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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