animals

Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

mandy — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

You may already know (and I hope you do) that zoos and circuses aren't good places for animals. But how do we know? Jason Hribal's Fear of an Animal Planet argues that we only need listen to what the animals themselves are telling us. He fills the pages with story after story of animals who "misbehave": who escape, who refuse to perform and reproduce, who attack (and often kill) human handlers. After twenty years of circus life, Tyke the elephant kills one of her captors and runs wild through the streets of Honolulu. Kumang the orangutan grounds a hot wire surrounding her enclosure and climbs out using the porcelain insulators as hand-holds. None of the orca Corky's calves survive past forty-six days, apparently victims of maternal neglect. And so on.

Key themes emerge. One: captive animals are exploited, in the full-on Marxist sense of the word. Whether performing circus stunts, entertaining zoo visitors, or breeding the next generation of performers, they create value for their human owners, value the benefit of which the animals themselves never own. Sea World is a multimillion dollar business. But it isn't using those profits to feast its whales on tuna, expand the chlorine-saturated pools, or—most assuredly—release marine animals back to the ocean.

Two: other animals can resist exploitation and slavery very much like human workers, through refusals to work, sabotage, escapes, and physical attacks. If we dare to see past species difference, and accept that animals' actions have intent, we recognize these tactics.

Three: through their resistance, animals are agents in their own history. When Tyke, for instance, was fatally was shot by police after her escape, footage of her death spurred human witnesses into activism. Two established the Hohenwald Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, where elephants roam unchained and unsupervised. Protests, lawsuits, and investigations into the animal contracting company that leased Tyke followed, and most significantly, some of Tyke's fellow performers were released into the care of sanctuaries like Hohenwald. None of this could have happened without Tyke's actions.

Hribal is a student of the historian Peter Linebaugh (co-author of The Many-Headed Hydra), whose approach he shares. Instead of accepting official narratives, he inverts social hierarchies and tells history from the perspective of the oppressed and dispossessed. Here, we're seeing circuses, zoos, and aquariums from the animals' side. Alas, the accounts—taken, according to the prologue, from newspapers, government and legal documents, online databases, institutional archives and a handful of earlier histories—are not individually sourced by foot- or endnotes, which strikes me as sloppy scholarship, surprising considering the author's background. It's also a criticism I'm sure Hribal's opponents will raise.

The author also makes a brief mention of alcohol use among circus trainers. In the next breath, he describes the industry as morally bankrupt. He seems to mean that circus management is utterly irresponsible in letting intoxicated handlers have contact with animals, but the phrasing is easily misunderstood to blame alcoholics ("drunkards," he says) for their addiction. I hope later editions can amend these flaws.

I want these later editions because I want nothing to detract from the challenge Fear of an Animal Planet offers its human readers. Like the best scholarship, it invites us to reject standard narratives. Instead of chalking up their behavior to mechanistic instinct, to adolescence, gender, playfulness, or high spirits, Hribal asks us to take animals' actions seriously: to see deliberate and eminently understandable resistance to conditions that the animals themselves find unacceptable, and to recognize them as fellow sufferers in a profit-driven economy.

Written by: Charlotte Malerich, March 10th 2011

Jonathan Safran Foer (01/19/2011)

brittany — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

London School of Economics

London, England

Jonathan Safran Foer spoke about the issues in his most recent book Eating Animals to a packed house at the London School of Economics. I haven’t read the book yet, or either one of his other two titles Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, so I went bracing for a preachy rally full of vegetarian dogma.

For those of you who have read the book, you probably know that I had no reason to fear. I’m a vegetarian, but both vegetarian activists and passionate meat eaters alike bother me. I tire of vegetarian propagandists shoving violent pictures of animal cruelty in people’s faces in an attempt to convert the nonconvertible. Just the same, I grow weary of telling people I’m a vegetarian and fielding questions like “No meat? What the hell do you eat?!” “Why? It’s natural to eat meat, y’know” or my favorite, “Ok, but jamon you eat, right?”

