Month: July 2004

BOOKS: Parrot Culture

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Parrot Culture by Bruce Thomas Boehrer
University of Pennsylvania Press (4200 Pine Street, Philadelphia,
PA 19104), 2004. 224 pages, paperback. $27.50.

The parrots who were popular in Greco-Roman imperial times, and
thereafter in Europe during the Middle Ages, came from India. But
the overland traffic in parrots slowed after the rise of Islam,
partly because Mohammed taught against caging birds and partly
because warfare between Christians and Muslims significantly reduced
the chances of moving fragile species through Central Asia alive.
Bruce Boehrer’s research shows that the parrots who flooded
into Europe after the Renaissance came from the New World, as a
direct result of Christopher Colum-bus’ voyages of discovery.
Over two millennia, the reverence with which captive parrots
were originally treated disappeared and the birds later became
objects of ridicule and satire. Boehrer delves at some length into
depictions of parrots in art and literature over the ages. Included
is the famous Monty Python “Dead Parrot Sketch.”
Renaissance writers transformed parrots into comic figures,
and some painters of the period did the same thing. Parrots appear
in numerous paintings by great masters including Rubens, Van Dyk,
Manet, and even some of the French impressionists, notably Renoir.

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Black & white

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians & Staff “is dedicated to
Lloyd Tait, VMD, the ASPCA’s first ‘head of shelter medicine,’ who
was everything one could imagine in a friend and mentor. Irascible,
supportive, quixotic, and fiercely dedicated to animal welfare, he
laid the early foundation for the formal practice of veterinary
medicine in the ASPCA shelters,” editors Lila Miller and Stephen
Zawistowski acknowledge.
Tait now works for the World Society for the Protection of
Animals. We recently received a copy of his comprehensive report on
the progress of dog sterilization in place of animal control killing
in Sri Lanka.
Tait joined the ASPCA staff in 1968, following former ASPCA
Brooklyn shelter director George Watford, now retired, as the
second nationally prominent humane worker of African descent. Miller
joined the ASPCA staff in 1977. She became the third nationally
prominent humane worker of African descent.
Since Miller was hired, a few other people of African
ancestry have become prominent in shelter work, perhaps most notably
longtime National Animal Control Association board member Keith
Robinson, but a convention of Afro-American executive directors of
humane societies could probably be held around one small table, and
would still have empty chairs.

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BOOKS: Vegetarianism: A History

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Vegetarianism: A History by Colin Spencer
Four Walls Eight Windows (39 W. 14th St,, New York, NY 10011),
2004. 384 pp., paperback. $16.00.

Until recent times, the history of vegetarianism was also
the history of religion and politics. The first two thirds of Colin
Spencer’s book describes the evolution of humanism and political and
religious influence on meat-eating.
Until the 18th century, vegetarianism in Europe was usually
equated with radicalism and heresy. During the Albigensian Crusade
against the vegetarian Cathari, who from about 1150 until circa 1250
challenged the primacy of Catholicism in southern France, alleged
heretics were required to prove their innocence by eating meat.
Spencer relates how “heretics” were brought before the
Emperor: “Among other wicked Manichean doctrines, they condemned
all eating of animals and with the agreement of everybody present,
he ordered them to be hanged.”
Circa 500 years B.C. the Greek philosopher and mathematician
Pythagoras was viewed with suspicion, though treated with greater
tolerance, when he openly abjured flesh. Pythagoras cited his belief
in the health benefits of vegetarianism, and his hope that
vegetarian societies would be less inclined to wage war. The basis
of his vegetarianism, however, appears to have been a belief in the
transmigration of souls (reincarnation).

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BOOKS: Life With Darwin & Other Baboons

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Life With Darwin
& Other Baboons
by Fransje Van Riel
Penguin Books South Africa Ltd.
(2nd floor, 90 Rivonia Rd., Sandton, 2196,
South Africa), 2003. 227 pages, paperback.
113 South African Rands .
(about $21 U.S., c/o <www.exclusivebooks.com>.)

