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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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MONTH: November 2006
Books
One At A Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter
by Diane Leigh & Marilee Geyer
No Voice Unheard
(P.O. Box 4171, Santa Cruz, CA 95063), 2005. 146 pages, paperback. $16.95.
One At A Time is a heartbreaking account
of one week in an animal shelter. While many animals will find a new home,
many other exquisite animals will not. The pictures of the cats and dogs
at the shelter are compelling; it is tempting to recommend that this book
should be part of a national humane education curriculum at schools.
"This is how companion animal overpopulation
works," Leigh and Geyer write. "Simple math, where the numbers
are lives and those responsible are unaccountable..."
Unfortunately, their "simple math"
includes estimates of the numbers of animals killed in U.S. shelters that
are half again higher than at any time in the past 10 years, of the U.S.
feral cat population that roughly triple reality, and the old saw that
a single unaltered cat and her offspring can exceed 400,000 in seven years.
ANIMAL PEOPLE recently joined Wall Street Journal "Numbers Guy"
columnist Carl Bialik in tracing the latter claim to source. It apparently
originated as a January 1969 hypothetical projection of canine fecundity
by the Animal Protection Institute. The projection mysteriously picked
up one decimal place in repetition while still applied to dogs, and gained
another decimal place when applied to cats.
Inflated estimates of the magnitude of
the U.S. pet population problem tend to cause public policy makers to
believe that sterilizing pets is futile, since humane workers seemingly
acknowledge to making no progress in decades of effort, that the situation
is hopeless, and that there are so many cats at large killing birds that
killing cats in high volume is the only possible response.
Leigh and Geyer do, however, provide a
credible analysis of why a dog and cat surplus developed, and what the
consequences are of killing dogs and cats in still shockingly high volume.
"It is a tangible sign of our society's
deep disconnection from other beings," Leigh and Geyer assess, "a
disconnection so profound and damaging that we could legitimately categorize
it as a sickness...šThe systematic mass destruction and disposal of millions
of living creatures every year constitutes a kind of violence in our society
that is no less violent because it is institutionalized and mostly overlooked.
When killing those who are closest to, and most dependent upon us becomes
an unquestioned fact of daily life, we have set a very dangerous and damaging
precedent as to what is ethically acceptable, what we are willing to tolerate,
and what we are capable of doing to others. How much easier is it to deny
consideration and compassion to one group when we have learned to accept
the mass killing of another-and especially, of beings whom we call our
'friends'?
"The homeless animal issue is critically important," Leigh and Geyer believe, "because it is so fundamental: dogs and cats are the closest most people ever get to other species and the natural world. If our concern and compassion are so weak and limited that we are unable to save those animals closest to us, how will we ever be able to save the more distant beings--the endangered species we may never see, the redwoods and mountains and wilderness we may never visit, the suffering people we may never meet and whose misery we may never experience directly?" --Beverley Pervan
The Medici Giraffe
And Other Tales of Exotic Animals
and Power
by Marina Belozerskaya
Little, Brown & Co.
(1271 Ave. of the Americas, New York,
NY 10020), 2006. 412 pages, paperback. $24.99.
Marina Belozerskaya has given us a diverse
collection of mini histories beginning in ancient Egypt. She examines
exotic animal-keeping in the Roman Empire, Renaissance Florence, Aztec
Mexico, Bohemia, Napoleonic France, and the early 20th century U.S.
Through time and across continents, Belozerskaya
reveals the use and abuse of exotic animals by powerful people.
A postscript about the sale from China
to the U.S. of two giant pandas, at an exorbitant price, in order to cement
relations between the two global powers, shows that when it comes to using
animals to advance the goals of ambitious people, nothing has changed
in two and half thousand years. Nearly 300 years B.C., the Roman general
Ptolemy Philadelphos kept a magnificent menagerie of captive wild animals
at his palace in Alexandria. He spent a fortune on capturing wild elephants,
the battle tanks of the ancient world, for military use. Roman rulers
frequently bought political popularity with the blood of captured African
and Asian wildlife. But according to Pliny, the emperor Pompey once misjudged
how even brutal Roman spectators would respond to a group of some twenty
elephants at the infamous Circus Maximus.