Thankfully, there were no leaflets handed out for either cause. Rather, I was captivated by Safran Foer’s social and environmental observations gained from the three years of research he put into the project. Safran points out that at this point in society’s development, everyone can recognize that eating meat is an “issue”, something we care about. However, voices from both sides are overly judgmental.

Safran Foer says vegetarian activists have helped create this strict dichotomy between meat eaters and non-meat eaters so much so that people do not see the benefits of just cutting down on meat consumption. “They have created a framework in discussing this so that they feel there are only two options: you’re a vegetarian or you’re a carnivore. And, most people cannot condition themselves to become a vegetarian… I think most people can condition themselves to eat less meat.” According to Safran Foer, if Americans can attempt to not eat meat for just one meal every week, the influence on the environment would be the same as taking five million cars off the road.

Vegetarians are often teased that they have canine teeth because humans are meant to eat meat naturally. Perhaps that was true during times when food was simply putting calories in our bodies. But Safran Foer points out that the huge social discourse surrounding the meat industry and the great lengths they take to create an idealistic picture of factory farms plays a much larger part in what we eat than we realize. According to Safran Foer, the animals in factory farms in the U.S. consume eight times more antibiotics than humans. Safran Foer asks “Is it natural to eat these kinds of animals that are raised in these ways? What’s natural about eating an animal that cannot survive without antibiotics? What’s natural about eating food that most nutritionists biologist and doctors I’ve spoken with say is probably the reason why girls are going through puberty at ages nine and ten?”

The system in which meat is produced is so distanced from consumers that we aren’t conscious of the externalized costs to the environment. Safran Foer says fast food “is presented as the cheapest food that’s ever been produced, when in fact it’s the most expensive food that’s ever been produced.” Indeed, the cost rung up at the supermarket does not include the destruction done to the environment. Safran Foer says the Global South has paid a huge price for this. Africa, South America, as well as parts of Eastern Europe all export food that they grow themselves but don’t eat to American and European companies. Their natural environments are destroyed in the process. Safran Foer asks “For what? Only for burgers. Not to solve the healthcare problem. Not to create peace in the Middle East. It’s for cheap burgers that make us fat.” Safran Foer also found that ninety-nine percent of the world’s soy crop is fed to animals concluding that, “No one eats tofu like meat eaters.”

Safran Foer claims that Eating Animals exists to begin a discussion about how people eat meat. He was not trying to create a book to persuade readers to become vegetarians, which is why he approached it journalistically, relying on the industry’s statistics and using two fact checkers. Even if you’re a die hard carnivore who scoffs at anything coming from the Kingdom Plantae or if you’re a vegan who refuses to swat a malaria carrying mosquito or somewhere in between, you should read Safran Foer’s book, if for no other reason than to learn about the affect the foods you choose to eat have on the rest of the world.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

An mp3 recording of the event can be accessed here.

Written by: Sara Custer, February 9th 2011

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modern Bestiary

priyanka — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Ian Falconer, David Sedaris

Little, Brown and Company

I met bestselling author David Sedaris in 2008 at a Barnes and Noble book-signing event for When You Are Engulfed In Flames. While he seemed more than a little uncomfortable with the kind of feigned intimacy such an event requires, he was still charming, professional, and idiosyncratic throughout our brief encounter.

He asked me if I liked turtles, as he set about doodling a smiling cartoon turtle on the title page. I nervously replied that well, I'd never eaten one, so I didn't know if I liked them or not.

“Why would you say that?” he asked.

I went on to tell him about a short online video I'd seen earlier that week. In it, an ancient tortoise was filmed trying to eat the boot of some Australian hiker, who still happened to be wearing said boot at the time. For some reason, I explained, that made me think of eating turtles. Quick as you please, Sedaris drew a jaunty pointy-toed boot just above his byline.

“You see that? That's the shoe where Mother Hubbard lives. And you see that turtle down there? He's going to murder Mother Hubbard.”

My eyes lit up like a little girl on Christmas morning. “Oooh! And the children?,” I asked excitedly, clapping my hands together.

