Month: October 1997

What really happened at Horizon High School

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.––The so-called Horizon
High School chicken incident of April 11, in Scottsdale,
Arizona, was perhaps the most publicized case of alleged
teenaged animal abuse this year, and was subject of a demonstration
outside the school as late as August 14––but an ANIMAL
PEOPLE investigation supports the findings of the
Phoenix Police Department and Paradise Valley Unified School
District that the incident simply did not happen as it was reported
by two local TV stations, the Animal Benefit Club, and
United Poultry Concerns.
The widely distributed allegation was that according
to eyewitnesses, 50 hens were released on the campus, then
“beaten, kicked like footballs, hurled through the air, stuffed
into lockers, and run over by cars.”

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Rarely caught

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Just a handful of alleged bird thieves have ever been
caught, including a woman who was charged on September
17 with stealing a Goffin cockatoo from the Village Pet
Center in Midvale, Utah, by stuffing the bird into a diaper
bag. She reportedly admitted to police that she resold the
cockatoo three weeks later to another pet store for $600, 60%
of the estimated retail value.
Akron police officer Tom Miksch in March 1995
made the first pinch of a parrot thief that ANIMAL PEOPLE
has on record. Miksch recovered a Moluccan cockatoo valued
at $2,499 in the first animal-related crime he said he had
handled in 25 years on the force. One of the two alleged perpetrators,
Gary L. Peavler, 39, had 90 previous adult arrests
and 42 prior convictions, the Akron Beacon-Journal reported,
on charges including mutiple counts of intoxication, plus
cases of assault, petty theft, and gross sexual imposition.

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REPORT FROM THE PREMARIN FRONT by Robin Duxbury, president, Project Equus

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

In early September United
Animal Nations sent me, Project
Equus PMU campaign coordinator
Jeri Meacham, and new UAN program
director Janet Hendrickson to
Manitoba to investigate the plight of
PMU mares and their foals.
As ANIMAL PEOPLE
exposed in April 1993, touching off
an ongoing international boycott of
the estrogen supplement Premarin,
PMU, short for pregnant mares’
urine, is produced by mares who
spend about two-thirds of each year
confined to their stalls, strapped to
collection cups, to produce the pregnant
mares’ urine that is the source
of the estrogen used in Premarin.

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Letters [Oct 1997]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

No-kill animal control agency
The Colorado Humane Society & SPCA is an open-door
shelter that provides animal control service to a large part of the
Denver metropolitan area––while operating as a no-kill shelter. We do
not kill animals for lack of space or for time limits. We euthanize only
to end the suffering of mortally injured or sick animals; when directed
to do so by a government agency; when an animal’s aggression is
unalterable and it poses a risk to society; and when an owner asks us
to do so––and we try to talk them out of it. In all of our research, I
have found no information on other organizations which manage this
difficult feat. Do you know of another? We would like to find information
on similar organizations, and would love to share information
on our success where it may help others.
––Pat Milton
Colorado Humane Society
Littleton, Colorado

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Editorial: Slugs, burros, men & boys

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Two young burros from Wild Burro Rescue now share the ANIMAL PEOPLE
premises with 19 cats, two dogs, three humans, and just about every kind of wildlife
native to Whidbey Island, Washington, including all seven types of slug.
The slugs would remind us of the often slow pace of change, even if our work did
not, having survived, almost unaltered, for more than 450 million years, with scarcely a
visible friend. Even the cats back disgustedly from their dishes when slugs crawl through
the heavy-duty screens around the porch to invade their kibble. We patiently relocate the
slugs more from obedience to the compassionate ethic than from genuine empathy––except
for Wolf, now seven, who has insisted on relocating every kind of life from harm’s way
since he could walk. Wolf opened this school year by rescuing a snake and attempting to
save grasshoppers from boys who tormented and tried to kill them on the playground. The
notion that “It’s just a [fill in the blank]” has never been part of his psychological vocabulary.
Instead, he explains––to anyone who denigrates any life form––that “all life has an
importance.” To be able to love a slug, we think, exemplifies the hope of the humane
movement and indeed, of humanity.

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REFUGE OR NO-MAN’S LAND?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

BURMA––”About 300 Karen
civilians fled into the Mae Sarieng district” of
Thailand, the Global Response environmental
and human rights electronic mail network
alerted 6,500 members on August 21, “after
Burmese soldiers torched six villages in
Burma’s Doi Kor province,” torturing relatives
and friends of the refugees who were
captured, according to interviews with the
escapees and relief workers published by the
Burma News Network and Bangkok Post.
The refugees, like many other
Karen fleeing the dictatorship of Burma over
the past several years, were interned at a
Thai government camp for displaced persons.
Especially problematic for human
rights advocates was that the incident came in
association with the establishment of the
Myinmoletkat Nature Reserve.

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Germ war on rabbits

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand––
Frustrated by governmental caution, farmers in
at least six districts of the South Island of New
Zealand separately introduced the deadly rabbit
calicivirus in late August. Their evident strategy
was to goad the government into undertaking
large-scale deliberate releases, as Australia
did in October 1996, a year after an accidental
release from a test site on Wardang Island
turned four of the six Australian states into––in
effect––a germ warfare experiment.
Concerned about liability, New
Zealand authorities held back a long discussed
release. On the verge of the rabbit birthing season,
highland farmers finally forced the issue
by importing from Australia the internal organs
of rabbits who had died of calicivirus, pureeing
the organs in blenders with bait such as oats,
jam, or carrots, and pouring the mess around
rabbit warrens.

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Speculative prices send parrot theft soaring

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

MIAMI– –Bill Gates, 50, not the
Microsoft baron but the manager of Animalia
Exotics in Miami, crawled out of a pool of his
own blood on August 20, dialed store owner
Joe Ferrero on his beeper, and when Ferrero
immediately called back, croaked “Joe, get
over here. I’m dying.”
Gates didn’t die, but he had been
badly pistol-whipped by two men who had just
cased the store with a seven-year-old girl and a
220-pound woman. The four left. The men then
returned to nab $200, an umbrella cockatoo,
and a Milian Amazon parrot. The birds were
worth an estimated $3,500, near the low end of
the parrot price scale.

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