Pet Monologues

Global warming—birds know. Read the rest of this entry »

Chapter 9: The stories that nourish a newspaper.
By John Armstrong

[This is the ninth of 14 excerpts, running Tuesdays and Thursdays, from John Armstrong's memoir of the working life: Wages.]

When a cement truck lost its brakes on a hill and ploughed through someone’s backyard, you needed the parents and relatives of the dead and wounded, the name of the driver, the owner of the company, the neighbours (to fill out the background and describe the terror they faced daily with Big Trucks roaring though their neighbourhood) and someone from government licensing to comment on why he and his department hadn’t checked this truck’s brakes.

It was also important to get the Opposition critic for that department who would describe how the government had failed so tragically in this case, despite his repeated warnings that such a disaster was coming, and how his party would do things differently if they were in office….

The same was true of any local tragedy whether it was the man who hacked up his wife and mailed her postage due to her parents or an immigrant woman who spoke and read no English and bled to death in the emergency room because she couldn’t fill out the admittance papers. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s better than a soap opera.

Since late March, my neighbors and I have been privy to the continuing saga of the trials and tribulations of a family consisting of papa and mama osprey and their very hungry, very noisy young. There are three of those.

Don’t think it’s easy to keep that growing trio of fledglings fed. It’s not as if the parents get to drive to a fast-food restaurant to pick up burgers and some chicken for supper. On the contrary, a lot of hard work goes into providing enough fish for three growing youngsters, plus the mother who gets to baby-sit while the babies are still defenseless.

It’s been estimated that one juvenile consumes close to 200 pounds during a typical season; multiply that times three and it is apparent the life of an osprey adult is not easy.

Last year an osprey pair nested on a snag farther down the river and although we were able to see some of the action, we were only able to observe them through binoculars. My neighbors, Paul and Phyllis, decided a closer nest would be a good addition to our neighborhood and last year they had an artificial nesting box put on a convenient snag closer to their house on the banks of the South Umpqua River. Read the rest of this entry »

Dog-walking can adversely affect wildlife.

Dog-walking leads to over 40 per cent reduction in bird abundance and more than 35 per cent reduction in bird diversity in woodlands, according to a study. Read the rest of this entry »

In many families, a thorough search for ticks is part of any hike, camping trip or other journey into the woods. For people who live in rural areas, particularly those who work outdoors, looking for ticks is often a part of daily life. It’s easy to think of these tiny arachnids as something to watch out for in relatively wild terrain, but ticks don’t confine themselves to the wilderness. They’re adaptive and resilient, and you can find them in distinctly urban areas, like the parks of New York City.

feamle tick
Photo courtesy CDC/Dr. Amanda Loftis, Dr. William Nicholson, Dr. Will Reeves, Dr. Chris Paddock
A female lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum.

The typical response to finding a tick is often disgust. It’s partly because ticks are parasites — they feed on their hosts’ blood. Although people see them most often on themselves and their pets, ticks also attack wild animals, farm animals, birds and reptiles. On top of that, some ticks, particularly females, swell dramatically when they ingest a lot of blood. An engorged tick, or one that’s full of blood, can have a bizarre, even grotesque appearance.

In addition to their feeding behavior and appearance, ticks are disease vectors. They can carry illnesses from one animal to another. In fact, ticks are the primary disease vector in domestic animals. In terms of human illness, only one parasite spreads more illness—the mosquito. Ticks can spread a wide variety of disease-causing organisms, including bacteria, viruses and protozoa. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a thoughtful and compassionate article by Sarah Hartwell with regard to cats. Dogs, birds, elephants, horses, many animals for that matter, experience these feelings. Knowlege of the grieving process puts us in better touch with feelings, a good thing.

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When a cat dies, owners often notice behavioral changes in their remaining cats. Some of these are due to adapting to a changed hierarchy, but other behavioral changes are due to a sense of loss. Many cats grieve the loss of a close human companion and others show signs of loss when a canine companion ides or goes missing.

It is impossible to say exactly what emotions cats feel, but when a close companion goes missing they are certainly be aware of the absence. It is unlikely that they mourn in the human sense of the word, but there will be some behavioral changes as they adjust to the gap in their lives.

What is grief?

Grief is the result of abrupt or unexpected severing of attachment. Cats are aware that a familiar person or companion cat is absent and may search for that person or cat. The death or absence may change an established hierarchy as well as being the absence of a familiar companion. While this is not the ritualised grief of humans, the sudden absence of something familiar is distressing to many cats. Mother cats whose kittens were taken away and destroyed often looked for their kittens for many days, all the while pacing and crying out. As well as the physical pain of engorged mammary glands, the cats displayed mental pain. Read the rest of this entry »

by Terry

My dog’s name is Fluffy. I call him Fluffy because he fell in the dryer when he was a puppy and his fur got all weird and fuzzy. Kittywitty, my cat, I found in a dumpster on a vacant lot. She’s real skinny and white and has a long nose, and my dad says she looks like a ferret. But she’s real neat and does these neat tricks like rolling over and sitting up – like a dog does. But she’s a cat. This is what makes her neat. I have a bird, too. Named Pepper. We keep him in a cage in our den. One time, when I had him out playing with him, he got loose and made a mess all over the house that smelled bad for a long time.

My pet turtle’s name is Floyd. I named him after my favorite uncle, who kinda looks like a turtle himself. We got him at the five-and-dime store. He stays in a plastic bowl we keep in the kitchen window. He loves the sun and stretches his neck and legs way out just like he’s sunbathing. He sleeps a lot, and sometimes it’s hard to tell If he’s dead or alive. I had another cat, but he got run over by a United Parcel truck. I buried him under a rose bush. That’s the only trouble with pets. You get to like them a lot, and when something happens to them, it makes you real sad.

Source: Cedar Park Middle School

Purple Martins: more than a fly-by-night annoyance.

DALLAS - Most everyone who has seen the thousands of purple martins gather each evening at Preston Road and Royal Lane comes away thrilled. Or disgusted. Read the rest of this entry »

Changes to Law That Saved Many Species May Result in Its Extinction

© Dawn M. Smith

The ESA as it is now proposed would not have saved many species. Minimizing the importance of critical habitat is one of the key issues in the changes being considered.

One of US wildlife preservation’s most important documents is being torn apart by the present administration. The way the Endangered Species Act of 1973 is being rewritten today might have spelled extinction for the California condor, the grey wolf, grizzly bears and the American bald eagles if it were in place when each of these species was being considered for listing.

Three issues are of concern. First, the new ruling, if approved, would only apply to species in areas they currently occupy, not their historic range. Secondly, states, not the federal government, would have the primary right to decide on how species are handled in their area. And finally, the ability to protect critical habitat would be severely reduced. Read the rest of this entry »

CAPE MAY, N.J. - Cats versus birds in this town. Cats are as much a part of this seaside town’s genteel culture as rainbow-colored Victorian bed-and-breakfasts, trolley tours and cocktails on the porch at sunset.

They’re also suspect No. 1 in many deaths of the endangered piping plover, a fist-size, white-and-brown fuzzball of a bird that has closed beaches and stopped development projects in the interest of protecting its habitat. Read the rest of this entry »