About Zanesville

Last week both Esquire and GQ published big stories on the Zanesville, Ohio zoo massacre. Read both articles, if you have time, but if you only have time for one [and even if you think you don't], read Esquire's version. Staff writer Chris Jones establishes a sense of unease, of dread and sorrow, and builds on it, and makes everything about that grim event very real and deeply affecting. Jones has said that he hoped to achieve the "spare beauty" of police reports from that night, and he has done that. He also wanted to write "something that would scare the shit out of people," and he's done that, too.

GQ's Chris Heath takes a different approach, and covers more ground. He writes about the police operation, details the life and misadventures of zoo owner Terry Thompson, and interviews others in Ohio who keep exotic animals. Heath's report is as thorough as anyone could wish, and would have been a perfectly tolerable effort, if only Chris Jones hadn't written such a corker of a piece on the same event for Esquire.


The following links have to do with 1) the work of creating a story, and 2) the race between GQ and Esquire to get a long-form Zanesville article in front of the magazine-buying public. Those not interested in the behavior of competing publishers and competitive journalists should probably give these links a miss.

Gawker: Why Did Esquire and GQ Both Publish Huge Zoo Massacre Stories on the Same Day?
Chris Jones of Esquire on His Zanesville Zoo Massacre Story 'Animals,' 'The Most Dramatic Story Of The Year'
Chris Jones on "Animals," his Zanesville Zoo massacre story [forum discussion, joined by the author]

And one more:
Dear Hollywood: Don’t forget Cincinnati Magazine’s Zanesville massacre story

Photo above: Sumatran tiger, ueno zoo tokyo japan, by children of the neon god on Flickr.

Link dumpage for a lazy holiday weekend

First off, via Janeen of SmartDogs [on Facebook], here's the Poop Fairy PSA. Awesome. And from the beautiful Northwest via Rachel Maddow, here's a swell video on the same topic. Martin Luther [with sidekick Lola] sings it:



More Dog Doogity goodness here [and a free sticker!].

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"Corporate personhood": much like a dog turd, it smells nasty, fosters parasites, and needs proper disposal. Consider that one little house on the prairie serves as the headquarters for 2,000 different corporations, some linked to criminals:

[The Reuters article] shows how critical these secrecy jurisdictions are to making corporations a vehicle of crime and other abuse. And, as [Nicholas] Shaxson has shown, secrecy jurisdictions are also a key tool for corporations to avoid paying their fair share and for dictators to loot their countries. These kinds of incorporation services are a key tool to sucking the money out of the legitimate economy.

At a time when SCOTUS is giving corporations –- even flimsy entities like the scraps of paper at 2710 Thomes –- more rights than actual citizens, it pays to understand how easy it is for people to avail themselves of corporate personhood.

The good folks at Move to Amend have the novel idea that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. "End corporate rule. Legalize democracy," is their motto. Good luck [wry face]. Seriously, it would be nice if some vestige of government of the people, by the people and for the people rose up and kicked corporate personhood's fat butt to the curb.

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Poop Week over at the most excellent 10,000 Birds was totally awesome.

"First of all, every birder backpack, rucksack, or other holder of materials should have toilet paper, or, failing that, tissues. Don’t resort to what I had to do once in the vicinity of the East Pond of Jamaica Bay and emerge sockless from the bushes."

Still laughing at that one. Yes, I'm twelve. Check out links to all the posts here.

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You knew possums are resistant to snake venom, right? Turns out their ossum super power has to do with one blood protein:

Since the evolutionary origin of the family, the vWF [von Willebrand Factor] of opossum species that prey on snakes has accumulated more changes than vWF in non-snake-eating species. That's circumstantial evidence for the effect of natural selection continuously acting on vWF over millions of years. Jansa and Voss picked out several specific changes that are unique to snake-eating opossums, and found that they're associated with a region of vWF that is known to bind with one of the toxins in pit viper venom.

Read all about it at Jeremy B. Yoder's terrific Denim and Tweed science blog.

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India's vultures have all but disappeared. Feral dogs have filled the void:

In the decade of major vulture decline, from 1992 to 2003, one estimate showed dog populations increasing by a third, up to nearly 30 million. The escalation of the dog population corresponds perfectly with the disappearance of India’s vultures.

Read about the dogs and the last Indian vultures here.