"When they had lost all hope of escape,"
Pliny wrote, "they tried to gain the compassion of the crowd by indescribable
gestures of entreaty, deploring their fate with a sort of wailing, so
much to the distress of the public that they forgot Pompey and his munificence,
carefully devised for their honor, and bursting into tears rose in a body
and invoked curses on the head of Pompey, for which he soon afterward
paid the penalty."
We learn how Lorenzo de Medici, the powerful Florentine merchant who wished to attain royal status, kept a menagerie of exotic animals, whom he habitually traded for political favours. In Mexico the 16th century Aztec King Montezuma maintained a marvellous collection of captive wild animals at his prosperous capital city. The conquistadores under Hernando Cortes set fire to the zoo, burning all the animals to death, in order to advance their colonial goal of terrorizing the natives. And so on.
The reader discovers how Rudolf XI, the
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in early 17th century Europe, neglected
his affairs of state, with dire consequences for all of Europe, because
of his obsession with wildlife and the study of flora and fauna. We learn
that while Napoleon Bonaparte was off butchering millions of Europeans,
his wife Josephine assiduously acquired, from as far away as Australia,
a large collection of animals for her private zoological park. In early
20th century America, news magnate William Randolph Hearst burdened his
huge publishing empire with the cost of purchasing exotic animals from
all over the world to stock his 60,000 acre private zoo at San Simeon,
California.
For the most part the stories end badly
for the animals, and continue to have bad endings in our own time. Belozerskaya,
for example, might have mentioned Cecil John Rhodes, the English colonial
who annexed Southern Africa to the British Crown at the turn of the 20th
Century.
Like so many potentates, Rhodes imported
exotic animals for his private zoo, located on the slopes of Table Mountain,
looming over Cape Town. Among the exotic imports were a few Himalayan
tahrs, who escaped, adapted well to Table Mountain, and by 2004 had reached
a population of several hundred. In that year the South African National
Parks Board decided that all "alien" animals would be exterminated.
The killing took several weeks of military-style assault, using ground
troops and helicopter gunships.
No doubt Hernan Cortes and his arsonist conquistadors would have applauded the bloodshed. --Chris Mercer, <www.cannedlion.co.za/>
The World of the Polar Bear
by Norbert Rosing
Firefly Books (P.O. Box 1338, Ellicot Station, Buffalo, NY 14205),
2006.
202 pages, hardcover, illust. $45.00.
Among Wild Horses:
A portrait of the Pryor Mountain
Mustangs
Photos by Lynne Pomeranz. Text by Rhonda Massingham
Storey Publishing (210 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247),
2006. 134 pages, hardcover, illustrated. $16.95.
The World of the Polar Bear and Among
Wild Horses are a world apart from most of the other coffee table books
we've seen lately.
First of all, the exquisite photos show
authentic wild animals, in panoramic views of the wild, except for some
mustangs in Among Wild Horses who appear to be in a holding corral after
a recent round-up.
Second, the text actually describes what
the photos show, and often explains how the photographer captured the
scene. Neither The World of the Polar Bear nor Among Wild Horses is a
recycled thesis, going into depth and detail about biological facts while
evading the controversies surrounding their subjects.
The World of the Polar Bear and Among
Wild Horses largely save their pleading for the last pages, but both are
direct appeals for animals who are jeopardized by present U.S. policies.
Both World of the Polar Bear author/photographer Norbert Rosing and Among
Wild Horses photographer Lynne Pomeranz make their cases mostly with the
photos and anecdotes that they collected in person during long stays among
their subjects.
As well as capturing almost every aspect
of wild polar bear life, Norbert Rosing provides many memorable shots
of the creatures who share their habitat, especially Arctic foxes, who
along with ravens are polar bears' frequent sidekicks. Rosing even caught
one Arctic fox in the act of nipping at a polar bear's heels--perhaps,
Rosing speculated, to urge the bear to go hunt a seal for both of them.
The bear shows no sign of inclination to harm the fox. Dangerous as polar
bears can be, they tend to be more patient and playful than menacing toward
anything that isn't either potentially dinner or a serious threat.
