BOOKS: Cats Are Not Peas

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Cats Are Not Peas: A CALICO HISTORY OF GENETICS
by Laura Gould
Copernicus (c/o Springer-Verlag, 175 5th Ave., New York, NY 10010), 1996.
228 pages, hardback, $22.00.

Are there male calico cats, despite
old wives’ tales to the contrary? Why do cats
seem to randomly differ from their presumed
parents? Why do even black cats often bear
dim tabby stripes, at least as kittens?
Laura Gould answers these questions
and many more as she tries to trace the
genetic circumstances that resulted in her
George, a rare male calico cat, who swaggers
through the pages with her, destroying
any air of academic exclusiity.

BOOKS: Mules In Court

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Mules In Court by Hank W. Hannah
Order c/o Hannah, Sr. Clr., Texico, IL 62889. 1996. 73 pp., cloth, $16.20.

Early in the history of pioneer settlements,
lawyers had so little to do that
they had to clear land and homestead.
Business picked up considerably with the
arrival of mules. Mules, it seems, spark a
range of court cases. Once before a judge,
mules have influenced everything from a
misunderstanding of genetics to the rights of
women.
Mules In Court reflects author
Hannah’s years of farming with mules, raising
mules (which is why he knows “some of
the lies about mules are true”), observing
gypsy horsetraders, witnessing the use of
mule paratroopers while commanding the
506th Parachute Infantry Regiment during
the 1944 Normandy invasion, practicing
and teaching veterinary law in Illinois and
abroad, and founding the American
Veterinary Medical Law Association.

BOOKS: The Cat I.Q. Test

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

The Cat I.Q. Test by Melissa Miller
Viking Penguin (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014-3657), 1996.
198 pages, paperback, $8.95.

When I think of feline intelligence,
five cats among the hundred-odd I’ve known
come to mind. My first cat, Catapuss, was a
creatively malevolent yet oddly compassionate
misfit who terrorized dogs, did not hunt,
objected if other cats tormented prey in his presence,
thrashed the barnyard bully in his only
big fight, let every other cat steal his dinner,
rarely socialized with other cats, and yet was
often first to alert us to another cat who was
hurting. He was behaviorally so different, and
so obviously inclined to work out detailed plots,
that one could not observe him without concluding
that he exercised considerable capacity for
abstract thought. Yet he did not seem clever at
basic feline survival.

Richey rules again on Animal Welfare Act

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––An October 29 ruling
by U.S. District Court Judge Charles Richey that USDA
regulations issued under the Animal Welfare Act in fact
violate the AWA has a quality of deja vu.
In fact, Judge Richey issued a similar opinion
on March 29, 1991, but was overruled on July 25,
1994, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of
Appeals, which held that the plaintiffs, the Animal
Legal Defense Fund and Roseann Circelli, Mary Eagan,
and Marc Jurnove as individuals, lacked standing to
bring the case.
The ALDF then restructured and refiled the
case. While Richey ruled again, as he did in the first
case, that the ALDF does have standing to pursue it, an
inevitable appeal by the USDA will almost certainly
again focus on the matter of standing, as have most
cases brought on behalf of animals, and it is not clear
that the Court of Appeals will this time agree with
Richey.

Activism

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Jailed for alleged contempt of court by McHenry
County judge James Franz on November 6, but ordered released
on appeal bond by the State of Illinois Appellate Court Second
District on November 21, Chicago Animal Rights Coalition
founder Steve Hindi finally got out late the evening of November
25, after Franz had delayed holding a bail hearing through the
weekend of November 23-24. On a hunger strike for the preceding
16 days, Hindi celebrated his release with a spaghetti dinner.
Hindi was hit with the contempt charge for participating in
protests outside the Woodstock Hunt Club on October 12 and
again on November 4, after receiving a temporary restraining
order which Hindi said to his understanding only prevented him
from flying ultralight aircraft over the hunt club to direct geese
away from the hunters. Hindi and fellow protesters Steve and
Carol Gross, who also received temporary restraining orders,
were at the same time sued for $410,000 by Woodstock Hunt Club
proprietor Earl Johnson––but while Hindi was in jail, Johnson
died, leaving uncertain whether the case would be pursued.

