LETTERS [June 1996]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

Moving fast for
turtles
Nice article. Thanks. One
thing. It was actually turtle experts
from all over the U.S. who wrote to
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at
request of the New York Turtle and
Tortoise Society and Humane
Society of the U.S., stopping the
proposed export of 10,000 Louisiana
box turtles. I wish the turtle experts
in NYTTS could take the credit
alone, but we’re just “amateurs”
who know a lot of pro-conservation
scientists who were willing to write.
(One wrote a 20-page letter against
the quota.) It was that kind of overwhelming
support for box turtles,
from all over, that forced the U.S.
government to do what they did. As
I previously said, “Science wins.”
––Allen Salzberg
N.Y. Turtle & Tortoise Society
New York, N.Y.

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Editorial: Politics and the unity myth

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

“United we stand; divided we fall,” Martin Luther King proclaimed in his “I had
a dream” speech to the participants in the 1964 civil rights march on Washington, D.C.
Activists have quoted King out of context ever since. Borrowing an early motto of
the 13 Colonies, King spoke of the power of voting blocks, and the influence they might
have to purge Congress of racists. He asked his audience to stand up as Americans, part of
the United States, and claim their right to vote. He most certainly did not tell the marchers
to stand united with those who either used or espoused violent tactics, which he forthrightly
opposed all his life; nor with the politically corrupt who looted the cause, even if they
espoused similar rhetoric; nor did King have any more use for black separatism than he had
for white separatism. Martin Luther King made plain where he stood, welcoming everyone
who chose to stand with him, but he didn’t welcome purported allies whose actions
tended to undermine, pollute, or dilute his message of multiracial Americanism.
King, who earned part of his early reputation by desegregating bowling alleys,
certainly knew the limited applicability of “United we stand, divided we fall” as a
metaphor. In bowling, pins near the ones struck go down too. One need only pick up a
newspaper to find examples of political figures and causes neutralized or discredited not by
their own deeds, but by those of their associates.

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Ghosties, goblins, and bumping off whales in the night

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

ABERDEEN, Scotland– – The
June 24-28 annual meeting of the
International Whaling Commission might
appropriately open with the ancient Scots
prayer, “God keep us from ghosties and goblins
and things that go ‘bump’ in the night.”
Resurrecting the ghost of whaling
from longboats last done more than 70 years
ago, the Makah tribe of the outermost tip of
the Olympic peninsula in Washington will bid
to claim a subsistance quota on grey whales
and become the first legal whalers along the
Pacific coast of the U.S. mainland since the
whaling station at Point Richmond,
California closed more than 20 years ago.
The Makah will be supported, for reasons
pertaining to political correctness, by Greenpeace
and the U.S. government––and Japan,
whose whaling industry has cultivated a close
relationship with Makah minister of fisheries
Daniel Green.

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More time for animal abuse: STUDY FINDS MARKEDLY HEAVIER SENTENCES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

EAST BERNARD, Texas––On March 16, East Bernard High School baseball
players Britt Sensat, Danny L. Crane, and Ryan Walters, all 17, and a juvenile, 16, captured
Tiger the cat, unofficial mascot of Koym Field and a favorite of many younger players,
tied her into a feed bag, beat her with their bats, ran over the carcass with a pickup truck,
and tossed the remains in a creek bed.
Informed of the deed, East Bernard High baseball coach Jim Bruce ordered the four
young men to run 100 miles in 30 days––training that many ballplayers would be doing anyway.
(Most pitchers run considerably more.) Bruce allowed them to remain on the team,
which they had helped to win two consecutive state division championships.

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OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

Lacey, age 8, female Irish
wolfhound belonging to Boston Globe pet
columnist Vicki Croke, the inspiration for
many of Croke’s columns, was euthanized
at Croke’s request on March 29, to end
incurable suffering from osteosarcoma.
“When you first met the 140-pound Lacey,”
Croke remembered, “one of our dearest
friends said, you’d think ‘Wow! What a
huge dog,’ but soon she seemed just like a
funny-shaped person. Only better. A
friend’s two-year-old son once sat feeding
Lacey cookies. After about the fifth, he
decided he wanted it back and reached into
Lacey’s huge mouth, practically up to his
armpit, and retrieved it. Lacey would
never hurt anyone––just ask our burglar.”

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BOOKS: The Dogs Who Came to Stay

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

The Dogs Who Came to Stay
by George Pitcher
Dutton Books (375 Hudson St., New
York, NY 10014),
1995, 163 pages, $18.95, hardcover.

If you enjoy reading about dogs,
but don’t expect much from their guardians,
here’s a book for you. George Pitcher has
written a biography of two dogs, Lupa and
Remus, that will have you smiling for the
dogs while crying for the author.
A pregnant Lupa arrives and produces
a litter of seven pups. Six are given
away, while the runt, Remus, and his
mother win the hearts of Pitcher and his
housemate, who predictably doesn’t want to
keep any animals.

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BOOKS: Alligators & Crocodiles

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

Alligators & Crocodiles, by Eric
D. Stoops and Debbie Ly n n e
Stone. Sterling Publishing (387 Park
Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-
8810), 1996. 80 pages, illustrated,
$13.95 paperback.

At about age four, I was terrified
of a mummified baby Cuvier’s Dwarf
Caiman belonging to a student who roomed
with us––in part because he was dead. I
sensed that the caiman no more wanted to be
among us than I wanted him to be there.
Alligators & Crocodiles brought that 40-
year-old memory back with a photo, captioned
“Studies of the contents of the stomach
of the Cuvier’s Dwarf Caiman suggest
that these caimans sometimes eat their
young.” Adds a second caption, “Probably
the Cuvier’s Dwarf Caiman is the rarest.”
Small wonder. Most other crocodilians are,
if nothing else, devoted mothers. And this
book tells everything any child is likely to
want to know about them.

BOOKS: The Flight of the Red Knot

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

The Flight of the Red Knot, by
Brian Harrington with Charles
Flowers. W.W. Norton & Company,
Inc. (500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10110), published in association with
WGBH–Boston and Manomet
Observatory, 1996. 192 pages; $29.95.

Subtitled “A natural history
account of a small bird’s annual migration
from the Arctic Circle to the tip of South
America and back,” this is a beautifully
illustrated book about the remarkable yearly
journeys of a species of sandpiper known as
the red knot. Measuring approximately 10
inches long and weighing about 20 ounces,
this hardy traveller migrates nearly 18,000
miles every year––an awesome distance by
any reckoning.

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