Sea-monster appeal & a worldwide holiday

It’s a monster, swimming right toward you!  It’s at least 50 feet long, with teeth that won’t quit, in a giant mouth you could stand upright in . . . briefly.  It’s “the biggest predator fish of all time”: a Megalodon!

But not to worry: this beastie has been extinct for 3.6 million years.  It lived ages before people, dinosaurs and even trees.  Its shark ancestors evolved 450 million years ago and survived four mass extinctions, including the one that killed most dinosaurs.

The question is, whether today’s sharks can survive the next mass extinction – the one caused by humans.

All of this is why New York’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) now features a shark exhibit, starring sharks prehistoric-to-present . . . with an uncertain future.  The Megalodon figured prominently in the long line of sharks (but, thank the power, not in our present-day waters).     

To simulate that frightful fish, the museum constructed a model of the first 30 feet of its length, with its giant head facing those entering the exhibit, which also includes more models, both moving and still images and text about sharks of all kinds in all history. 

(Reading about that “Meg model” in the works long ago fascinated me, prompting numerous references here to that fish, its kin and the museum’s shark exhibit.  In late July, I finally got there to see it all for myself: a thrill of a trip.) 

The exhibit’s interactive displays show (1) why sharks are such good swimmers (calling for equipment we don’t have: fins and a tail); (2) comparative danger to humans of sharks and other creatures (mosquitoes were clearly the most dangerous); (3) today’s three most dangerous-to-people sharks, who are behind most of the 10 or so annual deaths from shark bites; (4) what makes the great white shark so deadly; (5) how to fend off a shark. 

These days the shark to fend off would not be the whale shark, at 65 feet long, but the great white, now the biggest and most powerful predatory fish on earth.  Able to reach 21 feet in length, it comes with  about 300 huge serrated teeth and myriad killer skills.  

The saddest Q & A of the exhibit: why are sharks now endangered?  They’re killed as “bycatch” in nets and long lines; they’re killed for their fins that go into soup; and they’re killed through sport fishing, pollution and climate change.  A fate so horribly undeserved.  

(“Sharks” runs at the AMNH through Monday, Sept. 4, 2023 (Labor Day). Visit AMNH.org for details on the museum, its exhibitions and buying tickets.  Museum entrance requires a timed ticket, with an additional exhibit fee.)  

D.C. 'biter dog'

Poor Commander, the German shepherd who lives with the Bidens in the White House and the latest pet to have bitten people.  Was it his nature or his situation?  Will he be moved away for rehab and/or a calmer life?  Here’s what one columnist, cited here before, has to say about why dogs bite.   https://tinyurl.com/3au5strd

Arts & crafts 

I’ve seen art shows of objects made from trash or warfare memorabilia (“Trench Art”!).  Now how about a new and plentiful material for creative people to work with: 3-oz. metal cat food cans?  They clatter around in a recycle bag before pick-up day, then they’re gone.

Given a second life (after all, cats have nine of them), what could these cans become or be used for?  Could they somehow provide enjoyment -- beyond what their contents have already done?

If you can make it happen, please do.  Send me a photo of your creation made from cat food cans and I may show it here.  

Home boys

Two kids who know and love the sound of a cat-food can being opened are Billy and Jersey Summers.  And beyond that, they love the cans’ contents, both their own and each other’s. 

Jersey, for instance, seems to know from another floor when I’ve left the kitchen or even turned my back on the two bowls in different corners.  Suddenly, he’s working out on whatever Billy had left for a return visit.  

And Billy will casually saunter over to nose around in Jersey’s bowl, ostensibly on his way from the water bowl.   “So it goes”. . .    

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Bugs, birds, new ‘real’ chicken & tourist-scofflaws

Summer night, alight

Earlier this month, I realized I didn’t see a single firefly during June (and still not yet, nearly August). Will I ever see them again?  Are those softly glowing beetles also known as lightning bugs vanishing or not? 

The quick, if not definitive answer, is no!  A recent media story and an online program were both reassuring about these bioluminescent creatures who flash to communicate among themselves and to find mates.

OK, bugs: show yourselves!