The major threat to both polar bears and
Arctic foxes these days is global warming, fast shrinking the bears' seal
hunting habitat and flooding foxes out of their dens as the permafrost
thaws into vast bogs.
Compared to the Arctic, the Pryor Mountain
wild horses inhabit a veritable Garden of Eden along the Montana/Wyoming
border. The Crow tribe, who share much of the horses' range, point out
that the habitat in all directions from Pryor Mountain is much less hospitable.
The Pryor Mountain horses have been protected
from roundup for slaughter since the 1968 creation of the Pryor Mountain
Wild Horse Range, three years before the 1971 passage of the Wild Free
Roaming Horse and Burro Act. Yet the Pryor Mountain mustangs--and all
wild horses--are still at risk as result of federal policies favoring
ranchers, who perceive the mere 40,000 horses still on the U.S. range
as threats to the well-being of more than four million cattle.
Among Wild Horses opens with Hope Ryden's
account of how her work as a television reporter helped to save the Pryor
Mountain horses in 1968, and concludes with Rhonda Massingham's appeal
on their behalf today. "The Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range falls
under the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, and National
Park Service management, all of which juggle the health and well-being
of the horses there with other values," Massingham points out. "Due
to these multi-agency and multi-use agendas, the Pryor Mountain mustangs
are restricted to a much smaller, less productive range than they roamed
when the law was passed. The BLM reports that this area cannot presently
sustain the number of horses on the range."
In recent years the Pryor Mountain horse population has been controlled by one of the first successful applications of wildlife contraception. --Merritt Clifton
Rescued: Saving Animals from Disaster:
Life-changing stories and practical suggestions
by Allen & Linda Anderson
New World Library (14 Pamaron Way, Novato, CA 94949), 2006.
347 pages, paperback. $16.95.
Angel Animals Network founders Allen and
Linda Anderson in Rescued analyze the efforts made to save animals after
Hurricane Katrina. They relate the inspiring stories of committed volunteers
from all over the world who converged on New Orleans, southern Louisiana,
and coastal Mississippi to help the animals who were left behind when
their humans fled, were killed, or were simply unable to get home after
the New Orleans levies broke a day after the hurricane itself had passed.
The Andersons also describe the work done by various humane organizations,
under appalling conditions, to try to bring order out of chaos. There
were some high-profile individuals involved, such as Madeleine and T.
Boone Pickens, the oil billionaires, who chartered aircraft to transport
found animals to shelters outside the disaster area but most were unknown
people of ordinary resources.
The book is a tear-jerker, filled with
stories such as that of the kind lady who agreed to take in one of the
refugee dogs because her own beloved dog had gone missing six months before--and
discovered to her lasting joy that the dog delivered to her by rescuers
was the very same lost animal.
Although enormous efforts were made to
reunite pets with their guardians, the circumstances were such that there
were not many happy endings. Louisiana SPCA executive director Laura Maloney
estimated before Rescued went to press that while 15,000 animals were
rescued, only about 3,000 were reunited with their people. Other sources
estimate that fewer were rescued, and that somewhat more were returned
to their families. There is agreement, however, that not even half of
the animals have been returned to their previous caretakers--and reunions
are still reported, more than a year afterward.
The most important chapter, to our minds,
reviews the lessons learned from Katrina. The first was, "Hurricane
Katrina provided a wake-up call for mainstream Americans to recognize
the importance of saving animals from disaster." Animals are for
millions of people cherished family members. Official decisions that ignored
this caused major problems. Many owners simply refused to be rescued and
remained with their pets. Some died with their pets rather than leave
them behind. Others had to be separated from their animals by force, even
to the bizarre point where some evacuees were shot with Taser guns. Studies
later showed that separation anxiety resulting from the loss of companion
animals added significantly to the stress of the bereft evacuees. The
Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act signed into law in mid-October
by U.S. President George W. Bush is intended to ensure that pets will
not be left behind after future disasters.