[Both links above from Ed Yong'd addictive blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science.

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More links, and Pam Kling's you-are-there-as-the-rattlesnake-strikes photos, over at my newish, mostly-birding blog, Crow and Raven.

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

Peter Houser of Living with Birddogs visited China earlier this month and caught a glimpse of the future:

[N]early all of the enviroment that I saw was horribly damaged. During the entire time in country I saw only a handful of songbirds, a few magpies, no rodents, no hawks. Certainly no game birds. Anything that looks green is under mono-species cultivation. Most of the country is covered by a cloud of smog from the coal-burning electric plants. 5,000 years of human occupation have left a mark on the land and the animals that will not disappear until the next ice age. So, get out your checkbook and send some money to your favorite environmental advocate group. This trip really brought home to me how much we stand to lose if we do not learn to live in a balanced relationship with our environment.

Peter is just one of a number of fine hook-and-bullet bloggers to sound an alarm. Check out Chad Love here and here and here [and, heck, just nab Chad's RSS feed. He's good].

And don't miss Hal Herring's great editorial in Field & Stream, and Bob Marshall's special report, here.

Maybe you saw the April 15 NY Times article: G.O.P. Push in States to Deregulate Environment. [Alternate link via Google.] Quote:

In the past month, the nation’s focus has been on the budget battle in Washington, where Republicans in Congress aligned with the Tea Party have fought hard for rollbacks to the Environmental Protection Agency, clean air and water regulations, renewable energy and other conservation programs.

But similar efforts to make historically large cuts to environmental programs are also in play at the state level as legislatures and governors take aim at conservation and regulations they see as too burdensome to business interests.

If we hope to save our country from the big oil billionaires business interests that control so many of our politicians, we better get busy. Don't wait until the next Ice Age. Get busy now.

That fresh hell in the photo at the top of this post? Not China. It's Canada. And it kills me to think of it, but that toxic landscape used to be a boreal forest. Did I mention that Canada is the #1 supplier of oil to the US? Countless wildfowl die in those tailing ponds. The air, the rivers and the people — the men, women and children — who live nearby are being poisoned. But we mustn't burden the business interests! Oh, no, mustn't do that.

See also:
Boreal Songbird Initiative
Contact Elected Officials Seriously: they are public servants. They work for us.
iLoveMountains.org Because mountaintop removal mining is in a horror category of its own.

Seismology quote o' the day

The San Andreas Fault runs through Cajon Pass [lower left to upper right] in Southern California. See Lost Lake in the middle of the photo? Good place to bird — I saw a Purple Martin there last year. Photo by cocoi_m on Flickr.

A most excellent comment from geologist [specializing in tectonics] and science blogger Chris Rowan, on Twitter:

Anyone using the word 'overdue' automatically forfeits their right to be taken seriously.

Chris tells it: How to (and how not to) talk about earthquake hazards in the media. USGS seismologist Susan Hough, A+! Newsweek and "journalist" Simon Winchester, F- and dunce caps all around.

H/T: Ed Yong on Twitter.

Fear not, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane

A couple videos of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and what you can do to help:




Reclaimed land and liquefaction: Californians will feel a chill.

This is one of the most hair-raising videos I think I've ever seen. The sight of the roofs moving in the smoke and dust...



MESSENGER:
Gracious my lord,
I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do it.

MACBETH:
Well, say, sir.

MESSENGER:
As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The Wood began to move.

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PCMag.com has an excellent round up of "many options for online donations, as well as sites that will help you keep tabs on the rescue effort." I recommend California's own International Medical Corps: "The group said it will focus its efforts on earthquake and tsunami affected communities that have not yet been reached. To donate, text MED to 80888."

Our hearts are with Japan.

ETA: Satellite before/after shots at the NY Times here.

In other news

Baby mountain lion in the Santa Monica Mountains. Photo by the good folks of the National Park Service.

Three words: Radioactive. wild. boars.

"When I write to tell you to go outside and experience nature, I am writing inside and you are reading inside and neither of us is outside experiencing nature." True dat.

Mountain lions of the Santa Monica Mountains. Great overview by Gary Valle [H/T CougarMagic]. On second thought, maybe I'll stay inside. [Near midnight here in the San Bernardino National Forest. Plus: radioactive wild boars.] The cuteness! [And oh, the humanity.]

Oklahoma Pre-wash Cycle. Awww.