“AND the children,” he replied with a tiny smirk, before sliding my newly signed book back to me across the table.

Based on that interaction, it seems safe to assume that Sedaris had been thinking for quite some time about the many (humorous) perils of viewing beasts through a humanizing lens. Indeed, with “April In Paris,” one of the stories featured in When You Are Engulfed In Flames, Sedaris writes:

I've often heard that anthropomorphizing an animal is the worst justice you can do it. That said, I'm as guilty as anyone. In childhood stories, the snail grabs her purse and dashes out the door to put money in the meter. The rabbit cries when the blue jay makes fun of her buck teeth. The mouse loves his sister but not that way. And we think, *They're just like us!”

Sedaris tackles the multifaceted human experience via anthropomorphized animals, to hilarious effect, in his latest book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. Sedaris' stories are punctuated by illustrations from Ian Falconer, who is best known as the creator of “Olivia,” the Caldecott Honor-winning series of children's books about an adorable anthropomorphic piggy. These sixteen stories almost sit like a challenge to our instinct to see animals as being “just like us.” The book also calls into question that parallel inclination by humans to pretend that somehow we're not animals. With every story, I could practically hear Sedaris' feisty voice defiantly shouting, “So, you want to see animals act like people? Here you go. Just be careful what you wish for. You might not like everything you see.”

Take, for instance, “The Migrating Warblers,” a story of two condescending migratory birds who, with their glib dismissal of other countries as inferior, embody the "ugly American." Meanwhile, “The Mouse and the Snake” directly addresses the perils of trying to claim that an animal is “just like us”—not to mention the willful ignorance it takes to keep exotic/dangerous animals as pets. “The Sick Rat and the Healthy Rat” skewers the smug supposed power of positive thinking, and ends with one of the most morbid limericks I have ever read. In “The Vigilant Rabbit,” vigilance is synonymous with vigilante justice, as one rabbit humorlessly protects the borders of “his” forest with a ruthless ferocity. A few poignant tales also appear, such as the title story, which tackles miscommunication and lost love, and “Hello Kitty,” about the unusual circumstances of a combative alcoholic cat in an inter-species prison

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk is for every human whose bosom has swelled—in delight or empathy—when watching a movie featuring CGI-animated talking hamsters, or upon seeing photos of a chihuahua whose people think it's cute to take pictures of the poor creature dressed up in a pink tutu. Sedaris' book reminds us that, just as all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, all humans are animals—but animals are most decidedly not human.

Written by: M. Brianna Stallings, November 1st 2010

Nothing But a Dog

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Bobbi Katz, Jane Manning

Dutton Children's Books

Timmy and Lassie. Henry and Ribsy. Henry and Mudge. Shiloh, Sounder, Old Yeller. All great, classic stories. All beautiful illustrations of the so-called timeless bond between boy and dog. But where are the stories about girl and dog? There’s Because of Winn-Dixie and it, too, is a deservedly award-winning classic. But where is the rest of the canon? Finally, Opel and Winn-Dixie have worthwhile company with Nothing But a Dog, by Bobbi Katz, a picture book which manages to be both sophisticated and fun-loving.

Nothing But a Dog is told in the voice of a young girl who has a well thought-out argument about why when you long for a dog, nothing but a dog will do. Not parakeets, squirrels or kittens. Not soft, furry boots. There’s no activity fun enough to compensate, either. It is in the enumeration and illustrations of these allegedly lesser activities that the book really soars. In vibrant watercolors by Jane Manning, the girl “works at her own workbench with real tools,” rides a grown-up bike and climbs trees with a hat designating her Vice President of the Tree Climbers’ Club. (Another girl is president. A boy in the picture appears several branches below, but the girls are clearly the leaders). As the lively illustrations make clear, none of these activities are anywhere near the boring wasteland of time that the girl claims. But when you long for a dog, even playing the trumpet or going to monster movies (another wonderful illustration with the girls looking blasé and the boys terrified in their seats) can’t quell the longing.