Another beetle, btw, is given credit for pollinating big-leaf magnolias, an ancient deciduous North American tree that evolved some 95 million years ago, long before bees even existed!  Its flowers are the largest in the US.

Spoiler jays & birdbaths

Bully in birdbath

Which leads up the range of creature sizes to birds, where there’s good news and bad news.  The bad news, which won’t surprise the most casual bird watcher: local blue jays – as in my back yard where 2 suet cages were still maintained -- spoiled snack possibilities for all the other area birds. 

After a few days of hearing and seeing the jays’ bullying, I took both cages down.  Bagged in plastic, they’re secreted in my freezer to try again (when blue jays are on vacation?).

On to the good news.  It’s all about birdbaths and it’s greatly helpful.  Just plunking a birdbath outside somewhere and assuming birds will come is not enough.  The article linked below recommends a concrete birdbath, possibly tiered, with rocks in it, and with fresh water at least every day – and of course the story includes excellent reasons for these moves.

That’s not all.  Since finding clean, fresh water keeps getting harder for birds (and other wildlife), multiple birdbaths of varying heights could become vital resources for them.  As would “hydration stations” for pollinators like bees and wasps, and even for squirrels and chipmunks. 

Possibly best of all: the story’s delightful videos of birds (delightedly) bathing!      https://tinyurl.com/56ed5m48

Chickens, rejoice!

Now moving up the “size line” to chickens, how would you like a chicken sandwich?  A “cell-cultivated chicken” sandwich, that is – also known as “cultured meat” or “lab-grown meat.”

Which all means that this meat doesn’t come from slaughtered animals!  And as the AP story says, such lab-grown meat “aims at eliminating harm to animals and drastically reducing the environmental impacts of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste.”  The potential for good, in so many ways, is simply colossal!

Worth stressing: this “new” chicken is meat, not substitutes like plant-based “meats.”  Even better: companies all over the world are focusing on meat from carefully selected animal cells, including pork, lamb, fish and beef. 

The “lab-grown meat” movement will have to start small.  Right now, “cultured meat” is very expensive to make and because of limited production, will be served only in exclusive restaurants at first.  Consumers will probably wait years before seeing it more widely available.  

But, at a time when the HSUS recently reported that “More animals than ever before—92.2 billion—are used and killed each year for food,” something wonderful is starting to happen for animals: the hideous, inhumane and soon unnecessary factory farms and animal slaughter will finally end. 

Troublesome tourists

Bison

“People who approach wild animals aren’t brave; they are deluded.”  Yesterday’s Washington Post story excoriated tourists involved with more and more inappropriate and unsafe contacts with wild animals.  With such actions, they risk their own lives and those of the animals involved.  

Tourists offer spurious reasons for flouting rules and endangering animals they should only observe and appreciate . . . from a safe distance.  When people take chances and ignore rules, too often the animals pay for humans' idiocy. 

In its second part of “How to be a humane traveler for animals,” the HSUS addresses the same issues.  Effectively, we hope!     https://tinyurl.com/7fjd2ma3

Family resemblance

And on a happier note, here’s a family reunion complete with a beautiful group picture.   https://tinyurl.com/3u9d5jv4

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Myriad city 'feral' cats, bird competition for suet, humane travel

A big-city issue?  A job for countless volunteers?  A crazy cat lady’s dream?  A huge caring-challenge? 

It’s all of the above -- and much more!  It’s an estimated 500,000 (a half-million!) feral cats in New York City: homeless and hungry.  Not owned by or living with people, these street cats fend for themselves in all weather and for all food, water and doctoring they may get.  It’s a hard life for them, and a much shorter one than domesticated cats usually experience.

Where did they all come from?  Why this seeming explosion in feral cat colonies? Likely causes include (1) people adopted them during covid, then couldn’t keep them; (2) besides a veterinarian shortage, fees of those still in business have climbed; (3) once evictions resumed, economic help petered out too – a painful double whammy.

Nor will "birders," one group firmly against outdoor cats, help.  And the city of New York just isn’t deeply involved with the cats or their numbers so little is expected  there either.  Even though some areas can boast dedicated colony-caretakers who feed and watch out for the cats, there are only so many of them and they can do only so much. 

