2 confusing black birds & plastic strikes again, big time

American crow

So we’re looking out the window and see a couple big black birds strutting kind of stiffly around.  Are they crows?  Or ravens?  Or what? 

Of course if they stood still, showing their profiles, or flew in slo-mo overhead, we could probably tell the difference, but they’re not that thoughtful.  Crows are often seen in large groups, while ravens often travel, and forage, in pairs.

With equal-length feathers, a crow’s tail resembles a rounded fan, while its longer middle feathers make a raven’s tail look wedge-shaped.  Bigger than the American crow, a common raven averages 25 inches in length (to the crow’s 17-1/2 inches) with 2.6 pounds in mass (to the crow’s 1.4 pounds), and it has a larger, curvier beak.  

 

Crows make a “cawing” sound and ravens emit a lower, croaking sound  (the link below includes their sound effects); ravens ride the thermals and soar, while crows do more flapping.  Both birds are described as “opportunistic foragers,” who will eat just about anything. 

Most basic of all, both birds are part of the Corvidae family, also known as the “crow family,” or “corvids.” Their relatives include rooks, jackdaws and magpies – but don’t worry: those birds aren’t part of this comparison.

Common raven

Now, if only those black birds outside would line up and let us see their profiles, or spread their tails, or  . . .  !  

 http://www.audubon.org/news/how-tell-raven-crow

The water’s not fine

"Everybody into the pool!”  Oh, yuk!  Get out, quick – the water’s filled with plastic bags, bottles, cups and glasses, straws, utensils, and other such garbage. . . Who wants to swim in trash like that? 

Or worse: live in such trash?

Pity the creatures in our oceans, which are now being taken over by plastic – not only the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” between Hawaii and California, but other, ever-growing versions of it.  One estimate: by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans.  Re-read that sentence and try to picture it.

And picture this, also reported in recent Earth Day coverage: It’s as if a garbage truck filled with plastic/trash is dumped into the ocean every second.  How have the seas survived, let alone their inhabitants?

Plastic absorbs toxins, then fish eat the plastic, then people eat the fish. Maybe you’re thinking, “Serves them right” or “Turnabout is fair play” for the humans who brought this on, but fish and other sea creatures don’t deserve that life-threatening habitat. 

Can’t people reduce their brief, single use of those ubiquitous, dangerous plastic bags, or better yet, quit using them?  Some supermarkets push paper or fabric shopping bags, while others seem totally indifferent to the environmental disaster they’re feeding.  (Can you hear me, Wegman’s?!)    

                                                                                                                                                               image from Isle of Dogs

No dog is an island

Isle of Dogs: Wes Anderson’s crazy-jarring yet appealing mix of techniques (stop-action animation! use of puppets!)  and messages about pets and people . . . combine for a highly watchable if not wholly comprehensible movie. Banished from their city to an island garbage dump, these dogs are sympathetic and plucky characters, deserving to prevail over terrible loneliness. Animal-loving viewers may experience long patches of anxiety along with  unexpected humor.   

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/movies/isle-of-dogs-review-wes-anderson.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_180323

But who’s counting? 

In case you’re interested, this is the 54^th post in AnimalBeat II, after about a dozen earlier posts that appeared on the website of The Animal Protection League of NJ (www.aplnj.org). and moved here a year ago this month.  Now, for the best of both worlds, you can find all posts on the APLNJ site, under “blog,” and at www.1moreonce.blogspot.com (where you can comment – please do!) – and by subscription.

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‘Old business’ & new -- & things to do

“Is there any old business?”

Yes!  (I refer to saved but un-shared info about animals drawn from recent reading. Earth Day seems like a good time to put it out there so readers might be as surprised as I was by some of it.)  

Belated condolences to the owners of pets who died or were traumatized by gross mishandling three times last month by United Airlines employees: killed in the overhead bin, delivered to the wrong country and mistakenly loaded on board a flight.  By now, we can only hope United employees have been scared into carefulness.

