A Typical New Zealand Cat

Let’s take a step back for a second. Does the government have the power to control species, and perhaps more importantly, should they? This has occurred in the past, but it should be noted that Morgan’s plan doesn’t call for an all out cat killfest-instead, it suggests that the cat population be controlled and monitored. Given that feral cats are blamed for the majority of bird kills in New Zealand, it makes sense that Morgan’s plan emphasizes the spaying and neutering of cats. Some opponents to Morgan’s plan however cite that nature should be allowed to take its course. Unfortunately, over 30 bird species in New Zealand have gone extinct already, and many more are endangered due to the presence of imported cats. It seems to be a fair compromise for New Zealanders to make to preserve the biodiversity that makes New Zealand so special. But maybe that’s just because I’m a dog person.

This tradition started in 1989 with President George H. Bush.  Among the lucky few birds that have been spared are Katie and Zack in 2001 (named after children of the Chairman of the National Turkey Federation),  Marshmallow and Yam in 2005, and Liberty and Peace last Thanksgiving.

The process  is full of pomp.  The turkeys (one for the ceremony and one alternate) are selected at birth and trained to handle loud noises, crowds, and flash photography. They are brought into D.C. via motorcade and stay in a deluxe suite at the W Hotel, feasting on berries, corn, and acorn the night before the event. After their official duty, they are whisked off to Mount Vernon.

All is done in good jest and the holiday spirit, but it raises some “sort of” serious questions:

1. Why pardon turkeys at all?  Does this point to a larger issue about animal cruelty or food (over)consumption? Surely, there’s a reason why we cringe when we see Governor Palin pardoning a turkey while his fellow birds are being butchered in the background::

2. And what about the names? Why Liberty?  Why Peace?  And why was Liberty the chosen bird and Peace the alternate?  Surely it would have been bad taste to name the bird Osama.  But in the name of all things to be pardoned, what about Congress or the Economy? There must be a method to the madness of selecting these select birds—if the act is symbolic, then the names must be as well.

Just some food for thought.  Happy Thanksgiving!

PETA poster from 1994. Photograph: Rex Features. Source: The Guardian

But it seems like the folks at PETA are kicking it up a notch. NPR reports that PETA is planning a website that will “feature ‘tantalizing’ videos and photographs” (read: pornography) leading to its usual animal rights messages. Never mind that “tantalizing” summons up images of that medium-rare filet mignon oozing with the last drops of life force, it’s easy to see why this new initiative is questionable. The obvious objection is that using an immorality to promote an ethical viewpoint reeks of hypocrisy. Moreover, from a practical standpoint, this new enticement is bound to be a turn-off for “mainstream” audience, adding further to the perception of PETA as a fringe movement.

But are there really no justifiable reasons to put naked bodies on the line for animal rights?

Consider this: if one PETA argument is that humans and animals are really more alike than different, then what is more effective an illustration than human bodies eliciting and performing what are often called our most animalistic desires? Also, PETA’s new idea could function as a sort of meta-critique. If the public finds pornography objectifying, exploitative, disgusting, grotesque, and—in a word—offensive, then why wouldn’t it harbor the same sentiment toward the literal eating of animals, among many other evils that humans perpetrate on animals? Here the opponent would argue from the alleged differences between humans and animals, to which the PETA advocate could point to the juxtaposition: naked human, naked animal, wherein lies the difference?

Of course, opponents can point to cognitive ability as the decisive line between humans and animals—an old argument now. And maybe all PETA is going for with the new website is mere provocation, rather than some weird postmodern argument. But it suffices to point out the inextricable relationship between morality and the regulation of desires, regardless of which indulgence one prefers.

Pictured here is Yvonne the elusive cow. Photo from NPR.

Now that we have any potential conflicts illuminated, meet Yvonne. Yvonne is German cow who stuck it to the man and ran away moments before she was to be slaughtered. It seems quite ordinary that a cow would get frightened as it is being ushered to its death. What is out of the ordinary is that Yvonne’s escape was successful. Moreover, she wasn’t just able to finagle her way out of the slaughterhouse line; Yvonne has managed to evade:

• “Hunters on a shoot-to-kill mission (since called off);
• Search parties of volunteers trying to find the cow before the hunters did;
• Helicopters using thermal imaging cameras;
• A reward of 10,000 euros ($14,533), offered by Bild, a German tabloid;
• Entreaties delivered via animal psychic, who relayed that Yvonne “didn’t feel ready” to return to the world of humans.
• Bovine lures, including an (allegedly) attractive bull ox, her “sister cow” Waltraud, and Yvonne’s calf, Friesi.” (NPR)

The extreme measures to catch Yvonne came when she almost ran into a police officer on the highway and she was subsequently named a ‘public safety hazard.’ Herein lies my first question: do the police have a right to put a bounty on this cow? If an all out war is declared every time a deer causes a car accident the necessary expansion in government workers is enough to cause the Republican Party to have an aneurism. That simply doesn’t seem like a sensible way of spending federal money.

And then there is the issue of special treatment. The efforts to capture Yvonne quickly caught public attention and a social movement behind the protection of her ensued (Yvonne’s Facebook page). While I’m entirely on Team Yvonne, why should it matter that society has a crush on this cow? If she is worthy of her ‘public safety hazard’ title, then the government ought to protect its citizens and eliminate any risk (or “risk”) Yvonne poses; we have no issue with the government capturing rogue skunks and other less-appealing “risk” critters.