And finally: Goodbye, Snaffles. Splendid and deeply moving eulogy for a wise, wonderful horse.

Shoot-out at the... dog park? This week's edition of cops killing dogs

Honestly, it's enough to make me fear for my pups. Over at The Agitator, Radley Balko covers the latest cases of puppycide:

In Willits, CA an officer serving a search warrant shot and killed a family pet, an 8-year-old half-pit bull mix named Tonka:

According to resident Anna White, Tonka’s owner, the police shot her pet while it was in a fenced area on her front porch. “We found the shell casing outside by the fence area. Tonka then ran into our house, got onto my bed and died.”

White described her bedroom following the search, claiming Tonka’s body had been dumped from the bed onto the floor and items from her room dropped onto the body and into the dog’s blood. “They destroyed our house and found nothing,” says White. “Tonka lived long enough to die on my bed, which we shared each night.”

Does that tear your heart out, or what? Oh, and this: "When agents searched the home, they found nothing," reported the local paper.

Agents. found. nothing. They tore up the house and killed the family dog, and didn't find a damn thing. Gotta love that War on [some] Drugs.

"Finding nothing" seems to happen with depressing regularity when the family dog is gunned down by police, which brings us to the next case of dog killed by cop:

Stunned dog owners and residents of a Severn neighborhood are shocked that authorities won't be charging a federal police officer who shot and killed a Siberian husky Monday night at a community dog park.

The federal police officer panicked when the husky started playing "fighting" with the officer's German shepherd. According to the husky's owner Rachel Rettaliata, local animal control officials reported that they found no scratch or bite marks on either dog.

And no charges will be filed...! Try to imagine how you'd feel if some panicky Nimrod emptied his gun into one of your dogs for no sane reason under the sun. And got away with it. Damn.

Related:

More Cop-on-Dog Violence

Federal Cop Shoots Dog at a Dog Park. No Charges.

From this blog:

The police definition of "pit bull" often seems to be "any dog we shot."

["Holy Crap" by Marc Johns.]

Something important and something good

May 26, 2009: Day of Decision Protest in Hollywood. Photo by Tom Andrews/LAist.

"Yesterday’s anticipation has turned into today’s joy," wrote the most excellent political blogger Marcy Wheeler when she got the news. "The court, in a historic opinion and verdict, has declared California’s Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional."

"Fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." Chief US District Judge Vaughn Walker

Read Wheeler's terrific analysis here. Excerpt:

The opinion is, again as predicted, extremely well written, consummately detailed, brilliantly structured and contains a foundation of extremely well supported findings of fact and conclusions of law. In short, Vaughn Walker has crafted as fine a foundational opinion as could possibly be hoped for, and one that is designed with the intent to withstand appellate scrutiny not just in the 9th Circuit, but in the Supreme Court as well.

Obviously this is but a step in the process because there will be appeals, and the case will, without question, go to the Supreme Court. But, that said, you could not ask for a better platform and posture for a case on this issue to go to the Supremes on. It is all that and more [...]

Today is one of those rare seminal days where something important and something good has occurred. Fantastic. The beauty and joy of equality, due process and equal protection under the Constitution of the United States of America.

Gov. Schwarzenegger issued a statement saying, "For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves."

Yay, Governator! Yay, California! And a big, giant, standing ovation for the beauty and joy of equality, due process and equal protection under the Constitution of the United States of America.

The police definition of "pit bull" often seems to be "any dog we shot."

And don't forget [as if we could] the Merritt Clifton corollary: "A 'pit bull' is any dog the newspaper says is a pit bull."

Title of this post was swiped from the most excellent and essential Radley Balko, whose latest commentary on the epidemic of cops shooting dogs can be found here. Excerpt:

Last July I wrote a piece for The Daily Beast on the continuing cops-shooting-dogs problem. While it's difficult to say just how often this happens (police departments tend to be less than forthcoming with the data), it's often enough to produce a regular stream of news stories. What I did discover while reporting that piece is that very few police departments provide training for their officers on how to deal with dogs, something I found astonishing given how often your typical cop is likely to come into contact with one. By contrast, a U.S. Postal Service spokesman told me all of their employees get annual training on interaction with dogs. Probably not coincidentally, he also said serious dog attacks on postal workers are vanishingly rare. The other problem is that there's rarely any accountability for these shootings. If a police officer says he felt threatened by the dog, that's usually enough to justify the shoot, even if the dog was a miniature Dachshund, or a Jack Russell Terrier.

