals thing.