The girl, although she remains unnamed, is real and appealing. She is calm, thoughtful, and adventurous, and knows how to present a convincing argument. Does she prevail in the end? Her parents, who make their only appearance on the last page, respond just the way one would hope to a daughter who knows how to vividly present her case.

Nothing But a Dog will appeal to both children and parents. While some children’s books about pets strive to present the sobering reality (it’s a lot of responsibility, kids!), this one is all about the joyous, free-form, muddy, messy, incomparable, unconditional love between child and dog. And, yes, it’s a lovely change to have that child be a girl.

Parents will be quick to notice that the book leaves out the darker side of dog ownership. Where are the chewed carpets, the scarred cabinets, the poor dead soles? (I refer to shoes and slippers.) The puddles? The vet bills? The forced marches through blizzards with small-bladdered pups? In case you’re wondering, yes, we did recently bring home a puppy in the middle of a Chicago winter. And that is precisely why I wanted to read this book. The magic of dog ownership was lost to me somewhere between February and the realization that the rugs were no longer salvageable. The wonder of the guaranteed happy greeting faded as I considered how our new friend resembled Tigger if Tigger were to be reincarnated as a weapon of mass destruction. I badly needed to recapture the messy magic. Perhaps it was a reflection of my mental state that before I read the book, I kept mistakenly referring to it as, “Anything But a Dog.” But meeting this lovely, strong girl and drinking in the illustrations has gone a long way towards reminding me why we all love a good girl-and-her-dog story.

Written by: T. Tamara Weinstein, July 14th 2010

Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Maxine Kumin

W.W. Norton

It’s truly a shame that poetry is so often thought of as inaccessible, hopelessly and purposefully snarled with obscurity and flabby with rococo intellectualism. Great poetry should work on many levels, and thus appeal to a wide audience from those who appreciate it for its pure beauty and those that delight the complexity of further analysis. Maxine Kumin is a poet whose entire oeuvre is rooted in what she knows: her farm in New Hampshire, where she works in the ground, keeps horses. Her poetry is the dirt, it is the food scrap, it is the snort of horses, but she makes these mundane details peal out their secret beauty; she makes them transcendental.

Where I Live is a collection of poems that spans two decades of the poet’s illustrious career, which includes a Pulitzer Prize, a stint as Poet Laureate of the United States and countless other honors. The collection allows a reader to follow along with the contours of Kumin’s life. As with any life, there are personal and cultural landmarks, some common and others not so: marriage, giving birth, creating a home, a broken neck suffered by falling from a horse at age seventy-three, the death of a close friend, Anne Sexton. All are contemplated with a true, ringing voice and simple grace.

More interestingly, though, are those elements held constant. Kumin’s love for nature and animals alternately stings and sings. The reader can also feel her all-consuming vitriol for those who mistreat land and beast alike:

Damn all of you with dumpsters.
Damn all who do not compost.
Damn all who tie their dogs out
on bare ground, without water.
Damn all who debeak chickens
and all who eat them, damn
CEOs with bonuses, corporate jets, trophy wives.

Her poems of celebration are absolutely reverent: in an ode to her garden plants, she writes, “O children, citizens, my wayward jungly dears/you are all to be celebrated/plucked, transplanted, tilled under, resurrected here […] For all of you, whether eaten or extirpated/I plan to spend the rest of my life on my knees.”

It is from this celebratory spirit that she approaches her craft, too, referencing and playing with other poets, taunting and engaging them in her own verse. Her belief in the healing and cleansing power of composting and mucking out and gardening easily becomes a metaphor for her own work as a poet. Her exhilaration for both nature and language sustain one another; in fact, they feed one another, and Kumin, in her eighties, has much fertile land left to till.

Written by: Jo Ristow, March 19th 2010

Red Rover

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Nik Houser

As Red Rover opens, a faithful dog and a clever cat are surveying an empty playground’s scents and sights. There has been a kidnapping in the small Massachusetts town of Hope Falls. Baby Adam has been stolen away, apparently by some animal. Who is better suited to solve this crime and return Baby Adam to his rightful place than Hope Falls’ animal residents?

