REVIEWS: Lefty’s World

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

Lefty’s World
Video documentary, Kindness Publications (Suite 135, 1859 North Pine Island
Road, Plantation, FL 33322). 40 minutes. $17.95 plus $1.50 shipping.
Nominally, Lefty’s World is a companion to Lefty’s Place, producer Lewis
Nierman’s book about the rehabilitation of an injured Muscovy duck, recommended for
school libraries in our January/February issue. But it stands alone, with little overlap.
Wolf, age three and a half, will watch Lefty’s World ahead of most of the children’s video
classics in his impressive collection. He likes to see the Muscovy ducks and other familiar
wildlife––and he understands much of Sonny Dufault’s direct, informative narration.

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BOOKS: If Wishes Were Horses: The Education of a Veterinarian

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

If Wishes Were Horses: The
Education of a Veterinarian, by Loretta
Gage, DVM, and Nancy Gage, St Martin’s Press
(175 Fifth Ave, New York NY 10010), 1992, 295 pages,
paperback $4.99 U.S., $5.99 in Canada.
Nearly everyone who loves animals has at some
point dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. Loretta Gage was
one: this is her account of the reality behind that dream. With
relentless attention to detail, she and her sister describe the
process of becoming a doctor of veterinary medicine.
At times her dream seems more like a nightmare, an
endless boot camp of classes taught by insensitive instructors,
of animals sacrificed for knowledge of basic procedures.
Still, there are moments of friendship, human and nonhuman,
and Gage is impressively determined to succeed.

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BOOKS: The Serengeti Migration: Africa’s Animals on the Move

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

The Serengeti Migration: Africa’s
Animals on the Move, by Lise Lindblad,
with photos by Seven-Olaf Lindblad.
Hyperion/Disney Press (114 Fifth Ave., New York, NY
10011), 1994. 40 pages, hardcover, $15.95.
“Daddy, what’s this lion doing? The lion is eating
the zebra. But the zebra didn’t want to be eaten. The zebras
wish the lions would eat something else. But that’s what lions
do. We don’t have to eat animals.”
There’s only one gory photo in this picture-book
version of the Serengeti migration we’ve all seen on TV, but
of course it was the one Wolf zeroed in on, with a keen intu-
itive grasp of the difference between ourselves and natural
predators plus appreciation of the victim’s perspective.
What did he think of the book otherwise?
“It has buffalo in it. It has birds. It has antelopes.”
––Merritt Clifton & son

BOOKS: The Cat Who Came to Breakfast

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

The Cat Who Came to Breakfast, by
Lilian Jackson Braun, G.P. Putnam Sons (200
Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016), 1994, $19.95
hardcover.
Are there any cat lovers out there who are unfamil-
iar with Lilian Jackson Braun’s “The Cat Who…” series?
Fifteen titles are now in print. If you have missed them, they
are mysteries with minimal gore and victims characterized as
minimally missed. The real protagonists are not the humans
but the pet cats, usually Siamese. My preference among
them is The Cat Who Had 14 Tales, which differs in format
and style from the subject of this review.

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Evidence escapes

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

HARTVILLE, Ohio––The Sharon
Woods deer saga took another twist on March
25 when 74 of the 76 whitetailed deer in cus-
tody of elk breeder Robin Rodabaugh disap-
peared after someone cut the fence. The deer
were the last of 286 whom Rodabaugh and 10
volunteers removed from heavily overpopulated
Sharon Woods Metro Park, on the outskirts of
Columbus, during December and January.
Rodabaugh said three witnesses provided infor-
mation linking the fence-cutting to an alleged
“known poacher,” who apparently wanted the
deer to get out where he could shoot them.

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

Crimes Against Humans
Larry Gibson, 33, ex-deputy
sheriff for Douglas County, Oregon,
was arrested April 14 in Townsend,
Montana, for the alleged murder of his
two-year-old son Tommy on March 18,
1991. Gibson claimed he was jogging
when the boy disappeared, while his wife
was indoors; their daughter, then four,
said strangers drove off with him.
Unconvinced, investigators theorized in
May 1991 that Gibson shot his son by
accident while killing a neighbor’s cat
near the time of the disappearance.
Gibson’s wife, daughter, and another
son born since then recently left
him––whereupon the daughter, now
seven, told police she actually saw
Gibson strike Tommy, then stuff him
into a garbage bag.

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Watson fined

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

ST. JOHNS, Newfoundland––Captain
Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society was fined $5,000 on April 11 and his for-
mer ship the Cleveland Amory was fined $30,000,
for allegedly lacking proper certification under
Canadian maritime law during their July 28, 1993
confrontation with the Cuban dragnet fishing ves-
sel Rio Las Casasnear the tail of the Grand Banks.
The fines, stated in Canadian funds, would come
to about $4,000 and $24,000, respectively, in
U.S. currency.

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Laboratories

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

The American Association for the
Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care
put the animal care program at the Davis cam-
pus of the University of California on proba-
tion for six months in mid-April, stating that
the lack of a centralized system for enforcing
care standards has led to uneven and some-
times inadequate care, including cages that are
too small and dirty, and rat infestations of
holding facilities.

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Nuisance wildlife: swans as goose control

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

Nuisance wildlife control
experts in the upper midwest
report that mute swans may be the
best brake on the proliferation of
giant nonmigratory Canada geese.
Wildlife agencies in Atlantic coast
states from Rhode Island to Georgia
have practiced aggressive mute swan
“control” via egg-addling for about a
decade, after mute swan sightings
during the annual National Audubon
Society Christmas bird counts dou-
bled. Not noting that the number of
people out counting birds had also
doubled, the agencies warned that
the Atlantic coast was on the verge
of a mute swan population explo-
sion, 150 years after they were first
imported from England; blamed
swans for causing the decline of
heavily hunted migratory waterfowl;

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