COURT CALENDAR

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Allegedly violating people and animals

For about two months a group of
as many as 30 Kentucky youths purported to
drink their own blood and animal blood, calling
themselves The Vampire Clan. Police
identified but didn’t charge several of them
while investigating a break-in and mutilation
killings of two puppies at the animal shelter in
Murray, Kentucky. The apparent leader,
Sondra Gibson, was eventually arrested and
charged with trying to coerce a 14-year-old
boy into having sex with her as an initiation
rite, but by then The Vampire Clan was on a
rampage. Arrested in Baton Rouge on
November 29, in connection with the
November 24 bludgeon murders of Richard
Wendorf, 49, and his wife Naoma Ruth
Wendorf, 53, in their home at Eustis, Florida,
were their daughter Heather, 15; Roderick
Ferrell, 16, son of Gibson; Howard Scott
Anderson, 16; Sarah “Shea” Remington,
a.k.a. Charity Lynn Keesee, 16; and Dana
Cooper, 19. Ferrell and Anderson were also
charged with the shelter break-in.

European Union trapped fur import ban still uncertain

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

BRUSSELS––Just a week from the
twice deferred January 1 target date for
enforcing a European Union ban on imports
of fur from animals possibly caught by
leghold trapping, “the issue of whether or not
it will be implemented is still very much up
in the air,” Animal Welfare Institute executive
director Kathy Liss told ANIMAL PEOPLE
at deadline.
The politics of the ban were never
fiercer. The step-by-step procedure to either
enforce or scrap the ban started with the presentation
in September of draft international
trapping standards, prepared by a quadrilateral
committee including delegations from
Canada, Russia, the U.S., and the European
Union. Next was to come approval or rejection
of the draft standards by the European
Commission, followed by ratification or
rejection of the decision by the appropriate
European Council of Ministers––a critical
fork, Liss said, since “The Council of
Environment Ministers has been pretty favorable
toward the ban, but the Council of
Trade Ministers is just interested in the trade
issues.”

Zoos

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

The zoo management and animal rights communities shared mixed
shock, outrage, and grief on December 17 at the revelation by Newsweek that
the San Diego Zoo and the Chengdu Zoo in Sichuan province, China, had concealed
since July the deaths from dehydration and exposure of two extremely rare
white rhinos whom the San Diego Zoo had purchased from the Pittsburgh Zoo,
then sent to China in a deal that looked mighty like an even-up swap for the two
pandas who arrived at the San Diego Zoo from China a few weeks later and went
on public display November 1. Though aware that the rhinos were going to China,
the Pittsburgh Zoo sold the rhinos to the San Diego Zoo in part because of the San
Diego Zoo’s internationally recognized rhino breeding and handling: 77 rhinos
have been born at the San Diego Zoological Society’s Wild Animal Park in
Escondido, and of the 67 rhinos the zoo has transported to other facilities, the
only previous death it acknowledged in the aftermath of the losses was a rhino who
was shipped to Taiwan 18 years ago. Pittsburgh Zoo rhino curator Les Nesler
escorted the pair as far as New York City, saw them safely aboard a commercial
Boeing 747 cargo flight to Shanghai, and believed all would be well. However,
the arrangements were two weeks behind schedule, and in that interval, heavy
flooding hit central and eastern China, complicating ground transportation.

RELIGION & ANIMALS

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Brigitte Bardot, 62, renowned as a film
star but working fulltime for more than twice as long
in animal protection, went to trial on December 18
for allegedly inciting ethnic bias by attacking amateur
sheep slaughter by Moslem immigrants to France in
commemoration of Eid al-Adha, the holiday marking
the end of the month in which pilgrimages are made
to Mecca. Chief defense witness is expected to be
Leila El Fourgi, president of the Tunisia SPA.
“Perhaps the spirit of God that breathed
forth life into the Earth was a lower animal,”
Cardinal John O’Connor told the devout in a
November 24 sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in
New York City, following up on Pope John Paul II’s
October declaration that the theory of evolution is
“more than just a hypothesis.” Both the Pope and the
Cardinal stopped short, however, of suggesting that
animals share with humans the dimensions of a soul.

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