Mr. Caraway’s helper dog Goldie, a black Labrador retriever named by his blind master, may have once been a stray. He’s missing all memories other than his painfully present nightmares. Medusa is the hoity-toity Himalayan cat to whom Countess Lenotchka’s entire estate was willed, as well as a member of the oppressive Purity Association’s board of directors, sworn enemy to all pets without a pedigree. Despite her sarcastic commentary, Medusa proves that even cats have hearts when the unlikely pair join forces to find Baby Adam.

What starts with a temporary alliance to put a crime to rights becomes an Odyssey through all the frightening unknowns Hope Falls has to offer: bloodthirsty birds of prey; the cruel head of Animal Control, Edgar Fergut, and his pal Gill Grimes from the dump, the Lost Hills Animal Sanctuary said to have been a site for genetic experimentation years ago, and many more sinister obstacles. Goldie and Medusa track down and interrogate every animal whose scent could be found at the crime scene, before being forced to seek answers up in the Lost Hills, out at the strangely quiet Animal Control facility, even deep in the woods from the Oracle.

The novel’s main female character, Medusa, is grossly outnumbered by male characters, but manages to remain edgy and mean even as she primps and preens. Never one to make a choice to please anyone but herself, the cat is even labeled a bitch (one of this reviewer’s least favorite words for females who refuse to please) by her male companion at one point. Depending on your perspective, the character of Medusa is a delightfully strong, stubborn female, or a tired silhouette of the anger that can arise from a lifetime of being omitted and objectified.

No matter your particular brand of feminism, Houser’s inventiveness and sense of timing will keep you laughing even as you shake in your boots. Nik Houser’s fiction has been featured in numerous journals and even the anthology Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: 20th Annual Collection. Meet good dogs and bad dogs in this hackles-raising suspense mystery from a rising master of horror, sure to make animal enthusiasts and dog catchers alike sit and stay.

Written by: Sen Haines, January 6th 2010

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability

admin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:41:00 +0000

By Lierre Keith

Flashpoint Press

When I initially saw the title of this book, my inner scale wanted to weigh its contents against my fifteen year decision to exclude eating anything that had parents. I also presumed the author was one of those pork slinging individuals who just couldn’t cut it as a vegetarian. The good thing about getting older, though, is the wisdom I have acquired in remaining open. Lierre Keith discusses three reasons—moral, political, and nutritional—why most vegetarians choose to adopt a meatless diet, and the misconceived notions that often accompany those reasons.

What stood out to me is Keith’s discussion of agriculture and its effects on land, society, animals, and the relationship between all three. The land that is used to cultivate all those vegetables that vegetarians feel so ethically euphoric about consuming must be cleaned and cleared of every single piece of lint in order to be successful in producing a single plant. Consequently, the animals and microfauna (bacteria, fungi, and yeasts) that symbiotically thrived off that land are forced into their demise, with the bison serving as an example. Keith states that the sixty to 100 million bison that existed in the U.S. in 1491 have been reduced to 350,000 in number today. Also, only 10,000 wolves now remain where there were once between 425,000 and a million. Once this relationship is forced to call it quits, the land that would normally nourish and replenish itself is now barren until another piece of land is taken over, or until fertilizer is used.

With political vegetarianism, Keith uses the symbiotic relationship of the many companies that are seen as profit-fueled while also holding a financial interest in those meat-free, so-called environmentally-friendly products we so proudly consume. Basically, that soymilk we may drink out of protest against Coca-Cola is owned by the same company that holds shares in that red can.

In the section on nutritional vegetarianism, of which I took particular interest, Keith explains the physiology involved in consuming a low-saturated fat, high carbohydrate, and high grain diet. She also gives a personal account of how this diet affected her own body resulting in fourteen years of sickness, nausea, and bloating. Not only in vegetarianism, but also in the diet many Americans have been scared into adopting, the above-mentioned way of eating is being attributed to cardiovascular disease. Some of the diseases Keith states are attributed to the “diseases of civilization” are arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and stroke.

