Seattle isn’t the only city with aggressive animals. Strange stories from across the country have accumulated over the past few years to paint a vivid picture of the growing conflict between humans and urban wildlife.
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Over thousands of years of evolution, sheep, cattle and other cud chewers developed a nasty habit. They burp and break wind a lot.
That gives New Zealand a distressing gas problem.
The country’s 4 million people share two islands in the South Pacific with 40 million sheep, 9 million beef and dairy cattle and more than a million farmed deer, all producing the methane that many climate scientists say is one of the worst culprits behind global warming.
It may be a small country on the edge of the world, but New Zealand has big ambitions in the fight against climate change. Last year, Prime Minister Helen Clark set a national goal of becoming the world’s first carbon-neutral country.
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The latest “ethical” food in England is squirrel. That’s right, those fuzzy-tailed little rodents that scurry about your yard. Of course, Southerners have always eaten squirrels. It was a part of our food pyramid, and we didn’t give it up until we could afford hamburger.
Rural Southern families always have depended on the family sharpshooter to furnish a little alternative meat for the family table: squirrels, rabbits, possums, quail and other wild game. When the South finally caught up financially with the rest of the nation, we turned to beef, lamb, etc. If wild game is involved in Southern meals today, it is likely duck or deer meat. But there are those who still enjoy an occasional squirrel or rabbit, and certainly quail is always a treat.
On my visits to the backcountry of England, I have observed rabbit hutches in most backyards, but it seems that squirrel meat has caught the English fancy, and the rodent meat is in much demand, according to recent articles in British newspapers.
One newspaper account reports that squirrels are “low in fat, low in food miles and completely free range.” In other words, “environmentally friendly.” Some Brits claim that, “The grey squirrel is about as ethical a dish as it is possible to serve.” Hunters provide the meat to butcher shops, and the shop owners say they can’t get enough to satiate the hunger for the meat. British women even exchange squirrel recipes.
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This is the time of year when baby animals are being born across the wilderness – and is also the season when the Idaho Department of Fish and Game receives dozens of animals from people who believe they have rescued them. Fish and Game officials say it’s essential the public realizes the best place for baby animals is with their mothers in the great outdoors.
[…] Fish and Game officials say if you see baby animal alone you should leave them where they are because most of the time their mother is nearby and is probably out in search of food.
Jennifer Jackson, Department of Fish and Game: “Most often times baby animals have not been abandoned or orphaned or lost. Mom knows exactly where they are and she’ll come back and check on them periodically.”
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Bovine tuberculosis is a progressive wasting disease. It affects mainly cattle but also sheep, goats, pigs and other animals. People who get bovine TB have to take strong antibiotics for up to nine months to cure them.
Humans can get sick from infected cows by drinking milk that has not been heated to kill germs. Another risk is eating meat that has not been cooked to seventy-four degrees Celsius.
[…]
In the early twentieth century, bovine TB probably killed more animals in the United States than all other diseases combined. To control it, the government launched a highly successful testing program. Historians say animal doctors ordered the destruction of about four million cattle between nineteen seventeen and nineteen forty.
But currently, the state of Michigan in the Midwest is fighting an outbreak of tuberculosis in cattle. Experts identified wild deer as the source of infection. More recently the neighboring state of Minnesota has also had to deal with TB in cattle and deer.
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Citing threats of violence by animal rights activists, the San Francisco Art Institute said Saturday that it is canceling a controversial exhibition that included video clips of animals being bludgeoned to death, as well as a public forum it had scheduled to address the controversy.
“We’ve gotten dozens of threatening phone calls that targeted specific staff people with death threats, threats of violence and threats of sexual assaults,” said Art Institute President Chris Bratton. “We remain committed to freedom of speech as fundamental to this institution, but we have to take people’s safety very seriously.”
The exhibit that sparked the controversy was a one-person show by Paris artist Adel Abdessemed called “Don’t Trust Me,” which opened March 19.
Along with a variety of other elements, the show included a series of video loops of animals being bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer in front of a brick wall. The animals killed included a pig, goat, deer, ox, horse and sheep.
Animal welfare groups had attacked the video clips as degrading and cruel, and accused Abdessemed of killing animals for the sake of art.
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I’m not really sure if I would consider this to be good news. I LIKE rabbits and racoons and deer and geese (but then again, I have only one member of that menagerie at my house – racoons). Besides, coyotes also attack and kill domestic pets. I wonder if they would also attack and kill small children left to play by theirselves? Readers, do you know?
Anyway, while I don’t want coyotes to disappear, I probably wouldn’t be too excited about having a bunch of them in my backyard, either. How about you?
-Kitty Mowmow
Ohio’s coyote population is growing. That’s good news for many of you.
Coyotes prowling your yard will eat the rabbits and rodents that munched your garden. They will scare away trash-raiding raccoons and the deer eyeing your favorite bushes. They also eat the eggs of those messy Canada geese so many of you loathe.