Read the whole thing, and be sure to follow Radley's link to a terrific post at Popehat, where Patrick notes that "[i]n police reports, it appears that there are only two breeds of dogs, pit bulls and rottweilers":

I’ll bet that in some bureaucratic Newspeak seminar for police department internal affairs or public relations personnel, officers are taught, always, to characterize dogs shot by the police as “pit bulls,” “rottweilers,” or if they can’t jam it into one of those categories, “German shepherds.”

It's a good thing to see police thuggery and media fear-mongering addressed by respected, dare I say mainstream, journalists and bloggers. And huge props to the commenter at Popehat who says what every pit bull owner knows:

People associate [pit bulls] with black and latino people. The racist undertones of the ban in Denver (where I have lived) are not really undertones at all, but pretty openly racially motivated by the advocates of the ban when they discuss it.

Another essential Balko post: More Militarized Than the Military. Gotta love that War on [some] Drugs.

Related:

Good cop/bad cop, live dog/dead dog

Dogs White People Like
Sick pervs

"Susie's Law" signed by NC governor

Susie greets a supportive legislator. Photo by Jerry Wolford for the Greensboro News & Record.

Contributor keithan81 over at Pam's House Blend tells it:

Susie isn't a person. She's a pit bull mix who bears the scars of torture. In August, 2009, Susie, just a puppy, was found by passers-by in a Greensboro park, badly beatened with her jaw and teeth broken, and with second and third degree burns on over 60% of her body. Maggots infested her wounds; maggots that had been there for two weeks.

What on earth would cause a human to do this to Susie? Apparently, her attacker went crazy after she licked the face of his newborn baby. He beat her, then sprayed her with lighter fluid before setting her on fire. His mother turned him in; he accepted a guilty plea and was sentenced under the state's burning of property law. He will be in prison for 6-8 months. Yep, months. He would have gotten the same punishment for setting a couch on fire and more for setting a mailbox on fire.

Susie's Law changes all of that. Starting December 1, in North Carolina, the malicious abuse of animals will be deemed a Class H felony, punishable by up to ten years in prison, even for first-time offenders.

H/T to the Blend, where proprietor and pit bull owner Pam Spaulding advocates tirelessly for pits and pit mixes.

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[Here in SoCal, some legislators actually support mandatory mutilation... er, spay/neuter for anything that looks like a pit bull, no matter how responsible the owner or how blameless the dog, but that's another story.]

Related:
Susie's Law Signed After Months In The Making
Susie’s Law passes

Now with "Spillcam"

Related:

Gulf oil spill: 'Top kill' procedure begins

Live feeds from remotely operated vehicles

Love your mother

Snowy Plover, by Jim Urbach for Audubon. [Click for big, and get the screensaver here.] In its report Gulf Oil Spill Pictures: Ten Animals at Risk, National Geographic writes that the Snowy Plover "has been identified by the National Audubon Society as one of the species most vulnerable to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Snowy plovers risk not only direct contact with the oil but might also be poisoned by eating small invertebrates and oysters tainted with oil."

Updates on the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico:
Workers on Oil Rig Recall a Terrible Night of Blasts

BP suffers setback in attempts to stem Gulf of Mexico oil flow. “I wouldn’t say it has failed yet,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, said at a news conference in Robert, La. “What we attempted to do last night hasn’t worked.”

Learning to Love the Sea, Then Torn From It. The Gulf oil spill "has stalled, and possibly ruined, the livelihoods of thousands."

Regulator Deferred to Oil Industry on Rig Safety

Gulf Coast Fishermen Fear That They Will Be Left With 'Crippled Industry'

Sabotage! Conspiracy! And Other Ways to Spin the Oil Spill. I laugh to keep from crying.


Happy Mother's Day!

"The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is seen from a helicopter." Photo by Rick Loomis for the Los Angeles Times.

International Migratory Bird Day

Above: Cerulean Warbler, Rufous Hummingbird, American Redstart. Below left: Wood Duck, American Oystercatcher, Puffin, Whooping Crane. All by Robert Petty for EFTA's Bird Day 2010.

