Help backyard critters, think dog crates & adopt adult cats

Firefly

Weather or not, spring started last week.  Here’s a timely suggestion for what to do now that may surprise you: give in to holiday candy, take nice long naps or read a good book -- but don’t race outside to clean up the yard or garden!  

Right now is just too early for all that, and animals still need plant debris and dead leaves to shelter in when the weather turns bad (which it will do) or when predators are around.  Further, there’s no need to clean up when you still can’t plant till near mid-May anyway. 

The latest Master Gardeners of Mercer County flyer put it this way: “April is almost always a fickle month.  Walking on wet soil leads to compaction.  Planting too early can result in damage from a late frost . . . Cleaning up planting beds too early or too well can disturb overwintering insects.”

Chipmunk

Not only do creatures living outdoors need safe hiding places, but they also welcome any relief from gas-powered landscape machines – just think of the racket caused by leaf blowers and lawn mowers – a.k.a. “landscape pollution.”   (Does anyone out there remember, or even own rakes?!)   

Those noisy mechanized devices drown out birdsong, a recognized mental health benefit for humans, and kick up unhealthy contaminants – which, by the way, their human operators  are closest to!  Use of leaf-blowers destroys the “critical understory where birds, frogs, fireflies, bees, caterpillars and chipmunks forage and nest.”   No wonder we see fewer fireflies and insects every year!

https://www.humanesociety.org/news/birdsong-interrupted  

In-home dog prison?

A recent Washington Post article asked a troublesome question: “Should you crate your dog?”  (To me, the answer is obvious: No!)  

The writer discusses various uses for dog crates, citing what “experts” say, and mentions locking her own dog in a (well-furnished) crate when she leaves home for a few hours.  At that, all I could think of was that poor dog, unable to escape the crate, dying in a house fire.

Have dog crates, which I think were initially meant to be temporary new-puppy training devices only, become the 24-hour norm for dogs who live in homes?  How often, and for what purposes, should crates be used by dog parents for their pets? 

Can’t dogs be raised to have “the run of the house” after puppyhood?  https://tinyurl.com/j824zj73

Tip

Tried & true adults  

Every spring, kittens charm people.  (How could they not?!)  But in the midst of all that “Aw-w-w-w-w!”ness, one fact often eludes those who want to adopt a kitten on the spot: kittens quickly grow into . . . cats! 

Meanwhile, especially during kitten season, adult cats who need homes are hard put to compete with/ kittens, even though they’re the more needy of the two adoptable varieties.  Adult cats who are now in shelters or with rescue groups deserve homes now because they offer so much to

 

Ashley

adopters and homes would do them such good!

Grown-up felines “have been there,” and often don’t need training.  Their energy level is typically much lower than kittens’ non-stop curiosity and activity, so they fit into a family more peacefully – and, it’s been said, with greater appreciation.  (If you’re hoping for a lap-cat, here’s where you’re most likely to find a ready-made!)

Despite the current flood of cute kittens, please consider adopting an adult cat.  Three such felines now at the Ewing, NJ animal shelter run by Easel Animal Rescue League include a bonded pair of lovely gray cats (mother and daughter), Tip and Ashley, ages 12 and 11; and

Marshall

Marshall, a black cat of about 10, who is FIV+.  Described as "sweet," all three cats need homes.  

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All about elephants & help for Canada geese

Woolly mammoth (model)

The rains, floods and fires, the long Covid, the horrifying headlines . . . and more and more, and on and on . . .  .  Nothing to do about all that except: think of elephants.

Beg pardon? 

Well, doing that is possible for a day, anyway, when you daytrip to the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the American Museum of Natural History, where “The Secret Lives of Elephants” is now featured. This multi-faceted exhibition overviews the evolution and behavior our planet’s largest land animal, from the ancient world to today.    

Potentially fascinating for adults and children alike, the exhibition (think: a giant “cabinet of curiosities”) offers a wide variety of “elephant things” to look at, read, interact with, learn from, remember.  These include . . .  

      *  Life-size models of elephants and their ancestors, historically beginning with the woolly mammoth: what a guy!  

      *  Three different films to sit down and watch, including a touching one about an orphan baby elephant’s return to the wild.  Two others also star elephants, of course. 

·       Explanatory materials, illuminated, accompanies each elephant display so visitors can look and read, using various modes to acquire info.  

·       Buttons to push for fun mini quizzes or things to do, see or hear (When he made an African elephant’s ear flap, a little boy called out: “I’m cooling off the elephant!” – which those ears really do.  

A   And I heard an elephant rumble for the first time in my life.  These low-frequency sounds travel through the ground to distant elephants.)    https://tinyurl.com/4z698wt8

·        Another life-size elephant, whose digestive system is lighted up from within, and who is circled by numerous info sections about the many benefits of elephant poop (only starting with plant-seed dispersal) for the curious child in all of us.  

·        “Conservation," now a concept of great importance for the world’s endangered elephants, turns up throughout the exhibition, suggesting ways to foster elephant survival.   

·       A major feature of this exhibit is someone I’ll call “The explainer”: a staff member wearing an ID tag who roams around answering questions and striking up conversations with visitors.  Thanks to him, I found out just what the big lump atop the woolly mammoth’s head was: not some kind of bony structure, but stored fat for hard, hungry times.   https://tinyurl.com/yu52nwe

Sometimes, thankfully, they’re free in the wild (although increasingly threatened by poachers and habitat loss), but elephants are also forced into working-animal life, living in zoos and other demeaning, undeserved forms of existence.  Despite all that, they survive – maybe the moral of their story for us humans.  So, “think about elephants.” 

(Here are links to two enjoyable videos about elephants: first, some surprises (maybe!) from AMNH in a delightfully narrated 6-minutes -- amnh.org/exhibitions/secret-world-elephants -- and another video showing a baby elephant in tantrum mode -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvT40aCNMKM. 

After last year’s tremendous exhibition on sharks (including the near-unbelievable megalodon), and now this show on elephants, AMNH continues to enchant.  I think of it as a “magnet museum,” for its old- and new-style exhibits, in old and new building sections.

Blue whales (mom & calf)

Till April, visitors can also marvel at an awesome movie on the giant screen: Blue Whales: Return of the Giants – with beautiful seascapes and the sleek cetaceans who are now “rebounding from the brink of extinction.”  Starting next month, “Life by a Whisker,” about sea lions, will replace Blue Whales.   

Much closer to home (and sometimes all-too-familiar), another land animal experiences unnecessary, wholly inhumane action: Canada geese.

Communities choosing to reject humane options for co-existing with these birds often contract for their merciless killing instead.  Geese are forced into gas chambers, where they slowly die.

The Animal Protection League of NJ (aplnj.org) is fighting this cruelly primitive means of dealing with geese.  Those who also object are invited to a midday demonstration early next month.  Please see this flyer and mark your calendars!  https://conta.cc/4cdgY7t

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