However, as the media story reports, one group has adopted “a somewhat radical idea” first developed in England in the 1950s to deal with a feral cat problem: T. N. R., or Trap, Neuter, Return.  That revelation won’t come as news to numerous New Jersey cat advocates, already practicing – and preaching – TNR.

To them, TNR is the way to steadily decrease outdoor feline numbers by sterilizing feral cats and returning them to their colonies.  Fewer fertile felines means fewer kittens growing up to produce still more cats.  

Note: Many of New York’s “feral cats” don’t fit the literal description [“in a wild state, undomesticated, unused to humans. . .”].  They may have been abandoned by their human“owners” or carelessly “backyard-bred” by humans, then left on their own.  For such reasons, the growing preference – at least in this central NJ area – is to describe “ferals” as “community” cats and hope their communities will take  responsibility for them.)  

https://tinyurl.com/4w4kw4va

The only bird feeder in town?

I’ve heard about smaller birds “mobbing” bigger ones in air, aiming to drive them away – and I recently witnessed “mobbing” at the bird feeder in my yard.  Maybe it’s the most convenient food source, or the only one around, since opinions vary about feeding birds beyond their major time of need: winter.  

So now, birds queue up on the nearby arbor, fence or other perches on the feeder itself.  Then they demonstrate great acrobatic skills to reach parts of the two suet cages hanging there: upside-down woodpeckers snacking at the bottom of one and myriad others twirling on different sides of the other.  As the crowd grows, avian rumbles look possible and intimidating blue jays zoom back and forth. 

Wanted: Humane travelers

Are you a “humane traveler”?  Close encounters of the animal kind, and photo ops with animals are two summer/vacation bad deeds to avoid.  Animals involved with people in these circumstances can experience chronic stress and fear – while the people, often unsafe, can be hurt.

Sure, big-cat cub petting is now illegal (in the US, that is), but now other animals are getting the same treatment – after being captured in the wild and taken from their parents too young, or bred in captivity for petting and photo purposes.

Plus, as we had long read about baby elephants in circuses, and as still happens to Asian elephants so people can ride or bathe them, their spirits are broken to prepare them for their degrading lives-to-come.

https://tinyurl.com/mr2hjzxu 

Tiny animals living peaceful lives also need travelers to look out for them.  Think about seashells, which are often habitats for sea creatures.  Beachcombers are urged to follow these guidelines from the NJ Sea Grant Consortium: Be sure that any shell you want to take with you has no living (or dead)

creature still inside.  Foul smells give away dead creatures you don’t want to take home.  

Take only a couple specimens with you, leaving most shells for ecosystem use. Then, next time at the beach, recycle earlier beachcombing souvenirs.

 

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Unusual animals & their strange relationships

How often have we heard something new, different and not like us described as “alien”?  With little experience or practice at accepting life forms different from our own, we may have said it ourselves.   Anything “not-us” can be mysterious and/or intimidating.  One cure is getting to know that seeming “alien,” then often befriending or even protecting it.

At first, I puzzled over the subtitle of Sy Montgomery’s 2015 best seller, The Soul of an Octopus – “A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness,” but once I started reading and looking at the color illustrations, I got it.  And I marveled at Montgomery’s eager acceptance of this highly unusual being (to me, to us!) and her desire to interact with it and its own unique consciousness.

 “I wanted to meet the octopus.  I wanted to touch an alternate reality.  I wanted to explore a different kind of consciousness. . . ,” she wrote.  Different indeed: octopuses are invertebrates (no spine) and they live in open oceans, where most animals on this planet – usually also invertebrates -- live.   

In no way do they resemble human beings!

The octopus’s basic body plan includes 2 eyes, a mantle (containing its organs), a funnel (or siphon) and at least 8 arms – or, as Montgomery describes it:

an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen.  It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange.  It can change color and shape.  It can taste with its skin.  Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart.

. . . their body organization goes body, head, limbs.  Their mouths are in their armpits . . . They breathe water.  Their appendages are covered with dexterous, grasping suckers, a structure for which no mammal has an equivalent.    

