BOOKS: What The Parrot Told Alice

October 1, 1998 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

What The Parrot Told Alice
by Dale Smith
Illustrated by John Bardwell
Deer Creek Publishing (POB 2402, Nevada City, CA
95959), 1996. 125 pages. $11.95, paperback.

Loosely structured after Alice In Wonderland, with
black-and-white art instead of the color a book about parrots
would seem to demand, What The Parrot Told Alice owes more
to John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress, than to
Lewis Carroll, the vicar who broke from the tradition of “entertaining”
children with thinly disguised sermons.
Like both pre-Carroll children’s books and many
other recent ecologically sensitive titles, What The Parrot Told
Alice is unrelentingly preachy, albeit more sensitive to the
complexities of issues than most works of the genre, and
packed with information about parrots. It’s good enough to
wish it was more fully developed.

Reviews

BOOKS: The Master’s Cat & The Ugly Dachshund

October 1, 1998 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

The Master’s Cat:
The Story of Charles Dickens
as told by his Cat
by Eleanor Poe Barlow
132 pages. $24.00 hardcover.

The Ugly Dachshund
by G.B. Stern
Illustrated by K.F. Barker
192 pages. $15.00, paperback.
Both from J.N. Townsend Publishing
(12 Greenleaf Drive, Exeter, NH 03833), 1998.

Charles Dickens spent the last 14 years of his life
with a small white cat as his constant companion. The cat
was reputedly deaf. At least in Eleanor Poe Barlow view of
Dickens’ later years, as allegedly written from the cat’s perspective,
this did not preclude her from hearing human
speech. Purported dialogue appears on almost every page,
including improbably long soliloquies.

Moi brings back Leakey to patch wildlife service

October 1, 1998 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

NAIROBI, Kenya––Anthropologist Richard
Leakey, 56, on September 25 returned to the head of the
Kenya Wildlife Service. His appointment by president Daniel
arap Moi surprised just about all observers.
A third-generation Kenyan, whose British grandfather
came as a missionary in 1902, Leakey previously took
charge of the KWS in 1989, also at Moi’s request. Then as
now, poaching, crime, and mismanagement threatened the
viability of the Kenyan wildlife reserves, which together attract
as many as 750,000 visitors a year, and are the nation’s third
biggest source of foreign exchange.
Attracting strong support from abroad, Leakey
stepped up wildlife law enforcement, scarcely missing a day on
the job even after losing both legs in a 1993 plane crash, but
his legal rigidity openly antagonized some of Moi’s intimates.
Some reportedly wished to undo the Kenyan constitutional ban
on sport hunting, in order to start trophy hunting businesses;
others were accused of farming on wildlife reserve property.

DELIVERED TO SAFETY!

October 1, 1998 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

SAN ANTONIO, Texas– – Fifty-
five stumptail macaques arrived on
September 2 at the Wildlife Animal
Orphanage, after a 35-hour ride from the
Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin.
Native to Thailand, the stumptail colony is
descended from animals used to breed
research subjects for use by the late Harry
Harlow in his notorious infant deprivation
experiments, conducted from 1936 to 1971.
Remaining property of the University of
Wisconsin Regional Primate Research
Center, the stumptails and two breeding
groups of rhesus macaques had been housed
at the Vilas Zoo since 1963.
The stumptail colony still includes
a 37-year-old female who was among those
transferred out of Harlow’s direct custody.
The arrangement predated a clause of the
American Zoo Association code of ethics,
adopted in 1986, which discourages zoos
from providing animals for research not related
to conserving their own species.

Let them eat crow, say commissioners

October 1, 1998 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

The Nevada Board of Wildlife
Commissioners, which in March authorized
hunters to kill up to 10 crows a day
during spring and fall seasons, on
September 26 voted 8-1 not to open a bear
season, due to lack of bears everywhere but
in the Carson Range, east of Lake Tahoe.
Coinciding with the start of
hunting season, the Vermont Office of
Child Support in mid-August placed newspaper
ads warning that parents who don’t
make child support payments on time could
lose their hunting and fishing licenses. The
threat of license suspension has helped drive
collection of unpaid child support up from
$12 million in 1991 to $40 million in 1997.
According to the National
Advertising Council, the top 10 ad categories
in Hunter magazine during 1997, by
page count, were firearms; alcoholic
drinks; electronic devices; tobacco; job
opportunities; bladder control; off-road
vehicles and pickup trucks; hair restoration;
underwear; and pro wrestling.

Beers for the road at U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

October 1, 1998 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

James Beers, former chief of
wildlife refuge operations for the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and now USFWS liaison to
state wildlife agencies, recently told August
Gribbin of The Washington Times that USFWS
has attempted to oust him because he accepted
the National Trappers Association’s
“Conservationist of the Year” award for his
role in killing a European Union attempt to ban
imports of leghold-trapped fur.
This, Beers claimed, offended
USFWS brass who wish to cozy up with animal
rights activists. He didn’t name names.
He is reportedly now trying to press a whistleblower
complaint against higher-ups for transfering
him from Washington D.C. to
Massachusetts.

Four thousand acres––and 600 emus

October 1, 1998 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

ELK CREEK, Calif.––”Our object
in obtaining this land,” explained Humane
Farming Association Founder and president
Brad Miller, greeting the first outside visitors
to the 4,000-acre Suwanna Ranch after the
1998 No-Kill Conference, “was to see how
long we could maintain our policy of never
turning away a farm animal who had been
involved in a cruelty case, who had been
referred to us by a humane society, animal
control department, police department, fire
department, or county sheriff’s office.”
HFA guarantees farm animals who
have endured prosecutable cruelty a caring
home for life in a semi-natural environment.
But, Miller continues, “After many years of
doing this, our original HFA Farm Animal
Refuge in Fairfield,” just north of San
Francisco, “was becoming a little crowded.
We think, with this extra space, we’ll now be
able to keep going for quite a long time.”

Animals in laboratories

October 1, 1998 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Bert and Ernie, the first two pigs
whom Pennsylvania State University professor
Stan Curtis taught to play computer
games and adjust their own room temperature
with a joy stick, whose achievements were
described on page one of the June edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE, arrived on August 5 at
PIGS: A Sanctuary, in Charles Town,
West Virginia. Learning that Curtis had
replaced Bert and Ernie in his experiments
with two pigs of a smaller breed, Dale Riffle
and Jim Brewer wondered if the “retired”
pigs might be sent to slaughter or be used in
other research––so they asked, offered them
a home for life, and won approval from the
Penn State Institutional Animal Care and Use
Committee. “Bert and Ernie are true ambassadors
for advancing the humane treatment of
animals typically used for food,” said Riffle.
“They have contributed greatly to educating
the world that pigs are not stupid.”

Wearing the black hat well

October 1, 1998 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

GREENSBORO, N.C.––Sheriff B.J. Barnes
of Guilford County, North Carolina, on September 10
relievedly turned the county animal shelter over to the
United Animal Coalition, a consortium of 13 local
organizations including both the Guilford County
Humane Society and the Greensboro SPCA.
Forced to run the shelter temporarily through
the summer, when no one else wanted the contract,
Barnes on August 7 jolted viewers of his weekly
“Sheriff’s Beat” cable TV program with a 35-second
clip of himself killing a homeless dog.
Over the next six weeks, the Guilford
County adoption rate jumped 300%, and the UAC
formed in response to public outcry.

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