“I call coyotes nature’s animal-control officers, because they control the populations of every kind of urban wildlife people complain about, and do it so neatly, quietly and efficiently that most of the time most folks have no idea that coyotes are among them,” said Merritt Clifton, editor of the international Animal People newspaper.
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Motorists have been warned to watch out for wildlife after new research showed that an estimated one million animals were killed on Britain’s roads every year.
Research for the Post Office also showed that deer accidents accounted for injuries to 500 motorists, including over 100 serious or fatal crashes.
Costs for repairs to vehicles involved in animal collisions were estimated at more than £17 million, said the Post Office, adding that the “peak period” for wild animal-related road accidents was soon.
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For more animal-esque music, news, and issues, tune in to Kitty Mowmow’s Animal Expo online at www.thecapstone.ua.edu, Sunday nights 8-10 central.
We’ve all heard stories, sometimes from the laughing, bragging guilty parties themselves, of seemingly healthy, normal people being intentionally cruel to animals. Giving birds Alka-Seltzer and rice to make them explode and burying live cats up to their necks in the ground so you can run over their heads with lawn-mowers are apparently seen as socially acceptable behaviors by some people.
However, torturing and killing animals for fun is just a short step away from torturing and killing people for fun. We need to send the message that these acts are not funny, entertaining, or acceptable at all in our society. We must require that people who commit such atrocities serious repercussions – more than just taking away a hunting license or paying fines. If we won’t do it to protect the animals, we should do it to protect our own society.
Just thought I’d throw my two cents into the pile. What do you think?
-Kitty Mowmow
There has been a growing trend of “thrill killing” of animals throughout Wisconsin during the last few years, chief state conservation warden Randy Stark says.
Officials say several dozen cases have been confirmed in which wild animals were shot with firearms and arrows, run down with vehicles or clubbed with baseball bats and homemade weapons such as sharpened sticks.
“This is simply a criminal act. It has nothing to do with hunting,” said Department of Natural Resources warden Rick Rosen, who is stationed in St. Croix County. “It has nothing to do with sportsmanship at all. As far as why, it’s just like retail theft. That’s the best analogy. It’s the thrill with getting away with something and not getting caught.”
Jeremy Peery, a conservation warden in Rusk County, said he arrested three high school students several years ago who spent their summer driving around at night and shooting animals.
They “shot sandhill cranes, they shot turkeys, they even shot at some sturgeons that were spawning and porpoising up near a dam. Just for the kicks of doing it,” Peery said.
The trio paid fines ranging from $2,000 to $4,000, served jail terms and lost their hunting and fishing privileges for years.
Just about every warden in the state has heard of or investigated a similar case, Peery said.
A warden in Chippewa County handled a case in which high school students spent their evenings traveling around, shining lights at deer and shooting the vulnerable animals paralyzed by the bright lights, Peery said. They were accused of cutting out the heart of one of the deer and put it in the locker of the ex-girlfriend of one of the boys.
Ted Dremel, a warden in Waupaca County, has investigated a couple of thrill killing cases, including one in which three young men admitted to killing or wounding 48 deer in the Iola area.
“They truly give hunters a bad name,” Dremel said. “I think it’s important to make a huge distinction between hunters and this type of activity.”
The DNR surveyed wardens three years ago to see how much of a problem there might be, and 20 to 30 cases were reported by 23 wardens, said Chuck Horn, a conservation warden supervisor based in Dodgeville. A number of other thrill killing cases have been reported around the state since then.
The bulk of the perpetrators have been between 15 and 22 years old, and most incidents have involved groups of people acting together to kill the animals, officials said.
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YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — First, the civil servants were transferred to Myanmar’s newly built capital deep in the countryside. Now, it’s time for the rhinos and elephants to move.
The military government this week began using cranes and trucks to relocate scores of animals — including elephants, monkeys, birds, rhinos, bears and deer — out of the Zoological Garden in the biggest city, Yangon.
Fourteen trucks filled with animals, many stuffed into small cages, were scheduled to depart late Friday for the new capital, Naypyitaw, 250 miles to the north. The first batch left on Tuesday.
The junta moved its ministries and offices in November 2005 from Yangon to Naypyitaw, a hot, dusty town surrounded by mountains and forests.
Some of the zoo animals were staying in Yangon. A zookeeper, Thiha Zaw, said some elephants howled and refused to eat after their herd was split up by the move.
“It was a very emotional and sad scene to see the elephants cry when their young friend was taken away from the shelter,” the keeper said.
The animals being moved included a bear that zoo officials acknowledged had been in its temporary cage for days.
“It is very sad to see some big animals being crammed into small cages,” an onlooker said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal in this tightly controlled country.
Officials would give no reason for the move. A Myanmar magazine, Snapshot, said it was a matter of pride that a nation’s capital should host a zoo. The Yangon zoo has been chronically short of funding to feed the animals and has been falling into disrepair.
The animals moving to Naypyitaw will be housed in a 200-acre facility that opens to the public March 27, Snapshot reported, citing unidentified zoo officials.
The ruling junta has said the new zoo would be world-class, but some critics have expressed concern that it lacks the infrastructure and lush vegetation the animals need to survive.
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