Would you like to see eye-to-eye with an octopus?  Or feed a treat to one?  First, you’d have to locate its eye(s) and then you’d have to find out where, what and how it eats.

Montgomery did much more than that.  Over time spent visiting them in aquariums and talking with specialists, she became a friend and admirer of a few (named) octopuses, starting with “Athena.”  She communicating with them in ways clearly indicating 2-way relationships existed.  And she mourned her octopus friends when they died. 

More on octopuses

Judging by frequent media stories about them, these cephalopods seem to be coming into their own.  A primary example: the rights of octopuses in research.  Acknowledged to be notably intelligent, octopuses are now thought to deserve the same protections (and respect!) other animals are given by scientists.  https://tinyurl.com/mr3jsjc3   

True confession

“Salted slug”: No, that’s not a menu item!  Rather, it’s a description of a deliberately murdered creature who threatened the pansies I love.  After a twilight sighting of the villain approaching them, I grabbed a salt cellar and poured its contents on the slithering beast. 

Next morning I was confronted by a salty corpse on the driveway – and the need to remove and clean that area.  (Ugh! And yet comparable to the beer-in-a-shallow-bowl approach, requiring somehow disposing of drowned gastropods).   

Even though slugs are reputed to have ecological value, I’m an unrepentant recidivist.  And I’d do the same with a house fly, a tick or a mosquito.

(Blogger’s note:  My dispatch of the slug occurred despite the relation between octopuses (which fascinate me) and slugs (which don't!), both in the Phylum Mollusca: invertebrate animals without spines.  For more details, look into these 2 classes: cephalopods and gastropods.)  

                                                   

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Paws down, non-human animals handily beat human animals

I’m not familiar with (other-than-human) animals bitterly taking sides among themselves and working against the other sides; lying about the innocence of others in their group; manipulating in any way possible the minds of those on other sides . . . and so on. 

Once again, I conclude that the great inclusionary poet Walt Whitman was wholly right in saying, "I think I could turn and live with animals, . . . Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,/Not one kneels to another . . . ."

Compared with people, non-human animals are so comparatively virtuous (and sane!) that it's doubly unfair for them to be the mistreated, hunted and eaten ones in this world, now threatened with destruction because of long human abuse.

Sacrificial athletes

Just one for instance: the horses who die or are put down in the so-called “sport” of horse racing.  This has been a particularly tragic year for horses (think of them as the athletes involved) at Churchill Downs, the increasingly infamous home of the Kentucky Derby.  

Earlier this month, after 12 horses died over a few weeks there, the track suspended racing on the recommendation of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, which also called for an extensive safety review.  So ended, at least briefly, the commodification and death of these beautiful, innocent animals.    https://tinyurl.com/ycxu2tdu

Big cat protection

Now consider the world’s wild or captive big cats – larger versions of the domestic felines so many of us love.  Abused and hunted to near extinction worldwide, big cats in the US will now benefit from the Big Cat Public Safety Act that became law last December.  

They will be saved from the cruel, exploitative “cub petting industry,” that rips cubs from their mothers to become temporary money makers: able to be photographed with or petted by paying customers until they reach potentially dangerous ages and are cruelly disposed of.

  

                                  PAWS pic

The law also protects the public from unqualified private owners who breed, sell or acquire more big cats, often causing injuries or deaths to people involved.  In short, “the law prohibits physical contact between big cats the public.”         https://tinyurl.com/ycxu2tdu  

Horrific in every way

Here’s a fact about consumption of non-human animals that’s hard to imagine and much harder to accept.  The headline says it all: “More animals than ever before—92.2 billion—are used and killed each year for food.”  Just pause and think about that number of animals, innocent and unable to defend themselves, slaughtered and turned into food for human animals.  