What I thought would be a book filled with disgruntled accounts of a has-been vegetarian justifying the excuse to pig out on double cheeseburgers again, was actually a well-researched, statistically sound book that deals with truths from both a personal aspect and a social one. Keith, although opinionated in some places, still allows the reader to consider both sides of the vegetarian argument from three perspectives. For those who insist on one way versus another, The Vegetarian Myth presents us with enough information to wisely weigh whatever we choose to put on our plates.

Written by: Olupero R. Aiyenimelo, August 13th 2009

The Hedgehog’s Dilemma: A Tale of Obsession, Nostalgia, and the World’s Most Charming Mammal

admin — Mon, 25 May 2009 09:36:00 +0000

By Hugh Warwick

Bloomsbury Press

I remember the first time that I saw a hedgehog. I was studying abroad in England, returning home after a night out, and outside my flat I heard a snuffling sound in the underbrush. Seconds later, a small hedgehog toddled out, seemingly unfazed by our presence. This small moment has stayed with me.

I feel that Hugh Warwick, the author of The Hedgehog's Dilemma, would appreciate my story of my first encounter with a hedgehog considering his overwhelming passion for the personable little creature. Warwick has been researching hedgehogs for over twenty years, and his story is a mix of biography, scientific research, and impassioned plea.

Warwick has tracked hedgehogs—literally—across the world. Tracking hedgehogs by GPS across the hills of England, Warwick came literally nose to nose to hedgehogs, and he fell in love. And as I read his book, I began to fall in love with the creatures myself. As he discovered one of his hedgehogs was tragically being eaten, I gasped so loud that the people around me on the subway actually looked up to see what was happening. (For those of you who ride the subway in NYC, you know that this doesn’t happen often.)

Warwick tells his own story of researching hedgehogs across the years and across the seas, and we are met with a number of characters. There are the hedgehog collectors in America, where no native population exists. There are the overzealous journalists blaming hedgehogs for the decline of bird populations in Orkney. There are the incredibly selfless caretakers of injured or abandoned hedgehogs.

Warwick ends up in China looking for the elusive (possibly extinct) hughi hedgehog, his namesake hedgehog in a way. He tracks this specific species of hedgehog from the museums to the forests of China. I felt the excitement and possibility of the moment as he crossed continents in search of hughi, and you’ll have to read the book yourself to see what happens.

Hedgehogs—little creatures that trundle through the underbrush of England and other parts of Europe—are being threatened by human interference. With the demolition of the famous English hedges that hedgehogs are so inherently fond of, combined with the more cars on the road, the hedgehog population is diminishing. Inherent in this book—other than a clear love song to the hedgehog—is the message that humans are negatively affecting their environment. A conscious effort must be made to first acknowledge this fact, and then, something must be done about it.

Written by: Kristin Conard, May 25th 2009

This is Sour

admin — Wed, 30 May 2007 13:58:00 +0000

By Awesome Animal Ambulance

Aurora Seven Records

Up to Weymouth, doctor, up to Weymouth studio! Awesome Animal Ambulance’s CD debut, This is Sour, is full of cute catchy pop tunes that share more than animal fascination with the Panda Squad. They share nearly half the band, label, and a taste for the playful and upbeat. With song titles like “Hunting Season Behind the Wheel” or “Operation Kitty,” their song lyrics have a childish playfulness that even a boar couldn’t help but find charming. Some of the lyrics in “Count on Us" are “If you sense there is pollution/ and you don’t know what to do/ there is only one solution/ to get rid of the goo/ birds you can count on us/ squirrels you can count on us…” The CD is just too precious not to like. Where else can animal rescue be so much fun? There, I’m going to take out my paints and draw a happy blue sky. It’s only a pity the CD is eighteen minutes long, with a few under a minute synthesizer tracks. Check out cover artist Suzy Coady’s animal drawings, and surely the album as well. Hopefully we’ll hear more from Awesome Animal Ambulance.

Written by: Beatrice Smigasiewicz, May 30th 2007