Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war.
— Mark Antony, Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene I
Oy, gevalt!
After the week U.S. and UN politics put us Politicadoes through, we deserve a cute critters break.
*pregnant pause for comedic effect*
So let’s talk no-kill animal shelters.1
The next city over from where your buzzkilling Weekend Politics Thread host types this header recently triggered a teacup poodle-sized tempest by refusing to euthanize a 13-year-old boxer who spent a day-and-a-half suffering a cascade of strokes and seizures. A concerned citizen witnessed some of the poor creature’s throes and went to the newspaper. As concerned citizens do.
The shelter director quickly copped to failing to order, by phone, staff to take humane action. Which satisfied no one and certainly did not ameliorate the dog’s dying dismay. Complicating the whole sad affair, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stuck in its snout. As grandstanders do.
PETA, for reasons known only to the goat god Baphomet, maintains its world headquarters in the aforementioned Uvular-adjacent city. Which even a place that houses more people on active-duty military service than any region elsewhere around the globe could tolerate if the association spent a little more time actually caring for animals rather than focusing primarily on shaming humans.
Still, Uvular comes neither to bury nor praise PETA, only to tell them to pipe down once in a while and to consider killing fewer stray puppies and kittens.
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Whatever farm animal of war, Lana. Shut up!
— “Placebo Effect,” Archer, S2:Ep.9
Would that Uvular’s cul-de-sac by the sea experienced naught but the dramas begotten by fatally sick and neglectfully wandering canines. We got boars.2 Which starts with B. And that rhymes with E, which stands for environmental devastation.
The lower half of your coast-dwelling WPT host’s quite geographically large hometown consists of impenetrable swamp. That makes the place a prime location for free-range hog farming. Pigs can subsist on nearly any organic matter. Swine also swim, withstand extremes of temperature that would kill most things, resist diseases easily contracted by a majority of livestock, and breed like, well, rutting hogs.
But, and this matters, hogs do not greatly respect Gaia, property lines, or their ownership by the folks who ear tag them. Kind of like sand, semi-wild hogs have coarse hides, get everywhere, and irritate.
So, the state government has pretty much ordered bear hunters to also gun for boars. PETA demurs on that, to put it mildly, as do many hog farmers. The swamp has yet to weigh in on the subject. Perhaps no one has asked.
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♫ Remark the cat
Who hesitates towards you
In the light of the door which opens on her like a grin
You see the border of her coat is torn, and stained with sand
And you see the corner of her eye twist like a crooked pin ♫
— “Grizabella, the Glamor Cat,” Cats, Andrew Lloyd Webber
Speaking of pussy-grabbers,3 the debate over trap-neuter-return has spun around and, sometimes, injected itself into the local-for-Uvular harangues regarding no-kill shelters and boar genocide.
In addition to sounding like a good option for Brett Kavanaugh, TNR happens when do-gooders scoop up feral cats, spay or neuter said felines, and put them back out on the streets, largely without even trying to find adoptive families for the cats. This can work for a lot of Felix cati4 and Felix catae, but it plays hell on birds. Can’t please every animal all the time, one supposes.
What (dis)pleases you this first fine proper fall weekend? Share below.
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