“Fly the friendly skies”?  No thanks.  

http://abcnews.go.com/US/united-airlines-flight-diverted-dog-mistakenly-plane/story?id=53806484

“Many Animals Can Count, Some Better Than You,” according to a science story about “animal numerosity.”  Humans are definitely not the only animals smart enough to think quantitatively, the article says, citing examples from spiders, frogs and fish, as well as hyenas and chimps.

Spotted hyena

“Scientists have found that animals across the evolutionary spectrum have a keen sense of quantity, able to distinguish not just bigger from smaller or more from less, but two from four, four from ten, forty from sixty,” reports Natalie Angier, a favorite science writer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/science/animals-count-numbers.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_sc_20180205&nl=science-times&nlid=20760274&ref=headline&te=1

Here’s an amusing story about why there’s more research on dogs than cats. The writer collected various scientists’ theories for why that’s so – sometimes colored by their own feelings, choice of pets and/or stereotypes.

It’s worth noting the writer’s disclaimer: The research he’s interested in and writes about involves evolution, domestication, current genetics and behavior.  He was not asking about dogs and cats used as laboratory animals in invasive experiments. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/science/dog-science-cats.html?em_pos=medium&emc=edit_sc_20180226&nl=science-times&nl_art=0&nlid=20760274&ref=headline&te=1

If  it depended on my description in the last post, any law-breaking armadillo would escape the suspect line-up and go free.  My enthusiasm for the creatures overrode my accuracy in describing them; I completely omitted any reference to this armored mammal’s carapace, or protective shell!  

 Curled  armadillo                           belizar/Fotolia

Composed of “boney scale-like structures called scutes, topped with a layer of keratin (a component of hair, nails, and horns),” that set of plates, or the carapace, covers much of the armadillo’s body, including the head, legs and tail. One variety can curl itself up into an impenetrable ball when threatened by another armadillo or a predator. 

Remind Murphy: no more bear hunts
Also overlooked last time was this plea to help keep NJ Governor Phil Murphy honest.  During his election campaign, he pledged to end New Jersey’s fiendish bear hunts – aka trophy hunts.  Now it’s crucial to get that job done. 

That’s why the Animal Protection League of NJ urges everyone who cares about bears to phone the governor’s office – 609-292-6000 -- and remind Murphy of that pledge.

ACTION:  CALL 609-292-6000 and remind the Governor about his sacred promise to stop the bear hunt.

Fight anti-Earth Day acts
Today marks the 48^th annual celebration of Earth Day – an event that in 1970 opened the way for life-saving changes in our world.  The story below highlights some of the areas impacted then and since. While its graphic opening omits reference to endangered animals, the Endangered Species Act came out of Earth Day activism, along with the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The story also describes efforts by the current administration to undermine those laws – acts that are both incomprehensible and indefensible.  Resist!  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/climate/environmental-disasters-earth-day.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_180422

Word of the day 

Many of us are unfamiliar with this word or this feeling, but here it is: ailurophobia (ai-loor-uh-FOH-bee-uh, ay-) -- A fear of cats.  (Hard to imagine, isn’t it?)

                                             Imgur image in Wordsmith

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Foxes & black bears & . . . armadillos?

                                                                                                       APLNJ pic

With their springtime departure from dens, NJ’s black bears have opened 2018’s “bear season” – this one, we pray, with no bear hunt!  It’s wonderful to contemplate a year when the moms, cubs and males out there may live to hibernate again in the fall.

Not yet ravenously hungry or foraging for food, “spring bears” start out in a state of “walking hibernation.”  Their lethargy gradually lessens as habitats start greening up and new grass, herbs and leaves become available.  Only in June will they seriously start fattening up for winter, as well as seeking to mate.

When bear sightings occur, as they will, do not call DFW (see fox story below)!  Doing so, says a rep of the Bear Group (www.saveNJbears.com), is a potential death sentence besides being logged (however inaccurately) as a bear nuisance complaint.  That in turn feeds DFW’s “records” justifying the division’s bear “management” plans (think “hunt”).  

Instead, call the Bear Group (973-315-3219), which also does home visits for those wanting to know how to bear-proof their surroundings.  