Truth be told: every day is bird day here in Southern California. OK, every day is [or should be] bird day everywhere, but especially here. From the mountains to the sea [as a SoCal news icon used to say each evening] there are beautiful local birds and cool migratory birds everywhere you look.

International Migratory Bird Day "highlights and celebrates the migration of nearly 350 species of migratory birds between nesting habitats in North America and non-breeding grounds in Latin America, Mexico, and the Caribbean," and to quote from the essay Coming together to protect birds, "IMBD is not only a day to foster appreciation for wild birds and to celebrate and support migratory bird conservation; it is also is a call to action." We celebrate Bird Day [every day] by working toward:

• Protecting and managing green space.

• Landscaping with native plants in backyards and parks.

• Adopting architecture and lighting systems that reduce collisions.

• Making our communities hospitable to breeding, wintering and migrating birds that seek safe places to spend time and find food.

"Birds can save the world," writes Dr. John Fitzpatrick, Director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell:

[B]irds represent our most accessible and sensitive indicator of environmental health and ecological change. Today, thanks especially to the Internet, individual citizens have unprecedented opportunities to provide real data that answer important questions about bird populations at continental scales. Humans literally are beginning to serve as worldwide biosphere sensors. The question is, do we also have the will to self-correct? Birds present us with numerous motivations to do so, and an excellent barometer for measuring our successes and failures.

The real data Dr. Fitzpatrick is talking about can be viewed and explored at eBird, which is quite possibly the coolest data-gathering program of all time [and I'm not just saying that because I'm one of this year's top 100 eBirders in my county. Though I am]. To see just one example of eBird's citizen scientists at work, check out the eBird Gulf Coast Oil Spill Bird Tracker. The gadget displays recent sightings of ten focal species — data provided by a dedicated army of eBirders, citizen scientists providing "a real-time snapshot of the region’s birdlife, helping conservationists and researchers understand where, when, and how many of each species are currently occurring on local beaches and wetlands."

Wild birds embody the wonder and beauty of nature, its mystery and its miracles. The challenges wild birds face are challenges that sooner or later will confront us all. We owe it to ourselves, if not to the life of the skies, to celebrate Bird Day as if our future depended on it — because odds are, it does.

Related:
George Divoky's Planet. "This is a story about global warming and a scientist named George Divoky, who studies a colony of Arctic seabirds on a remote barrier island off the northern coast of Alaska. I mention all this at the start because a reader might like to come to the point, and what could be more urgent than the very health and durability of this planet we call Earth? However, before George can pursue his inquiry into worldwide climate change; before he can puzzle out the connections between a bunch of penguinesque birds on a flat, snow-covered, icebound island and the escalating threat of droughts, floods and rising global temperatures, he must first mount a defense -- his only defense in this frozen, godforsaken place -- against the possibility of being consumed, down to the last toenail, by a polar bear while he sleeps. He must first build a fence." A hands-down, must-read classic, even more important now than when it was first published back in 2002.

Media helicopters force Gulf birds to abandon nests. Holy crap, news people.

The know-how and materials already exist. We need to do the right thing

Efforts under way to douse nighttime lights on downtown Cleveland skyscrapers, saving millions of migrating songbirds


H/T to Mike McDowell for the JSOnline link.

News Flash

Click for big.

Climate change is [hello, Congress] still real. California's essential water/politics blogger Emily Green reported this week that 255 of the country’s leading scientists, including 11 Nobel laureates, are doing what they can to get the message across:

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

Read:
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE INTEGRITY OF SCIENCE [pdf]
Lead Letter Published in Science magazine, May 7, 2010
From 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences

In related news, California has some of the greediest and most dangerous initiative-pushers on earth. Rule by initiative is the first two or three thousand reasons my poor state is in such bad shape these days.


Image above: Carbon Dioxide Concentration [screen grab] from NASA's Global Climate Change website.

"a commentary on our own culpability"

canary 2, 2008, by Kate McDowell.

Artist Kate McDowell's statement about her work begins:

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words--to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. – C.S. Lewis.

In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones.

You can view Kate McDowell's portfolio here. Her work, as she says, is "a painstaking record of endangered natural forms and a commentary on our own culpability."

Cuckoo. [In case it's needed, here is some context.]

Related:
Urgency increases as oil spill grows
How oil affects birds
Birds, Sharks, Whales, Sea Turtles, and Other Wildlife Threatened By Oil Slick Nearing Coast -- with information on "some of the birds and other wildlife experts are most concerned about."

