BOOKS: The Aye-Aye and I

November 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

The Aye-Aye and I, by Gerald Durrell. Touchstone Books (1230 Avenue of

the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 1992; first Touchstone edition 1994. 175

pages. $11.00 paperback.

My favorite gift on my eighth birthday was a copy of Gerald Durrell’s first book,

My Family And Other Animals, about finding his calling as a naturalist while growing up on

the Greek island of Corfu during the 1920s. I read and reread it to tatters. Thus I declared dibs

on reviewing The Aye-Aye and I––and was hugely disappointed, as well as relieved that I may

have missed little by missing 21 of the subsequent 22 Durrell titles. Once known chiefly as

younger brother of the novelist Lawrence Durrell, Gerald has now sold far more books than

Lawrence ever did, as well as becoming legendary for his television specials and species con-

servation work via the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust. This has apparently convinced him

that his galloping trots are more fascinating tthan the lemurs of Madagascar, his nominal

topic this time in a tediously whimsical tome that might have made a good newspaper feature.

BOOKS: Skywater

November 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

Skywater, by Melinda Worth Popham. Greywolf Press (2402 University

Ave., St. Paul, MN 55114), 1990. 206 pages, $17.95 hardcover.

Because Melinda Worth Popham’s Skywater is fiction, it won’t be shelved alongside

Grady’s work in libraries; but Popham does convincingly describe life from the perspective of

six vividly introduced coyotes, who flee from the loss of their water source due to pollution,

in quest of the water that sometimes falls from above and lies beyond the beyond. There are

memorable human characters as well, including a trapper who might seem overdrawn if we

hadn’t met his clone many times. Though never a big seller, the mythic appeal of Skywater is

such that it may endure to become an acknowledged classic––and to gain deserved recognition

when eventually it is discovered by Hollywood.

BOOKS: The World of the Coyote

November 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

The World of the Coyote, by Wayne Grady. Sierra Club Books (730 Polk

St., San Francisco, CA 94109), 1994. 143 pages, 72 color photos, $25.00 hard-

back.

“In the early 1940s,” Wayne Grady recounts, “the citizens of Klamath County,

Oregon, instituted an intensive campaign to eradicate the coyote. By 1947 there was not a

single coyote in Klamath County. But there were field mice. The cost in lost crops soared

into the millions of dollars, far more than had ever been attributed to damage by coyotes. In

the end, Klamath County began to reintroduce the coyote.”

This episode alone is worth the price of the book ––and is just one of many quotable

passages in a richly illustrated text that belongs in every school library. Those who already

know and appreciate coyotes will be enthralled; so will be many who have never met one.

COURT CALENDAR

November 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

Collector cases

A 32-year-old man from Barrie,

Ontario, drew five years in prison on October 5

for three counts of sexual abuse and one of

obstructing justice, while his female companion,

33, drew two years for obstructing justice. In

November 1991 the pair locked the woman’s four

girls and a boy in a feces-filled basement for 18

months, along with 19 cats and four dogs, after

police visited the home to question the man about

allegedly anally raping the two oldest girls, then

nine and 10. The children were discovered, res-

cued, and placed in foster care in April 1993.

Zoos & Aquariums

November 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

Ivan, the gorilla kept for 30 years in solitary con-

finement at a now defunct shopping mall in Tacoma,

Washington, was moved on October 10 to Zoo Atlanta, where

he will share a $4.5 million facility with 20 other gorillas

including Willie B., a gorilla who spent 27 years in isolation

but has adapted well to life with a family group. Ivan will

spend 90 days in a separate suite, viewing the other gorillas

through a window, before being introduced in person to any.

The onset of winter threatened to kill a manatee

who somehow meandered into Chesapeake Bay, 1,000 miles

north of his usual habitat, but a 15-member team from Sea

World in Orlando, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the

National Aquarium, the Maryland Department of Natural

Resources, and the Save the Manatee Club on October 1 cap-

tured him and took him to the National Aquarium, pending

transfer to Sea World and eventual release.

Birds

November 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

Three years after spotted owl protection took

effect, Oregon is not economically wrecked but booming,

with its lowest unemployment rate in 30 years. The loss of

15,000 forest products jobs has been offset by the creation of

20,000 jobs in high technology. Of the displaced wood work-

ers who have been retrained at Lane Community College in

Springfield, 90% have new jobs, at an average hourly wage of

$9.02––only $1.00 less per hour than their old average, and

sure to rise as they gain seniority.

Oxford University zoologist Marion Petrie reported

on October 13 that a study of peafowl at the Whipsnade animal

park, north of London, found that the peacocks with the

largest fantails produced the biggest young––which may be

why the peahens are most attracted to those peacocks.

ANIMAL HEALTH

November 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

British link veal and brain damage

Rejected by most veterinary authorities, the hypothesis

advanced by Cornell veterinary student Michael Greger via Farm

Sanctuary that there may be a link between bovine spongiform

encephalopathy and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease gained slightly

more weight on October 7 when the United Kingdom CJD

Surveillance Unit reported that, “A study of the eating habits of

people with CJD showed some statistical associations with the eat-

ing of various meat products, particularly veal.” Veal calves are

fed milk replacers which contain processed slaughterhouse offal,

and therefore could sometimes contain the remains of animals who

had either BSE or scrapie, a similar disease found in sheep. CJD

appears some years after infection, and like BSE, leads to paraly-

sis, blindness, dementia, and death. An ongoing BSE epidemic,

now waning, has hit more than 130,000 cattle in Britain since

1986. CJD is comparatively rare, killing 40-50 Britons a year.

Dirty pool (Part I of a two-part investigative series)

November 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

ORLANDO, NEW YORK CITY,

MYSTIC––Activists don’t believe anything

they hear from the “aquaprison industry.”

Oceanarium people don’t trust activists to

know truth when they see it. And small won-

der on either side, given the pitch of the pro-

paganda for and against keeping marine mam-

mals in captivity.

This debate differs from the equally

bitter conflicts over hunting, trapping, meat-

eating, and the use of animals in biomedical

research. Knowingly or not, the antagonists

in the oceanarium debate express smilar

visions of what oceanariums should be––and

issue many of the same criticisms of what

they are. They agree that saving marine

mammals is among the urgent moral and eco-

logical priorities of our time. Their only sub-

stantive disagreements concern the morality

of capturing marine mammals from the wild,

a practice now largely but not totally history,

and the ethics of putting them on display.

Horses

November 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994:

Premarin maker on defensive

BRANDON, Manitoba––Wyeth-Ayerst is

worried about consumer response to the disclosure by

the Farm Animal Concerns Trust and ANIMAL

PEOPLE in early 1993 that its top-selling drug, the

estrogen supplement Premarin, comes from pregnant

mares’ urine, or PMU; that the great majority of the

75,000-plus foals born to the mares each year are sold

to slaughter; and that vegetable-based alternatives are

readily available. Premarin is now under boycott by

most major animal protection groups.

Wyeth-Ayerst now answers letters of protest

with copies of a report entitled Care and Management

of Horses at PMU Production Facilities, by consul-

tant Shauna Spurlock, DVM, who argues that the

ranchers, “place their foals as they always have. The

type of foals produced run the gambit from purebred

thoroughbred foals intended for the race track, to

quarter horse foals destined for the show ring, to draft

foals that may be used for light recreational work.

« 1 … 142 143 144 145 146 … 173 »