Above all, do not feed bears!  That can happen inadvertently, by leaving bird feeders outside, feeding pets outdoors, failing to securely fasten garbage cans.  In most cases, just enjoy the moment of a bear sighting; black bears are shy and retiring creatures, one source stresses, and “they will generally turn and amble away when approached.”  Otherwise, use aversive conditioning techniques – like waving arms, shouting, using noise-makers. 

And this comparison is comforting: “According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, for every person killed by a black bear in North America, 60 are killed by domestic dogs, 180 by bees, and 350 by lightning.”  Lately in New Jersey, bears have had much more to fear from people than the opposite.

Foxes for birds

A recent newspaper story revealed why foxes in Brigantine seem to be disappearing:  they’re being killed by NJ’s Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) to help protect endangered shorebirds like the piping plover and red knot.

                                                                               DFW pic

For the last four years, DFW has contracted with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to “handle population control” by trapping and euthanizing foxes “by a gun” – what the press officer described as “humane control.”  Before that, DFW did the same thing on its own -- as well as sometimes trapping foxes on municipal beaches with local officials’ OK.

If there was follow up to this story, I missed it.  So I’m left wondering who made the call to protect the birds and kill the foxes?  Can a person or a state or federal agency do so unilaterally?  Was there public notification when it started?  (That people reportedly wondered what’s been happening to the foxes suggests not.)  Finally, with DFW’s disclosure of what it’s been up to, what, if anything, will happen now? 

Armadillos – say what?  

Well, yes, armadillos.  After all, we looked at pangolins months ago, so today it’s armadillos – giant ones, at that.  Until a recent Dodo story, I hadn’t given a thought to them since Rango, a movie that featured one, among other zany characters.

Giant Armadillo

Native to South America, these big guys can weigh up to 180 pounds and head to tail, occupy nearly five feet.  Their name means “little armoured one” in Spanish and together with their size and elusiveness, they’re definitely not cuddly pets.

Overall, armadillos can range from chipmunk size (“pink fairy armadillo”) to giant, with a wild looking “screaming hairy armadillo” somewhere there.  Great diggers with sharp claws and characterized by long noses, armadillos are related to sloths and anteaters.  No surprise there. 

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Mercy & science say 'subvert the dominant paradigm'

Herbie

“Each and every one of these animals is an individual who suffers pain, who has a family, who has a story.”  Since my last post, I’ve continued to think about that quote from Mercy for Animals, Nathan Runkle’s book.  How many people ever consider whether animals of any sort, including those heading for slaughter, have their own families, their own stories?

  

Because of course they do.

By human standards, a chicken’s story may be brief, even barren. Yet they have lived, however long, and with luck, experienced pleasure.  We have to hope their lives included pleasure because so many of them end their days in a industrial farm setting like the factory farm for egg-laying chickens that Runkle describes here.

“ . . . the overwhelming stench of ammonia . . . The shed . . . is crammed with egg-laying chickens. Overhead, hens are crowded inside cages, each the size of a file-cabinet drawer,  . . . confining 7 to 10 adult birds.  [They] are unable to fully spread their wings, let alone walk, perch, roost, dust bathe or experience the most basic freedom of movement.  The wire cage floors are slanted, meaning the birds can never stand upright . . . the eggs they lay will immediately roll away from them. . . [to be] carefully cleaned to remove blood and feces and then placed in happily decorated cartons proudly declaring “Farm Fresh Eggs.” . . . The endless row of cages are stacked like stairs, allowing the birds’ feces to fall into the manure pit in which we now stand.”  --pp. xii, xiii, Mercy for Animals: One Man’s Quest to Inspire Compassion and Improve the Lives of Farm Animals.

So, what to do?  Quit chicken? Then what?  Return to beef-eating?  Not so fast: Citing our “collective love affair with beef, dating back more than 10,000 years,” Richard Conniff  reluctantly admits it’s “time to break it off.”  

Conniff’s stats about the effects of cattle-raising on climate are startling, making it much easier to understand French scientists’ proposal to put a carbon tax on beef to help meet European Union climate change targets.  That won’t happen, but here are some of the reasons for it:

·       one think tank attributes 14.5 % of global emissions to livestock – “more than the emissions from powering all the world’s road vehicles, trains, ships and airplanes combined.”

·         livestock consume the yield from a quarter of all cropland worldwide.

·        with grazing added, the business of making meat occupies about three-quarters of the agricultural land on the planet.

·         ruminant digestion causes cattle to belch and otherwise emit huge quantities of methane. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/opinion/sunday/carbon-tax-on-beef.html

Beef cattle shed

It begins to seem as if all food roads lead to . . . “clean meat ” – real meat grown from animal cells, with no need to raise and slaughter entire creatures.  Biotechnology could be used to make this happen, producing “the meat so many humans crave without taking such an enormous toll on the planet, since growing meat is much more efficient than raising animals to later turn into that same meat.”   

That concept is introduced in the foreword to Paul Shapiro’s Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World.  “Judged by the amount of suffering it causes, industrial farming of animals is arguably one of the worst crimes in history,” the writer says.

  

Case closed – for now.

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Chickens = cannon fodder for wannabe vegetarians

We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us

how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.

--Anna Sewell, author (Black Beauty, etc.!) 1820-1878

I know I’m no great hero for animals in being merely a vegetarian.  Even so, there’s one expression I often hear from non-vegetarians that infuriates me.  It goes like this:  “I don’t eat beef or pork or fish, just chicken” -- as if “just chicken” is somehow not the flesh of a once-sentient being, like other meat; as if the chicken supply is free and inexhaustible; as if chickens don’t feel the dread and agony of slaughter, which so many other animals have been documented as feeling.   

Oh, come on.  Most chickens by far are not the pampered backyard pets who live in pricey designer coops, eat carefully selected foods and are protected from predators and extreme weather.  For the billions of “commercial chickens” – that is, those bred to become food in the United States -- life is frightfully different.

a 'broiler' factory

You read it right: “billions.”  Of the land animals slaughtered for food each year here, 8.6 billion animals are chickens – nearly 300 per second. These figures come from Mercy for Animals, the book cited in my last post.  And author Nathan Runkle points out that “each and every one of these animals is an individual who suffers pain, who has a family, who has a story.”  

Years ago, before learning what I know now, I participated in a demonstration at a nearby McDonald’s, sponsored by PETA, I think.  Its purpose:  demand more humane slaughter of chickens. As if “humane slaughter” were not a contradiction in terms. As if as a result, chickens would feel better about the whole thing.  

There.  At least temporarily, this rant took our minds off all the hams served for dinner today – that is, all the pigs, smart, friendly and lovable animals that they are – raised and slaughtered for a celebration of rebirth.  Ironic, isn’t it?  But human meat-eaters probably aren’t interested in irony when it comes to their eating habits.  

More on home-visiting vets

A few real-life experiences last month illustrated for me the value of a vet who makes home visits – as described in a recent post here.  Bundling two reluctant cats into their carriers for vet visits took a toll, and I found myself daydreaming of a vet who would come to us (no guile or carrier needed!). Here’s a story about a certified veterinary acupuncturist who makes house calls in NYC – bless him!   

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/nyregion/with-a-metrocard-and-needles-a-vet-makes-house-calls.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront

Poison-prevention aids

We missed the ASPCA’s poison prevention week last month, but it’s never too late to know what to avoid, what to do.  I’m reminded of a dear gray cat who hung around a local nursery, allowing petting and accepting treats.  Until he died of poisoning, the owners said, when asked.  As if that had to be the end of him.

   

The kindest possible thought: that they didn’t know where to look or what to do.  Here’s what may be the definitive info source on animal poisoning that even other animal welfare organizations point to for the quality of its helpfulness.   

http://info.aspcapro.org/acton/rif/3485/s-0e7c-1803/-/l-074d:5e493/q-074e/showPreparedMessage?sid=TV2:meii9CrOV

Equal film time for dogs?

Kedi, the charming documentary about cats leading the good life in Istanbul, would make American cats jealous.  I’m not sure Isle of Dogs will do the same for canines, but I still intend to see it.  This review is only the first positive mention I’ve noted.   

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/movies/isle-of-dogs-review-wes-anderson.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_180323

                                                                                                                                        Fox Searchlight/20th Century Fox 

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