The scale of animal suffering is unfathomable, according to the HSUS blog (linked below), but further, this food system is also a major source of stress on the climate.  As Peter Singer advised in a column recently mentioned here, switching to plant-based foods can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Please see the short video about factory farming that’s part of the blog post linked below and ask yourself, “Do these animals deserve such a life, such a fate?” and “Must we really keep eating meat when we know all this about the animal suffering and climate damage it costs us?” https://tinyurl.com/ycxu2tdu

Tree trunks & coexistence

Finally, a small but worthy example of peaceful coexistence with wild animals: the Parks & Outdoor Dept. in Chattanooga, TN, uses a mix of sand and latex paint “to deter beavers from gnawing on the trees” by painting the tree trunks.  “Managing” human-wildlife conflicts too often ends in wildlife deaths, as happened some years ago in Princeton, NJ, when the “animal control officer” shot beavers in a public park.         https://tinyurl.com/yc3nbbc2

‘Be prepared’    

Over the last few months, I've advocated assembling disaster/survival kits and what they should contain.  Here’s one more take on that subject from a Sunday NYTimes issue earlier this month.

Pooling suggestions from 8 thinking people who have faced disaster, the double-page illustrated article makes this persuasive case: “Hurricane season just started in the Atlantic.  In the West, fires have already begun to break out. But no matter where you live, extreme weather events are becoming commonplace.”       https://tinyurl.com/2rx657nj   

And finally, June is “Adopt a Cat month” and “Foster a Pet” month – a time for people who still have love to give to animals needing loving homes.  (Don’t they all?)    

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Of horse horrors, outdoor cats, squirrels en masse & spring storms

Besides shipping horses abroad for slaughter – which has happened since 2007, when that heinous practice ended in the US -- this subject can also include the slaughter of horses in the horserace world.  Long before triple crown races began this spring, race horses have died in training at tracks, for causes often claimed to be unknown.

Then, during races, or shortly after, horses are injured, die and are put down right on the track.  And this is called a “sport”!

Killing horses for meat is “the final betrayal of their connection” with people – as companions, faithful steeds at stables, competitors or working horses -- as the HSUS puts it.   (photo below: horses in export van) 

                                                                                                      HSUS pic

Happily for horses, new legislation has been reintroduced in the House of Representatives:  the SAFE (Save America's Forgotten Equines) Act (H. R. 3475).  This bill would permanently ban the domestic slaughter of American horses and their export for that purpose. 

Please: contact your representative(s) to request support for this crucial bill!  https://tinyurl.com/7hnvcmrn

Needy cat or not?

A timely question during kitten season: Does that outdoor cat need to be rescued?  The answer, no longer, is an automatic “yes.”   In a guest blog post for the HSUS, its senior analyst for cat protection and policy writes well and convincingly about “How can I help this cat?” 

                                                      HSUS pic

Bringing a cat inside may not be the right thing to do because we understand much more these days about cats and their behaviors.  After the practice of keeping cats indoors became widespread, seeing a cat outdoors often leads to a well-intentioned impulse to bring that cat in or take her/him to a shelter.

Don’t automatically do that!  For the “why-not,” please read what Danielle Bays has to say:    https://tinyurl.com/3mwp2e9m   

Squazillion squirrels

Try to imagine stepping out your front door into a ground cover of gray squirrels, visible as far as the eye could see. 

In 1842, and then a few more times since then, an amateur naturalist saw just that sight: “thousands of squirrels scurrying across the landscape in an unbroken wave.”  They were Eastern gray squirrels, moving in a roughly southeasterly direction, usually in autumn.

For reasons only guessed at even now, they went through forests into prairies, through cornfields like locusts and through water – crossing the Ohio, Niagara and Mississippi Rivers -- like “great furry armadas.”  (What an image!)

Later, an analyst quantified the total number in squirrel mass movements as 30 thousand per mile, concluding these waves could have included more than 400 million squirrels.      https://tinyurl.com/2p844k27 

Remember it now?