The second major lesson learned was that
individuals have to take primary responsibility for their pets. Abandoned
animals in most cases suffered horribly, and thousands died long, slow
deaths. The Andersons list some of the common sense precautions that animal
guardians can take to ensure their pets' well-being during disasters.
The Andersons also mention the need for
proper training, recruitment and assimilation of disaster relief workers
into existing organisations. Although far more animal welfare organizations
worked together successfully after Katrina than after any previous disaster,
there is still a need for improved collaboration.
--Chris Mercer
<www.cannedlion.co.za>
Koalas: Zen In Fur
Edited by Joanne Ehrich
Koala Jo Publishing (352 N. El Camino Real, San Mateo, CA 94401), 2006.
97 pages, paperback. $35.00.
Early in 2006 graphic artist Koala Jo
Ehrich produced a lavish 260-page photo collection entitled Koalas: Moving
Portraits of Serenity, with an afterword by celebrity zoo personality
Jack Hanna, to help the Australian Koala Foundation raise money for koala
conservation and rescue work.
Assembling koala images from 120 photographers,
Ehrich funded the publication herself--and soon found that the book cost
so much to print that she would lose more money on each sale than would
go to help koalas.
As her relationship with the Australian
Koala Foundation had deteriorated, Ehrich regrouped and put together Koalas:
Zen In Fur, using the same text but mostly different photographers, scrapping
Jack Hanna, and bringing the notion of a coffee table book on koalas down
to affordable size.
Even 98 pages of koala photos might induce
an overdose on cuteness. But not smiling at happy koalas is a challenge
even to the most caustic and cynical of critics.
There is a theory that as with "smiling"
dolphins, koalas cannot help looking happy. This is not entirely true.
The photos in Koalas: Zen In Fur demonstrate that koalas doing fun things
are visibly more enthusiastic about their happiness than others, and that
koalas who are close to their mamas or babies tend to look more serene
than those who are alone out on a limb. Some koalas do at times look worried.
Some koalas fight. On the whole, though, koalas are exemplars of living
simply, wanting little.
Unlike dolphins, koalas have never been imagined to be among the brightest
critters in the world. But, when their needs are met, they may be among
the most cheerful.
--Merritt Clifton
How to be a Cat Detective:
Solving the Mystery of your Cat's Behavior.
by Vicky Halls
Penguin (375 Hudson St., NY 10014), 2006. 285 pages, paperback.
$14.00.
More and more people are extending their
homes to feline companionship today. The numbers of U.S. cat-keeping homes
have doubled in 20 years, and the number of multi-cat households has increased
even faster, as people who already have a cat in residence decide that
they can offer a loving home to others less fortunate, such as the local
stray whom they have been feeding at the bottom of the garden, or a shelter
cat.
"Sadly they don't come with a manual
so, to a certain extent, we have to make up the rules as we go along,"
writes Vicky Halls about keeping cats healthy and happy.
And make them up we do. But do we know
what we are doing? Often not.
Halls is a feline therapist who has helped
many a cat and cat guardian to overcome years of problems and find a happy
modus vivendi. Halls discusses house soiling, urine spraying, aggression,
anxiety, fear and much, much more.
I have always thought that I should get
a companion for my eight-year-old cat, to brighten up her day, give her
a new lease on life, etcetera. This book has come at the right time to
make me think deeper and recognise that the kitten would not be for my
cat, but for me. What effect would that little bundle of mischief have
on the peaceful home that we have at present? This book has helped me
to make the right decisions.
Guardians of companion animals really
owe it to themselves and their animals to be better informed about them,
because as Vicky Hall says, "The ultimate sign of love for our pets
has to be a respect for the species and a desire to accrue knowledge to
make their lives as pleasant as possible. With that in mind it's probably
worth delving a little deeper into a social structure that is really a
world apart from our own."
--Beverley Pervan
<www.cannedlion.co.za/>
Pigeons
by Andrew D. Blechman
Grove Press
(841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003), 2006. 256 pages. $23.00
An enthralling study, this book covers
the whole spectrum of topics associated with pigeons, once revered and
respected as messengers, now often reviled as "rats with wings."
