Book Reviews

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

Track of the Cat, by Nevada Barr. G.P.

Putnam’s Sons (200 Madison Ave., New York, NY

10016) 1993, 238 pages, $19.95 hardcover.

“When is a cougar not a cougar?” asks National Park

Service Ranger Anna Pigeon, the heroine of this mystery

novel. Anna discovers the corpse of fellow park ranger Sheila

Drury while on a routine expedition searching for signs of

mountain lions. Drury has apparently been killed by one of

the big cats, but there are inconsistencies, which only Anna

seems to recognize. The authorities order the inevitable hunt

for the killer cat, and a lactating female cougar is blamed and

sacrificed. Anna, a native New Yorker who is more at home

with the desert wildlife of the Texas outback than with people,

is outraged and begins to probe. The plot twists and turns,

and the suspense carries through the last page. A bonus for the

animal person is that the book, written by real-life park ranger

Nevada Barr, is totally “animal rights” while being blessedly

bereft of philosophizing.

––Kim Bartlett

Alleged horse killers charged with murder

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

CHICAGO––Illinois and federal

authorities probing a scheme to kill race and show

horses for insurance money say they have cracked

a series of the most sensational unsolved crimes in

Chicago history. Richard Bailey, 62, described

as a gigolo who cheated lonely widows out of hun-

dreds of thousands of dollars, was charged July 27

in connection with the 1977 disappearance of

Helen Vorhees Brach, the Brach candy heiress

whose will founded the Brach Foundation, a

major source of funding for animal-related chari-

ties. August 12, stable owner Kenneth Hansen, a

Bailey associate, was charged with the October

1955 kidnap-rape-murders of Robert Peterson, 14,

and brothers John and Anton Schluessler, ages 13

and 11, whose deaths, some sociologists say,

changed the attitudes of America toward hitchhik-

ing and supervision of children, and reinforced

homophobia for a generation of parents.

RODEO

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

California Assembly Bill 49x, to ban

horse–tripping––a staple of charro rodeo – – at

deadline awaited only governor Pete Wilson’s

signature to become law. Calls of support for the

bill may be made to 916-445-2864.

The Animal Rights Foundation of

Florida asks that letters protesting Dr. Pepper’s

use of rodeo themes in ads be sent to John Clark,

Senior V.P. for Advertising, Dr. Pepper USA,

8144 Walnut Hill Lane, Dallas, TX 75231.

Members of In Defense of Animals

attempted a sit-in August 12 to protest a cattle

drive through the streets of Napa, California,

held to promote the Napa Town and Country Fair

rodeo. They were nearly trampled––along with

spectators––when the supposedly expert cowboys

lost control of the herd of 25 longhorn steers

about a block before reaching the demonstrators.

Bernstein lays down LASPCA law

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

LOS ANGELES––Hired to

revamp the Los Angeles SPCA, executive

director Madeleine Bernstein is already

dodging backstabs from some of the board,

which in April pushed Bernstein’s prede-

cessor, Ed Cubrda, into retirement after 25

years. In July, American Humane

Association west coast office director Betty

Denny Smith quietly quit the board, after

11 years. Soon afterward at least one other

board member intimated to media that

Smith quit because of Bernstein’s policies,

which Smith denied, and issued other

charges about Bernstein’s activity that fact-

checking soon disproved.

BOOKS: Pets and the meaning of life

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

Yes Virginia ...There IS A Pet

Heaven: Understanding Your Older

Dogs and Cats, by Corienne “Corky”

Jones. Pebbles Publishing (POB 1432,

Beaverton, OR 97075-1432), 1991, 144

pages, paper, $12.95 plus $2.00 postage.

Corienne Jones sums up her

approach to caring for older pets in mantra-

like fashion several times during the course of

her book:

BOOKS: Seeking the truth of whales

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

The Year of the Whale, by Victor B. Sheffer.

Scribner, 1969. 244 pages, paperback, out of print.

Gone Whaling, by Douglas Hand. Simon &

Schuster (Rockefeller Center, 1230 Avenue of the

Americas, New York, NY 10020), 1994. 223 pages,

$22.00 hardback.

Published 25 years apart, The Year of the Whale

and Gone Whaling came to ANIMAL PEOPLE, the former

at a library book sale and the latter for review, within 24

hours of one another. Victor Sheffer’s faintly fictionalized

account of the first year in the life of a sperm whale might be

remembered as the book that saved the whales, except that it

isn’t remembered at all despite the acclaim it received on pub-

lication, including the Burroughs Medal for the year’s best

book about natural history. Douglas Hand’s exploration of

the growing human fascination with orcas owes ancestry to

Sheffer’s work, even though the odds are good that Hand

hasn’t ever heard of Sheffer, much less read him. Though

ANIMAL HEALTH

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

No face-branding halt yet despite what mass media reported

July 7 media reports that the USDA would no longer require face-branding of steers import-

ed from Mexico were incorrect. Such an announcement was expected, but was apparently delayed by

the White House to get input on the rules change from the National Cattlemen’s Association. The

USDA did amend the import rules for Mexican heifers, who now must be given a local anesthetic

prior to spaying, and are rump-branded. The steers are branded to help inspectors backtrack cattle car-

rying bovine tuberculosis; the heifers are spayed to prevent the transmission of brucellosis.

What’s up in Montreal?

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

MONTREAL––The Canadian

SPCA recently endured yet another of

many recent changes of management, as

a young dissident faction led by longtime

critic Alex Wolfe won control of the

board and moved it toward the distant

goal of becoming a no-kill––against bitter

union and veterinary opposition.

“Until now,” former board

member Anne Streeter wrote recently in

the Montreal Gazette, “the CSPCA has

been notoriously trigger-happy, putting

down close to 50,000 animals a year.

Now the CSPCA is accused of keeping

too many marginally healthy animals

alive. Critics say the place is overcrowd-

ed, dirty, underfunded and short-staffed.”

What’s up in Minneapolis?

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

MINNEAPOLIS––The Animal

Humane Society of Hennepin County, the

leading shelter in Minneapolis, has

achieved a 50% adoption rate or better

every year since 1990. Broken down,

AHSHC places 97% of the puppies it

receives, 50% of the adult dogs, 60% of

the kittens, and 35% of the adult cats. The

high adoption numbers are not achieved

through selective intake: of the 22,151 ani-

mals AHSHC handled in 1992, 84% were

animal control pickups.

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