Dead zone

"An oil-soaked bird floats dead," victim of the Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay, 2007. SF Chronicle photos [above and left] by Michael Macor.

Gut-wrenching: the Gulf Coast oil spill "could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades."

"The terrible loss of 11 workers may be just the beginning of this tragedy as the oil slick spreads toward sensitive coastal areas vital to birds and marine life and to all the communities that depend on them", said Melanie Driscoll, an Audubon bird conservation director, who is monitoring the situation from her base in Louisiana. "For birds, the timing could not be worse; they are breeding, nesting and especially vulnerable in many of the places where the oil could come ashore." [Source.]

From a must-read post, Complete and Utter Disaster:

We’re in the midst of spring migration, a time of year when hundreds of thousands of neotropical migrating songbirds are teeming onto our continent from parts south, many of them taking a route that famously leads them to jump the Gulf of Mexico in one swoop. It’s a flight that can take up to 20 hours and leaves birds completely famished and exhausted. To say that it’s difficult is an understatement. It’s one of the truly amazing behaviors in the natural world. And now at the peak of migration, for those birds taking a path straight across the gulf with a bullseye on, perhaps, crucial bits of coastal habitat like Alabama’s Dauphin Island or Florida’s St. Mark’s NWR, the last stretch of migration has to be through a sooty, black curtain of oil smoke several thousand feet high.

Updates at the International Bird Rescue Research Center's blog.

All links in this post via the most excellent Mike McDowell, who wrote on Facebook that "everyone who voted for "Drill Baby Drill" [should] start heading down to the gulf coast to help clean oil off of critters."

As old and jaded and cynical as I am, I still have trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that we [consumers, voters, Americans] allow this sort of disaster to happen. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't be happening.


Commenter Bill on Coyote Crossing writes: "For all of you out there who care please lessen your use of the oil based economy, and, at the very least, don’t do business with BP."

Helluva lobbying group, Wayney

Dunno what's worse — a puppy-mill victim with a vacant stare, or a man so freaked out at the thought of handling an animal that he has to summon his girlfriend to remove her pet cat from his chest.

What's worst, actually, may be the fact that the cat-averse individual in question is lobbyist-in-chief of the beleaguered Humane Society of the United States. Which shouldn't be confused with your local humane society, not that anyone ever does such a thing.

Brent over at KC Dog Blog has an excellent run-down of some of the HSUS's most flagrant abuses and current troubles. "Help us care for the Vick dogs," oy. With a friend like Wayne "I don’t want to see another dog or cat born" Pacelle, dogs and cats don't need enemies.

The most excellent Laura Sanborn rages against the machine [in a comment at Pet Connection]:

HSUS & PETA —> still raking in tens of millions of dollars a year despite the Great Recession. Again, their fund-raising models work because they effectively and misleadingly leverage our compassion for defenseless animals. I won’t use those tactics myself and don’t have an answer for how to ethically compete with it.

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Here's a HumaneWatch.org guest column on the HSUS lobbying effort. [News flash: money talks!] Yes, I know HumaneWatch is a front for CAFO-lovin', environmentalist-hatin' extremists. It's just that they seem so much more... factual about the HSUS than the HSUS seems to be about unfunded mandates and wildlife management and such. The man who said, "The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest," never met a lobbyist. [I kid. He knew a few.]

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Terrific post over at Lucy & Friends on puppy mill legislation. Did I first bookmark Lucy nearly 20 years ago? I did indeed :~)


I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: we dog lovers screwed up big time when we told the average pet owner to forget about breeding his friendly, healthy Lab to the friendly, healthy collie mix down the street. When we did our best to prevent that, with our spay/neuter campaigns and our lists explaining "how to identify a good breeder," we gave up much of our freedom to have the dogs we really want. We granted ideologues and politicians, puppy mills, rescue groups and AKC breeders of functional cripples the power to shape and choose our dogs for us. Which reminds me: where exactly am I supposed to find a nice puppy these days? Hey, let's ask Wayne Pacelle — he knows all about animals!


[Which Times gets it right...? Image: "With his cat, Libby, is Wayne Pacelle, the Humane Society president." Photo by Michael Temchine for The New York Times.]

Working dogs in the news

Two stories: one hopeful, one skeptical.

First up, from the NY Times: For the Battle-Scarred, Comfort at Leash’s End. Excerpt:

Just weeks after Chris Goehner, 25, an Iraq war veteran, got a dog, he was able to cut in half the dose of anxiety and sleep medications he took for post-traumatic stress disorder. The night terrors and suicidal thoughts that kept him awake for days on end ceased.

Aaron Ellis, 29, another Iraq veteran with the stress disorder, scrapped his medications entirely soon after getting a dog — and set foot in a grocery store for the first time in three years.

The dogs to whom they credit their improved health are not just pets. Rather, they are psychiatric service dogs specially trained to help traumatized veterans leave the battlefield behind as they reintegrate into society.

Because of stories like these, the federal government, not usually at the forefront of alternative medical treatments, is spending several million dollars to study whether scientific research supports anecdotal reports that the dogs might speed recovery from the psychological wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Full story and audio slide show here. Photo at top left by Stephen Crowley for The New York Times.


Next: can dogs follow a six month old track? And if they can't, how is it that two search dogs — a yellow Labrador and a German short-haired pointer — came so close were driven to a site two miles from the place a murder victim's body was hidden?

The handlers, Sarah Platts and Julie R. Jones, partners at Virginia-based VK9 Scent Specific Search and Recovery Unit, say their highly trained dogs possess specialized skills that have made believers of many families and police agencies.

"It's a revelation for some folks," said Platts, 48, adding that her volunteer organization has helped authorities gather evidence on numerous murder and missing-person cases.

Dog handler organizations are skeptical. Their profession, members say, has been undermined over the years by handlers claiming amazing crime-busting abilities who were later exposed as frauds. They say Quincy and Jack's work was an incredible coincidence or a calculated hoax.

Attributing heroic skills to lovable dogs is natural but invites false hope, said Roger Titus, a trainer with the National Police Bloodhound Assn.

The article is online now, and will be on the front page of Monday's print edition of the L.A. Times: Dogged faith in these trackers.

There have been a few more

More aftershocks. [Click for big.] This is a screengrab from a site bookmarked by just about everyone in the Golden State: Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada. Real-time updating goodness, and all you need to know about the magic of plate tectonics.

According to the L.A. Times, the fault responsible for this quake was south of the San Andreas. One man died when his home near Mexicali collapsed, and "at least six homes were destroyed by fires caused by the quake."

In this KTLA news video, Caltech's most excellent Dr. Lucy Jones answers everyone's seismic, if not seismically sophisticated, questions. [As TJ Sullivan tweets, "Hearing Dr. Lucy after an earthquake is like hearing Vin Scully call a Dodger game. She's the real deal." Another classic from TJ: "What did we learn from today's quake? That hundreds of people in SoCal are constantly shooting video of their pool water."]

Whenever there's a quake over 5 or so, for days afterwards I always put a little flashlight in my jeans pocket and keep it close pretty much 24/7. Because earthquakes in total darkness are not cool.

Note to self: train dogs to duck, cover and hold.

Mashable has rounded up some earthquake photos from Twitter. This has to be high on everyone's "there but for the grace of God" list:

Evacuating Disneyland, by ms_kristin.

Related:
Protect Yourself During an Earthquake... Drop, Cover, and Hold On! [and forget that "Triangle of Life" BS].

U.S. Customs Canine Enforcement Training [video]

"Lab mix" when he's keeping the nation safe — "pit mix" if you're the nitwit: Rocky [former shelter dog], an explosive detector dog for U.S. Customs.

Time sink city — for the wonks, anyway ;~) To quote the most awesome and excellent Ta-Nehisi Coates:

C-SPAN has uploaded much of their video library. It's searchable. There is only one sensible reply to this information--Oh. My. God.

"Each dog is a unique individual, and so is each handler." Eugene Kerven, U.S. Customs Service Canine Enforcement Training Center Director.

So I ran across a 22-minute vid on dog training and training facilities operated by the U.S. Customs Service filmed back in 2001. At the time, 87% of the dogs used by U.S. Customs were from pounds and shelters — the type of dog Area Man turns in because Scout is bouncing off the walls and tearing the house down. [Scout is the kind of easy-to-motivate dog that trainers love. That I love, anyway.] The video is unembeddable — click on the link to view.

Read more here: U.S. border security canine programs