Pet Monologues

September 21 — Mark the following Puruvian holiday on your calendar.

by john kass
Americans are busy hissing and scratching each other’s eyes out over presidential politics. But there is one thing we can agree on—sending a few thousand U.S. troops into Peru to occupy the nation and stop Peruvians from eating all their cats.

This villainous cat-munching takes place in the fall, when otherwise gentle and kindly Peruvians gather in the village of La Quebrada, just south of Lima, to gorge on felines. They eat fried cat and stewed cat and poached cat. Also, cats prepared with various savory local spices, such as Grilled Cat with Huacatay, the pungent and tasty Peruvian black mint.

Americans have proved we’ll accept almost anything if packaged and marketed properly. We’ve recently accepted socialism just to make Wall Street happy before an election. But if there’s one thing we won’t abide, it’s a nation of cat-eaters.

The terrible Peruvian cat-eating spree has a name: La Festival Gastronomico del Gato. Or for those of you who don’t speak Spanish—the Gastronomic Festival of the Cat. Read the rest of this entry »

Parts of Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

New regulations, which don’t require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press. Read the rest of this entry »

Saudi Arabia. Bans dogs and cats.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — To keep the sexes apart in the state capital, a pet ban is in effect. As every single man knows: Walking a dog in the park equals sure babe magnet. Saudi Arabia’s Islamic religious police, in their zeal to keep the sexes apart, want to make sure the technique doesn’t catch on here. Read the rest of this entry »

Came across this very disturbing story visiting the NPR site and then went to the photographer’s site for photos, which are even more disturbing. This is a story about a gorilla named Senkwekwe who was murdered,
executed actually.

Here is a portion of NPR writeup…Last July, Brent Stirton took a photograph that shocked the world when it was published in Newsweek — a picture of a dead 500-pound male gorilla named Senkwekwe, one of six endangered mountain gorillas who had been murdered, execution-style, in the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In the photo, Senkwekwe is strapped on his back, on a litter made of saplings. More than a dozen African men are carrying him — gently, respectfully — out of the jungle that was supposed to be his sanctuary.

When Stirton took that photo, one pressing question was still unanswered: Who would do such a thing, and why?

Stirton recently got a chance to investigate the answer. He was the first photojournalist allowed back into the part of Virunga where the mountain gorillas live — a section now controlled by a militia. Read the rest of this entry »

Though summer is upon us and there are many good summer tips to keep your pet out of harms way, here is year-round advice that can save a life.

An emergency situations calls for staying calm and making quick decisions. What should you do? Knowledge is power, so take the steps right now to learn how to handle an emergency. In addition to the first aid kit you have for home, camping, have a fully stocked pet first-aid kit (see below) know where the nearest 24-hour emergency pet clinic is. It could mean the difference between life and death. And act cautiously—animals in severe pain or fear may bite.

CAR ACCIDENTS
A pet that has been hit by a car needs to see a vet immediately. Internal bleeding is common, and outward signs of distress may not show for several hours. Also, puncture wounds that close rapidly can cause life-threatening infections later on. Enlist someone’s help in moving the animal by sliding a heavy towel beneath it. To avoid being bitten, tie a strip of cloth over your dog’s nose, or cover your cat’s face with a coat.

BLEEDING
Using direct pressure, apply a clean, dry cloth to the wound. If blood soaks through the first layer of fabric, add more so you don’t disrupt any clots that may be forming. Use a tourniquet only as a last resort, and make it just tight enough to significantly reduce the flow of blood. Loosen it every five minutes, and don’t keep it on for longer than 20 minutes. Transport your pet to the vet as soon as possible. Read the rest of this entry »

$2,500 HSUS reward. Dog killings.

The HSUS Offers Reward In Lincoln County, Mont. Dog Killings. The Humane Society of the United States is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible for killing at least nine dogs in the Libby, Troy and Eureka areas of Montana over the past five weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Congressional hearing tomorrow: Kempthorne hides, Center testifies.

The Bush administration’s refusal to list the polar bear as an endangered species took a bizarre turn last week when Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne refused to testify at tomorrow’s Senate hearing. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s it mean? It means revealing a secret. Where did that
expression come from?

Image: Hans Neleman

Graham’s Random Ramblings. says, “Would appear as though in days of past one would trot off and buy a pig from your local butcher at the market. The pig would be placed in a bag for convenience. (The bag was called a “poke”). A dishonest butcher would replace the pig with a big cat. Now, if you opened the bag later, to find out that you had been taken for a ride, the cat was “let out of the bag”, the Butchers secret was exposed.

Back to the poke. If you buy a pig in a poke you have bought something worthless. From the same origin.

A number of sources say this is not true, the cat referred to is the cat ‘o nine tails, used to flog sailors in the Royal Navy. The whip was kept in a bag, and when taken out, it meant that the flogging was a certainty.”

Now Wikipedia didn’t know that!

What about “Horse Feathers”? Read the rest of this entry »

A few posts ago PM presented incredible polar bear photos. The images by themselves are remarkable. But the polar bear is more than the largest predator on this planet. They have become a global warming symbol. It’s an easy analogy. The bears live on ice. The ices is melting. Easy picture here. Here is another polar bear story, and another global warming hot-spot.

The bears may have more problems…

Today Salon.com. comes to the forefront highlighting yet another polar bear worry. Part of their story is in this post with a link to the full story…

If your idea of a good time is paying $25,000 to journey to the frozen north in Canada to shoot a polar bear—making you one of the more than 50 American “sportsmen” who do so every year—you’re not happy about the lawsuits and recriminations over whether the Bush administration should grant new protections to polar bears. After all, those darn regulations could interfere with your bringing home a furry white rug for your living room floor.

In the reams of press about the increasing deaths of polar bears, the role of trophy hunters and the Inuit who help them is often missing. In the Canadian territories where the polar bear lives, the government sets quotas for the number of bears that can be hunted each year. The Canadian Inuit, who are paid by hunters to help them stalk the bears, and American hunting associations have become vocal adversaries to environmentalists and Congress members who in recent months have battled the Department of Interior, with its Bush-Cheney oil connections, to safeguard the polar bear.

Today, there are between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears worldwide, according to the World Conservation Union Species Survival Commission’s Polar Bear Specialist Group, which lists the species as “vulnerable.” Between 700 and 900 polar bears are shot every year, the majority of those taken in Canada, according to Andrew Derocher, a biologist at the University of Alberta, who chairs the Polar Bear Specialist Group. Of the approximately 600 polar bears shot in Canada, about 15 percent of those are killed by sports hunters, many of them American, who pay between $20,000 to $35,000 for the chance to do so. Read the rest of this entry »