“I knew I needed to help it. . . . I didn’t
have anything to cut the line,
so I used my teeth.” --a mailman who rescued a chipmunk
trapped
with wire netting wrapped tightly around his neck **
Today, at least for starters,
we’re going to the dogs. No, we won’t take
on PetSmart for the numerous fatalities that have occurred after pets were
groomed at various PS stores. That sad story calls for more investigation than
I can do, and then, with luck, licensure laws for pet groomers and strict supervision
and record-keeping in every store -- as well as caring pet parents who ask
questions and make their presence felt.
No, this has to do with what I’ll
call “native American dogs,” or canines who long inhabited the US, along with
Native Americans. Estimated to have been here for more than 10,000 years, those
early dogs, already domesticated, were thought to have traveled here with
people who crossed the Bering land bridge.
Then came the Europeans, bringing
their own dogs. And that was the
beginning of the end of native American dogs, who left virtually no genetic
trace of their existence in modern-day dogs.
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| Zeus |
What happened to those ancient
canines? Theories vary: eaten by starving colonists, who may also have killed
them to keep their dogs’ bloodlines pure, or felled by infectious diseases --
which made big dents in human populations at the same time.
In short, as a paper published in
Science put it, the 15th century
arrival of Europeans in the Americas “didn’t just affect the lives of humans
already living here, it also took a devastating toll on their pets.”
I won’t excerpt from my second dog story, this one about
Juliet, a beloved family dog. Instead, I’ll
just hope you “read it and weep” for all it says about love.
Murphy’s bear hunt
Despite protests, demonstrations,
billboards and aerial messages, phone calls, letters and in-person appeals,
Governor Phil Murphy allowed this week’s bear hunt to proceed. And some hunters no doubt deem it a huge
success: they got their trophies, even if those trophies were helpless bear
cubs.
You read it right: killing bear cubs
is part of New Jersey’s hunt, a shameful-but-legal activity unique only to this
state and Alaska.
“By failing to protect mother bears with cubs, and even permitting
the hunting of black bear cubs themselves, the New Jersey Division of Fish
& Wildlife [DFW] has created an especially unethical, unsporting, unpopular
and controversial policy,” according to the Humane Society of the United States
(HSUS).
This year’s bear hunt will resume
for a week in December. Thanks, Governor
Murphy, for permitting a horrible, inhumane pursuit to continue. At this point, our phone calls to the
governor’s office (609-292-6000) should castigate him for allowing bear slaughter
on top of reneging on his pledge to
stop it! And there's one more protest to come. . . .
Well, it beats a peacock
Earlier this week in Florida, Frontier
Airlines authorized police to remove a passenger with an “emotional support
squirrel” when she refused to leave the plane. Although the woman had noted her
plan to bring an emotional support animal aboard, squirrels and other rodents don’t
qualify for the job, according to Frontier.
Obviously, airline officials are unaware of the myriad Dodo stories
about people who bond with squirrels, opening their hearts and homes to them. And those of us who covertly feed
(unsalted!) peanuts in shells to neighborhood squirrels know just where that
woman was coming from.
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