Editorial: Westward ho!

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

You may have noticed that this edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE is dated simply
“July.” Traditionally we’ve published a combined July/August edition, but we’ve varied the
routine this year to facilitate our forthcoming relocation, from a 160-year-old rambling
farmhouse almost on top of the New York/Vermont border to a compact home/office in
Clinton, Washington. Because our new location won’t be ready until we’d normally be
starting in on our September edition, and because moving 22 cats, three dogs, and a whole
newspaper cross-country and setting up again will of necessity take several weeks, we’ll be
issuing an August/September combined edition from here, to be mailed in late July, just
before we hit the road. While the post office delivers it, we’ll roll west in a convoy of rented
trucks, the traveling menagerie in an air-conditioned van with double doors to prevent
escapes, and the office in a separate van because cats, dogs, files, and computers barely
get along even without the stress of travel. (It’s not the animals who object––it’s the equipment.)
By the time you’ve received the August/September edition, we hope, we’ll be
unpacking and able to answer your calls, faxes, and e-mailed information requests.

“They poop––kill them.” NEW TWIST TO SILENT SPRING

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

CHATHAM, Massachusetts– –
Three stories simultaneously moving on the
newswires at the beginning of June called to
mind the late Rachel Carson, author of Silent
Spring, the expose of chemical poisons and
their effect on birds that 35 years ago marked
the start of environmental militancy.
Carson would have applauded an
eight-state program of cooperation with state
government and private industry that the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service credited with cutting
the number of major illegal bird poisoning
cases in the central and northern Rockies
last year to just three, down from nine in
1994. As in Carson’s time, eagles who
allegedly prey on lambs remain the primary
targets, but the victims can now be counted
in the dozens, not the hundreds, and bald
eagles, then apparently headed toward
extinction, are now off the Endangered
Species List––which was created as part of
the Endangered Species Act, a measure
Carson advanced but which was not passed
until nine years after her 1964 death.

Give them liberty or give them fish

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

KEY WEST, Florida––It’s all over now but the blame-throwing. Bogie and
Bacall, the former Ocean Reef Club dolphins, are back at large in the Indian River Lagoon,
where they were captured in 1987, unidentifiable because someone on the night of May 17
cut the plastic fence forming their sea pen to release them just before they were to be freezebranded
to facilitate follow-up study of their progress.
Luther and Jake, two former Navy dolphins, are back in the Navy, and Buck, the
third of that group, will rejoin the Navy marine mammal program when and if he recovers
from an infected deep cut of unknown origin. Luther had a similar but less serious cut.

Puma panic

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Worthy of a film expose in the tradition of Reefer Madness,
the hyperbolic 1936 documentary that alerted the world to the perils of
marijuana, PUMA PANIC!!! could be coming soon to a suburb near you!
Causes include the possible presence of a puma within a few
dozen miles; public reminders that pumas eat pets and people; hunting
advocates blaming the problem on an alleged lack of people using
hounds and telemetry to track pumas, then blow them out of trees in
such a manner as to save intact heads for the wall; and wildlife officials
engaging in bizarre rituals to avert the threat, sometimes reminiscent of
animal sacrifice to appease an alleged dragon.
For instance, with the approval of Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife biologist John Thiebes, volunteer trapper Richard Stahl
circa May 13 live-trapped a purported feral cat, fed the cat for three
days, and then staked him out in a small cage as live bait for a puma
who purportedly stalked two boys near Medford on April 3, six weeks
earlier; killed several other cats; and killed a dachshund on April 29.

OBITUARIES

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment