BOOKS: Horses in the Killing

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Horses in the Killing
by Raymond Moreira
and Joseph Barreira
Americans Against Equine Slaughter
(44 Morton St., Fall River, MA 02720),
1996. 120 pages, paperback. $22.00.

Raymond Moreira learned the realities of
horse slaughter when at auction he inadvertantly
sold his own healthy, beloved gelding
to a killer-buyer. Moreira responded with a
crusade against horse slaughter. Visiting auctions
around the U.S., he took special note of
the one at New Holland, Pennsylvania.
“The conditions in the holding pens
at New Holland were among the worst I have
ever seen,” he writes. “Horses bound for
slaughter were crammed in indiscriminately;

BOOKS: The Good Year

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

The Good Year
by Era Zistel
J.B. Townsend (12 Greenleaf Drive,
Exeter, NH 03833), 1959, reissued 1996.
206 pages, paperback, $15.00.

Thirty-seven years after Zistel wrote
The Good Year, more readers than ever will
identify with her poignant chapters on hunting.
The wounded raccoon central to the story survives
and gets through one hunting season––but
just as attachment seems safe, Man the Enemy
defeats Human the Rescuer and Nurturer.
Zistel’s characterization of the incorrigibly
ignorant and cruel is almost unbearably accurate.

REVIEWS: The Leopard Son

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

The Leopard Son
New theatre release, from Discovery Channel Pictures (1996).

Leopards are to lions on the
Serengeti Plain of Tanzania much as coyotes
are to wolves in Yellowstone National Park:
smaller, smarter, less celebrated, and sure to
be killed if ever caught by their bigger, more
territorial kin.
Like coyotes, leopards deserve
more appreciation. Cinematographer Hugo
van Lawick has the right idea with T h e
Leopard Son, Discovery Channel Pictures’
first full-length feature film, to be released
September 27. As the maker of the awardwinning
People of the Forest: The Chimps of
Gombe, about the work of his ex-wife Jane
Goodall, van Lawick is up to the job.

BOOKS: Animal Hospital

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Animal Hospital
by Stephen Sawicki
Chicago Review Press (814 North
Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610)
1996, 234 pages, $22 hardcover.

Veteran investigative reporter
Stephen Sawicki apparently became interested
in the Massachusetts SPCA’s Angell Memorial
Animal Hospital while authoring Teach Me To
Kill, his best-selling account of the Pam Smart
case, in which a New Hampshire schoolmarm
allegedly seduced a 16-year-old into murdering
her husband––after she put his beloved dog
in the basement, so that the dog wouldn’t have
to witness the killing. Smart, now doing life
in prison, was among Angell Memorial’s
many famous and infamous clients, along
with Elvis Presley and Stephen King.

Herps & alleged perps

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Third World cruelty prosecutions are almost
unheard of, and prosecutions for cruelty to reptiles are rare
everywhere, but Zimbabwe SPCA manager Merryl Harrison
vowed September 18 to bring Harare Snake Park crocodile
keeper Smart Bester to justice and save the 79-year-old male
croc who finally bit his arm off, six years after the SPCA
began receiving complaints about Bester jabbing the croc
with a stick to make him snap his jaws and lash his tail.
A three-year U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
probe of imports of endangered snakes and tortoises from
Madagascar on August 22 brought 16-count indictments
against alleged traffickers Frank Lehmeyer, Wolfgang Kloe,
Olaf Strohmann, and Roland Werner, all of Germany; Rick
Truant, of Canada; and Simon Harris, of South Africa.

Bad day in the Rockies

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

DENVER––Colorado state veterinarians had a bad
day on August 20, as in El Paso County district judge Thomas
Kane thwarted a bid by Keith Roehr, DVM, to permanently
close the Colorado Animal Refuge, while in Boulder, Rocky
Mountain Animal Defense filed a cruelty complaint against
John Maulsby, DVM, chief of the state Department of
Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Protection.
After five days of testimony, Kane ruled that
Colorado Animal Refuge founder Mary Port and staff have
made a good faith effort to comply with state laws, giving
them until January 1 to finish construction of 20 to 25 more
pens, in addition to the 45 already built; provide shade to the
pens; improve the refuge plumbing; provide heated winter
accommodations; and build a perimeter fence––mostly stipulations
that she earlier failed to meet at the former refuge site in
Elbert County. Port moved to El Paso County in January after
almost a year of battling fix-or-vacate orders in Elbert County.

Religion & animals

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Santerian priest Rigoberto Zamora, 59, of
Miami––whose credentials are disputed by some other prominent
Santerians––on July 30 accepted a plea bargain in settlement
of four counts of cruelty filed against him for animal sacrifices
performed to celebrate the 1993 Supreme Court ruling
that although the conditions of such sacrifice may be regulated,
forbidding animal sacrifice itself violates the constitutional
guarantee of freedom of religion. “During the two-hour ceremony
before TV cameras,” Raju Cebium of Associated Press
reported, “Zamora killed five roosters, three goats, two hens,
two pigeons, two guinea hens, and a lamb. Zamora switched
knives midway through the slaughter of one goat, ripped the
head off a pigeon, and slammed a guinea hen against the floor.”
Pleading no contest to one cruelty count, and pledging to
appeal, Zamora was sentenced by Dade County judge Victoria
Sigler to do 400 hours of community service at a Catholic home
for the aged. Objected Zamora, “To send me to a center run by
the Catholic Church,” which regards Santeria as heresy, “is to
violate my freedom of religion, and to force me to do hard
labor is an assault on my health.” Zamora said he is a diabetic,
and has heart disease.

They’re sick of this case

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

SAN MATEO, California––Of the first 28
employees and volunteers tested for exposure to a flu-like
zoonotic disease called Q fever at the Peninsula Humane
Society, 23 proved positive, executive director Kathy
Savesky told media on September 20, one day after a local
physician apparently inadvertantly made knowledge of the
outbreak public by appealing for further information about the
disease on an Internet message board maintained by the
World Health Organization.
The bacterial disease hit the shelter staff shortly
after 39 of 230 dairy goats seized from Fran Simmons and
Maryella Woodman of Pescadero on March 19 gave birth.
“The disease is most easily transmitted by coming into contact
with goat placentas during birthing,” freelance Eve Mitchell
explained in coverage for the San Francisco Examiner. Many
of the goats were found “standing up to their bellies in mud,
feces, and urine,” Mitchell continued, and were apparently
suffering from mud fever, a perhaps related illness usually
seen in horses.

HUMANE ENFORCEMENT

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

The San Francisco Commission of Animal
Control and Welfare on September 13 postponed any action
on the treatment of live turtles, frogs, birds, and other animals
sold as food until October 17. A year-long San Francisco
SPCA push for more stringent enforcement of anti-cruelty laws
in Chinatown markets burst into the public in August when the
SF/SPCA was simultaneously attacked by Chinatown market
owners for alleged cultural imperialism and by Fund for
Animals representative Virginia Handley, who asked members
to tell SF/SPCA president Richard Avanzino that “his job is to
protect animals, not animal abusers” because Avanzino told
the San Francisco Chronicle that a ban on home slaughter
advanced by the Fund, Action for Animals, and In Defense of
Animals after the controversy began would probably be unenforceable.

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