REVIEWS: Kratts’ Creatures

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

Kratts’ Creatures
with Martin Kratt, Chris Kratt, and Shannon Duff
PBS, 4:30 p.m. daily, school day afternoons and weekend mornings.

After Wolf Clifton, 7, saw one
episode of Kratt’s Creatures at his cousin
Eric’s house, on a local Public Broadcasting
System station that doesn’t reach here, there
was no peace until we’d figured out how to get
the program by satellite from KBDI-Denver.
There was still a conflict, in that because of
the difference in time zones, K r a t t ’ s
Creatures airs here an hour earlier than it’s
supposed to––soon enough after the end of
Wolf’s school day that he has to rush right in
the door and turn on the TV, and even then he
often misses the opening sequence.
But ANIMAL PEOPLE p u b l i s h e r
Kim Bartlett, Wolf’s mommy, is also his driver,
and was soon so hooked on K r a t t ’ s
Creatures herself that they rarely miss the start
of the original material.

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BOOKS: Vegetarian Dogs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Vegetarian Dogs:
Towards a World
Without Exploitation
by Verona re-Bow
and Jonathan Dune
LiveArt (POB 7056, Halcyon, CA
93421), 1998.
55 pages, spiral binding, $12.00

In India, where one can hardly open
one’s eyes without seeing a street dog, and
where commercial dog food is almost unheard
of, there are indeed plenty of malnourished,
even starving dogs. One wonders, however,
if the malnourishment is not due less to the diet
of street garbage––mostly fruits and vegetables
–– than to parasite infestation and over-competition
for the garbage caused by too many dogs,
too many pigs, and lots of monkeys.

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BOOKS: The Monkey’s Bridge & The Flight of the Iguana

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

The Monkey’s Bridge:
Mysteries of Evolution in Central America
by David Rains Wallace
Sierra Club Books (895 2nd St., San Francisco, CA 94105), 1997.
$25.00, hardcover, 276 pages.

The Flight of the Iguana:
A Sidelong View of Science & Nature
by David Quammen
Touchstone Books (1230 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 1998.
302 pages, paperback, $13.00.

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BOOKS: Gray Whales: Wandering Giants

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Gray Whales:
Wandering Giants
by Robert H. Busch
Orca Book Publishers (POB 468, Custer,
WA 98240-0468), 1998.
138 pages, paperback, $19.95.

Among the whales most often seen
along the Pacific coast, gray whales until
recently have been much less known than the
acrobatic orcas and humpbacks, and the giant
blue whales, who––though relatively rarely
seen––loom as large in imagination as in life.
Perhaps for that reason there was
little public opposition when gray whales
were downlisted from endangered to threatened
in 1992, and removed completely from
Endangered Species Act protection in 1994.

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BOOKS: Animal Rights: History and Scope of a Radical Social Movement

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Animal Rights:
History and Scope
of a Radical
Social Movement
by Harold D. Guither
Southern Illinois University Press (POB
3697, Carbondale, IL 62901), 1998.
287 pages, paperback, $25.00.

Harold D. Guither, professor
emeritus of agricultural policy at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
offers in Animal Rights: History and Scope
of a Radical Social Movement the most thorough,
dispassionate, statistically documented
analysis of the animal rights movement
yet published. Though Guither approaches
the topic from an agribusiness perspective, it
would be unfair to characterize him as antianimal
rights. Guither’s philosophical position

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BOOKS: Hummingbirds: My Winter Guests

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Hummingbirds:
My Winter Guests
by Arnette Heidcamp
Crown Publishing (201 E. 50th St. New
York, NY 10022), 1997.
192 pages, hardcover, $18.00.

Several years ago I found a bird’s
nest in the woods: tightly woven from fine
grass fibers, and incredibly small. Recognizing
that it had belonged to a hummingbird, I
was astounded to realize that the tiny bird had
raised her entire family in it.
Arnette Heidcamp’s third volume
on her experiences with hummingbirds
recounts the events of the 1995-1996 winter,
when she hosted two injured rubythroats and
two rufuses who stayed too long in their summer
territory.

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BOOKS: Land of the Tiger

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Land of the Tiger
A Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent
by Valmik Thapar
University of California Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94720), 1998.
288 pages, 167 color photos, $29.95 hardcover.

You might expect a pornographic
preoccupation with predation from the title
Land of the Tiger , a dry tome from the subtitle,
a coffee table ornament from the oversized
illustrated format, or New Age quasi-spiritual
gibberish from the jacket blurb promising that
Valmik Thapar “links the reverence shown to
nature by Eastern religions, including
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, to the
tremendous biodiversity that remains on the
Indian subcontinent today.”

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250 Things You Can Do To Make Your Cat Adore You

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

250 Things You Can Do To
Make Your Cat Adore You
by Ingrid Newkirk
Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 1998.
201 pages, paperback, $11.00.

In 1992 and 1995, ANIMAL PEOP
L E surveys of cat rescuers netted several
signed responses from PETA staffers who,
almost alone among the respondents, identified
mass roundups for killing by needle as
their preferred “rescue” method. One of them
killed an average of about one cat per day.
In January 1998, ANIMAL PEOP
L E received a detailed account from John
Newton of the Meower Power Feral Cat coalition,
alleging that a hit squad led personally
at first by PETA cofounder Ingrid Newkirk
had for three years frequently trapped cats
from supervised neuter/release colonies in the
vicinity of Fort Norfolk, Virginia, and delivered
many to their deaths at local animal shelters.

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