It is undeniable that baboons cause problems for farmers in
South Africa. Unfortunately, the usual response to their presence
is to shoot them. Life With Darwin & Other Baboons seeks to reduce
hostility toward baboons by providing insight into the complexities
of baboon society and the inevitable conflicts that arise when
animals and humans use the same habitat.
I once visited the South Texas Primate Sanctuary in Dilley,
Texas (now known as the API Primate Sanctuary). Founder Lou Griffin,
then still the director, knew every snow monkey and understood how
they fit into the group. When Lou introduced me to the snow monkeys,
she gave me the privilege of entering a fascinating new world. Life
With Darwin opens a similar door.
Fransje Van Riel introduces us to baboons through Karin Saks,
foster mother to an orphaned infant named Gismo. As Karin cared for
his physical and emotional needs, she realized that she would
ultimately have to find him a wild baboon family. Locating a wild
troop, she slowly introduced Gismo to it. Thanks to her
extraordinary efforts, the troop accepted him.

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Animal obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Shopper, 6, a California sea lion who swam up the Napa
River to visit a Petaluma motorcycle shop, was shot circa July 5 by
an unknown person near Benessere Vineyards, north of St. Helena.
Captured by Marine Mammal Center staff after his first swim inland,
Shopper was released on June 22 at Point Reyes National Seashore,
but returned upriver the next day. Napa radio station KVON raised a
reward fund of $12,500 for the conviction of his killer.

Tina, 34, an Asian elephant born at the Oregon Zoo, kept
at the Greater Vancou-ver Zoo 1972-2003, died suddenly on July 21,
2004 at the Elephant Sanctuary at Hohenwald, Tennessee, her home
since August 2003, much missed by two companions.

A.J., 12, the bloodhound who inspired Kat Albrecht to use
dogs to track lost pets, died on July 7. “His history included many
searches for criminals and lost people,” Albrecht wrote. “In 1998,
A.J. was retired from police work due to hip displasia, and moved
straight into tracking pets. On his first search he found a missing
diabetic cat named Marmalade in less than eight minutes. He received
hip replacement surgery in 1999 and lived afterward in relative
comfort. A.J. was featured in the PBS program Dogs With Jobs., and
in the PAX program Miracle Pets (now shown on Animal Planet as Animal
Miracles). Several of his searches are featured in The Lost Pet
Chronicles,” reviewed on page 20.

Oasis in a storm

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

BENSON, Arizona–Since the high-tech stock crash of
2000-2001 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, hundreds
of charities have coped with abrupt losses of income, but the ups
and downs of the Oasis Sanctuary Foundation have occurred for other
reasons.
Sybil Erden in 1997 started Oasis from her home in Phoenix to
provide lifetime care to cast-off tropical birds. Also in 1997,
two strangers, Mary and Jason Sanderson, of Nashua, New Hampshire,
won a $66 million Powerball lottery. They became acquainted with
Erden in 1998.
Struggling with a cumulative deficit of almost $80,000,
Erden in 1999 moved Oasis to a 72-acre former pecan orchard beside
the San Pedro River at Cascabel, Arizona, secured on a five-year
mortgage with a pledge from the Sandersons to donate $100,000 a year
for 24 years. In January 2004, however, the Sandersons told Erden
that their pending divorce would end the payments. Oasis is now
suing them for the unpaid balance.

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USAid pushes Zimbabwean “wise use” wildlife management model in Kenya

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

HARARE, NAIROBI–The future of wildlife in Zimbabwe and
Kenya may depend on the outcome of the November 2004 U.S.
Presidential election–or may be decided sooner, as officials in a
position to cash in on consumptive use rush to do it.
U.S. President George W. Bush brought to the White House a
renewed commitment to the wildlife policies of his father George H.
Bush and Ronald Reagan.
Echoing the “sustainable use” rhetoric of the World Wildlife
Fund and African Wildlife Foundation, all three Presidents have
actually been more closely aligned with the Competitive Enterprise
Institute and Safari Club International–and none more so than George
W., who was the Safari Club “Governor of the Year” in 1999 for
vetoing a Texas bill to restrain canned hunts.
Operative assumptions of the George W. Bush administration
African wildlife policy, are that wildlife should pay its own way;
that trophy hunting is the best ecological and economic use for large
wildlife; that breeding huntable populations of wildlife in
captivity is an acceptable alternative to protecting habitat; that
conservation is best motivated by profit rather than altruism; and
that his Republican forebears knew what they were doing, since none
of the Big Five trophy species–African elephant, rhino, lion,
leopard, and Cape buffalo–went extinct on their watch.
The Center for Private Conservation, a Competitive
Enterprise Institute subsidiary, touted Zimbabwe as the showplace
for successful “wise use” wildlife policy during the 2000 U.S.
election campaign. Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, an avowed
Marxist just a few years earlier, seduced the Reagan and George H.
Bush administrations by turning conservation over almost entirely to
the private sector.

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Human obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Bonny Shah, 58, died on July 28, 2004, in Dallas, after
a long battle with leukemia. She married electrical engineer Ratilal
Shah, a Jain from Gujarat, India, in 1968. Unable to find work as
a teacher, she started a business called Maharani, importing
hand-crafted dog collars and other gift items from India, “but
instead of selling the collars, she used them to bring rescued dogs
home,” Rati Shah told ANIMAL PEOPLE. He joined Maharani in 1975,
three years after the birth of their son Noah. The firm found a
niche supplying animal-theme items to zoo gift shops. As it grew,
the Shahs hired ever-increasing numbers of Indian artisans. They
built a school in India that was among the first to teach computer
skills as part of the curriculum, a human birth control clinic that
performs 200 sterilizations per year, and a general-purpose clinic
serving 30 villages that treats 18,000 patients per year without
charge. In exchange for donating 20 computers to the school the
Shahs built, Bonny Shah won a pledge that the school will look after
several dogs she rescued throughout their lives. At the Shahs’ home
in Bartonville, Texas, they founded the Ahimsa of Texas sanctuary,
managed by Bonny’s parents, Lou and Evelyn Karstadt, who continue
in her memory. “Bonny loved donkeys. She wanted to do more for
donkeys,” Rati Shah continued, “so in India we created the Dharma
Donkey Sanctuary,” now supervised by Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep
Kumar Nath. “With the help of the Blue Cross of India,” Rati Shah
said, “we treat 2,500 donkeys there at donkey camps held every six
months.” Bonny Shah also sponsored humane education and feral cat
rescue work by Kat Chaplin, the Dallas-based “Neuteress of the
Night.” Chaplin introduced the Shahs to ANIMAL PEOPLE in January
1998. During the next six years Bonny Shah contributed profiles of
the Bishnoi people of the Rajasthan desert, whose Jain-like faith
emphasizes kindness toward animals; the Donkey Sanctuary, in
England; and the Wildlife SOS and Friendicoes sanctuaries in India.

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Post-9/11 shelter killing hits 4.9 million a year

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004

Entering 2004, ANIMAL PEOPLE hoped that 2003 would prove to
have been the year when U.S. shelter killing of dogs and cats fell
below four million for the first time since the first national
estimates of the toll were developed circa 1960.
Instead, surging intakes of pit bull terriers,
Rottweilers, and mixed breed dogs with pit bull or Rottweiler traits
appear to have more than offset all the reductions achieved since
1997 in feral cat intake, accidental litters of puppies and kittens,
and surrenders of unruly year-old purebred dogs of other types.
Thus the estimated U.S. shelter death toll soared by 17%, to
4.9 million.
The ANIMAL PEOPLE estimate is based on data from every
shelter in cities, counties, or sometimes whole states containing
more than a third of the U.S. human population, and is
proportionately weighted to get regional balance. It includes data
collected only in the three preceding years.
Thus the 2004 ANIMAL PEOPLE estimate is the first to consist
predominantly of data reflecting the economic conditions following
the high-tech stock collapse of 2000-2001 and the terrorist attacks
of September 11, 2001.

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