Finally, approaching hot, dry (maybe!) summer, we’ve almost forgotten this year’s wild, wet spring.  But nearly a century ago, a poet described it.  Beautifully.

from “The Land”

by Vita Sackville-West

That was a spring of storms. They prowled the night;

Low level lightning flickered in the east

Continuous. The white pear-blossom gleamed

Motionless in the flashes; birds were still;

Darkness and silence knotted to suspense,

Riven by the premonitory glint

Of skulking storm, a giant that whirled a sword

Over the low horizon, and with tread

Earth-shaking ever threatened his approach,

But to delay his terror kept afar,

And held earth stayed in waiting like a beast

Bowed to receive a blow. But when he strode

Down from his throne of hills upon the plain,

And broke his anger to a thousand shards

Over the prostrate fields, then leapt the earth

Proud to accept his challenge; drank his rain;

Under his sudden wind tossed wild her trees;

Opened her secret bosom to his shafts;

The great drops spattered; then above the house

Crashed thunder, and the little wainscot shook

And the green garden in the lightning lay.

                 (published in Poem-a-Day on 4-3-22, by the Academy of American Poets)

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These days, people and animals are together in misery

For many, many people, times are hard these days.  Bitter national divisions, long covid, mass shootings, frightful storms and climate-change fears . . . . For our fellow (non-human) animals, times have always been hard -- for at least as long as we’ve been on earth with them! 

Now and then come rays of hope, surprisingly merciful deeds and happy times, but inevitably, cruel and inhumane behaviors dominate the news.

Peter Singer, for me the philosopher-king of animal welfare, in an Earth Day column last month discussed why, since 1970 – 47 years ago! – he has not eaten meat.  In that year of the first Earth Day, he realized “there is no ethical justification for treating animals like machines for converting feed into meat, milk and eggs.”  

Since then, Singer has added another, possibly world-saving reason for boycotting meat: climate change.  Think methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that’s much more destructive than carbon dioxide.  “Meat and dairy production,” he writes, are major sources of methane.

That’s a major reason why Singer proposes that people halve their consumption of animal products – a step much more effective than other options he mentions to end factory farming and save the planet. 

“This means we can do something for the planet every time we eat,” he says.     https://tinyurl.com/uhtfauaw

Purloined pigs

Another story involves saving two piglets from a Smithfield Foods factory farm in Utah, where they were destined for slaughter.  Instead, the men who rescued them gave them a chance to live “happily ever after.”  

Neither stealing nor rescuing the piglets was the intent of those who removed them that night.  But the terrible condition both baby pigs were in prompted the men to take them when they left.  Nursed back to health and re-homed at a sanctuary, the piglets, by then named Lucy and Lizzie, are enjoying new lives.   

That wasn’t the only surprise.  The second one began with the men’s indictment for taking the pigs from the farm -- and ended with their acquittal.  They wanted people to “wrestle with the moral implications of how living beings end up in grocery stores as packages of meat.”

For three surprising reasons that included having their consciences stirred, the jury found the defendants not guilty.  It’s hoped the verdict will positively influence the way corporations treat animals under their care.

https://tinyurl.com/bdd4jd9z

What is Lucy?

Besides being very big and gray and popular, Lucy, of Margate, NJ (mentioned in the last post here), is a puzzling creature to identify.  Her ears suggest she’s an Asian elephant, but her giant tusks are all wrong: female Asian elephants don’t have tusks!

Lucy may have to “live” with disputes over her animal heritage and resign herself to being . . . a large, elderly faux elephant landmark at the Jersey shore.

Just for fun and with no doubt about his heritage, here’s a delightful video of a real live baby elephant who thinks he should charge a vehicle.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSRlUsQ7TJ8

Fur family update 

Billy and Jersey Summers – a.k.a. “the Summers boys” -- are such good buddies that I’m going to quit using pheromone diffusers.  They have steadily become better friends every day since Jersey arrived last October.

Billy remains my long-time friend and support, generally sharing my bed pillows and trailing me around the house, carrying his yellow fluffy ball: a signal for us to play.  So I invite him to trip down to the basement with me for cardboard box-time, with treats (that he's really after) along the way.

Jersey continues his independent, semi-domesticated ways (running from being picked up, so also missing nail clipping and brushing and, at the toss of a toy, breaking into a kittenish dance with small balls and mice.)  He also continues to gaze into the glass fireplace door at the cat he always sees there, looking back at him.  

And uh-oh: he recently noticed the clothes dryer’s round glass door facing out and showing him still another cat in our house.  Now he has one on each floor to stare at, charm or guard against.  

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