Author Andrew Blechman explores both the methods and motives of pigeon
fanciers, who often devote their whole lives to breeding and racing their
birds; military messengers, some of whom still use pigeons in places and
situations where electronics are impractical; and recreational pigeon
shooters, to whom the birds are no more than challenging targets.
Primarily a pigeon admirer, Blechman tries
shooting pigeons himself, unsuccessfully, and eats pigeon meat in a late
chapter, even offering a recipe for pigeon pot pie.
Among the many noteworthy employments
of pigeons, Julius Reuters established the Reuters News Agency on the
wings of pigeons. As the back cover mentions, "A pigeon delivered
the results of the first Olympics in 776 B.C., and a pigeon first brought
the news of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo more than 2,500 years later."
Some Al Qaida cells reputedly use pigeons to evade high-tech surveillance.
Hundreds of thousands of pigeon fanciers around the world participate
in pigeon racing, in which fanciers see whose birds can find their way
home fastest from remote locations--and the sport is growing in popularity
in the Far East as fast as it declines in the west.
Orienting themselves by the earth's magnetic
field, pigeons can sprint for hours on end, with incredible homing navigation.
A racing bird is expected to fly 500 miles in about eight hours, without
stopping for food or drink.
Blechman describes the state of these
birds when they arrive home, emaciated and open-billed, desperate for
air, food and water. Primarily a blue-collar pursuit in the U.S., pigeon
racing in Europe is patronized by aristocracy and even royalty. Belgium
is the centre of the pigeon-breeding world, with prices for top racers
reaching up to $200,000.
Much human use of pigeons has been viciously exploitive. Blechman includes a chapter about the annual pigeon shoots formerly held in Hegins, Pennsylvania, the most public of many similar events. Focusing on the birds and the shooters rather than the activists, Blechman leaves to others the role of Hegins as one of the focal causes of the early animal rights movement, and as the place where now nationally prominent animal rights activists Steve Hindi and Heidi Prescott first won recognition--Hindi as a shocked hunter who switched sides, Prescott as the first demonstrator to run in front of the guns to try to save wounded birds, soon followed by Steve Simmons, Alex Pacheco, and dozens of others during the next several years. --Chris Mercer
A Good Dog
by Jon Katz
Villard (Random House Publishing Group, 1745 Broadway, New York,
NY 10019), 2006. 216 pages, paperback. $21.95.
Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, an
animal may come into one's life with life-changing consequences. This
is the story of one such animal, the border collie Orson.
"Orson radically altered my life,"
writes Jon Katz. "He came at a pivotal time and provoked--with no
conscious part in the process, I'm sure--a series of actions and reactions
that caused me to change almost everything about the way I lived and worked
and thought."
Katz was living at the time in suburban
New Jersey with his wife and daughter. Because border collies have such
super-canine energy as to be incompatible with suburban life, Katz decided
to take Orson for training sessions in rural Pennsylvania, run by sheep
farmer Carolyn Wilkie. Initially, his aim was to calm Orson by burning
off some of the dog's energy. However, this modest aim soon evolved into
the purchase of the land that became Bedlam Farm, inspiring Katz's 2004
book The Dogs of Bedlam Farm, and the acquisition of livestock, including
donkeys, sheep, and two more dogs.
Even with all this scope for interesting activity, Orson remained troubled. He had previously been studied by animal behaviorists and trainers. He enjoyed the attention of two vets, one holistic, the other traditional, as well as a shaman, and his diet included Chinese herbal supplements.
Notwithstanding all these remedies, Orson's
personality defects persisted until Katz bought a four-wheeled all-terrain
vehicle to get around the farm in. Suddenly, Orson found his purpose in
life. "He had found his work--intense, exciting, in close proximity
to me. Unlike sheepherding, which he had to watch from a distance, on
the ATV he was in the center of the storm, right where he always wanted
to be. The machine gave him the chance to run like a fiend, which he loved,
and then to navigate, which he loved even more. And there was no way to
do it wrong or screw it up. It was all positive, all the time."
This is an emotionally charged book, written
with humor and insight, about a commitment not many people would give,
and unwavering love between a man and his dog.
--Beverley Pervan