Even if she isn’t a risk, the matter isn’t society’s decision to make. Now that an animal sanctuary has bought her, Yvonne is private property. Just because my dog is infinitely more appealing than my neighbor’s, the neighborhood is not allowed to impose their opinion on my dogs behavior any more so than on the ugly, yappy dog next door.

The third question is simple: at what point should this cow simply be left alone? Clearly she has an uncompromising desire to be free and apparently she is capable of surviving on her own. It’s not like Colonel Gaddafi trying to live out the rest of his years in peace – it’s a cow. She has been paid for. Assuming she isn’t an imposition on society, why can’t she just enjoy her bovine justice? Not a far leap from this question is the foundation to vegetarianism/veganism, but as the disclaimer warned, that’s not an argument I am going to explore.

Photo via Deane Anderson

This week PETA has taken a new stance in its plight for animal rights that has many people LOLing (sorry, did I overdo the acronyms?).  The latest from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is a demand for more “animal friendly” lingo in the New International Version of the Bible.

Let’s get some background, first. The New International Version of the Bible has been in the works for almost 40 years.  The major aim of the committee working on this latest edition is to make the language of the Bible more easily understood by the modern people of today, using more modern terminology to increase the accessibility of the text they believe to be God’s word. In the eyes of PETA, this presents the perfect opportunity to remove “speciesist” language from the Good Book (yes, that’s like “sexist” or “racist,” and according to the OED it’s actually a real word).  This means not referring to animals as “it,” but as “he” and “she.”

PETA is a progressive organization that brings to light and helps ameliorate the shocking harm done to animals around the world, and that’s great. But it seems that with its latest cause PETA has, well, gone a bit astray. They seem to think that incorporating more humanizing pronouns when referring to animals may cause a shift in public mentality to view animals as thinking and feeling creatures, which would in turn perhaps cause humans to treat animals better. It’s true that the Bible is the most widely-read book in the entire world. But changing a few “it” and “that” to “he” and “she” seems an incredibly trickle-down, circuitous route to achieving animal rights on a wide scale. (In part because, interestingly, it seems that Christians don’t exactly see eye-to-eye with PETA’s mission.) The fact that PETA, usually such an active, passionate proponent of animal rights, would become involved in something that does not affect animals in any immediate, direct, or significant way, strikes me as misguided.

Acts of cruelty are committed against animals around the world, be it through the food, fashion, or entertainment industry. When humans aren’t exploiting animals for some “necessity” (i.e. food or clothing–where do we draw the lines here?), some resort to animal cruelty for sheer fun or due to misplaced anger. These are all very real issues that need to be addressed, and PETA does what it can through education and protesting to stop violence against animals. What seems a bit like a waste of time and energy, however, is this latest goal of achieving more sensitive language in the best-selling book of all time. No one seems to be suggesting that animals are currently harmed by reading the Bible, and it’s arguable that people who don’t care about animal rights are not going to be influenced by changing the language in a religious text. When so many other more shocking and violent acts are committed against animals every day, one must wonder why PETA chose to allocate a portion of its resources to an issue that is of minimal significance or relevance to the lives of those for whom the organization advocates.  Where’s the utility in that?

There is probably not much debate on whether her action was humane or not, what I think really is worth talking about is Mark Bittman’s response in the New York Times. Bittman argues that we torture animals everyday in meat factories and we make it okay because we eat the animals (warning: he included some really graphic videos). The fact that a teenager is charged with a federal felony for killing a hamster while industries get away with grinding up 200 million chicks alive in a year is something that really troubles me.

Humans as a species have succeeded in evolution so successfully that we are hands-down on the top of the food chain. We have the ability to eat what we want and the power to bring many species of animals to extinction if we want to (or even when we don’t want to). We rarely have to worry about being overpowered by other animals, and as cliché as this sounds, we have the responsibility to go along with the power we have to make ethical decisions. I am by no means telling people to all turn vegetarians or vegan (I am definitely not one), but I think it is important to think about what makes mass killing animals for food okay and killing one hamster not.

How do we decide which animals are more important than others? Do we base it on the intelligence of the animals? (I’m pretty sure that pigs are smarter than hamsters.) The ability to perceive pain, death, or self-identity? We can buy rat poison in stores, but killing a pet mouse via poison would be animal torture, how do we explain that? Why is it socially acceptable to eat certain non-endangered animals and unacceptable to eat others?

It seems like the “purpose” of the animals is all that matters to humans instead of what species they are, and that seems to me a very subjective line and in a way, an irresponsible way to define things. I think the ultimate question comes down to how to balance human needs and wants with those of other living beings.

(Thanks to Christian for giving me this awesome link and some great ideas for the post)

Photo via Impressions of Saratoga Online

Everyone knows drinking alcohol and driving vehicles don’t make a good match. But what about handling other means of transportation while under the influence of drugs or alcohol? Recently, a public safety ad in Montana which broadcasts catching a ride home with a horse as a metaphor for finding a safe ride home is now actually calling into question whether riding your horse home while intoxicated is illegal.

According to Montana law, horseback riding while drunk is, in fact, legal, as an animal is not lawfully defined as a vehicle (this isn’t the case in Colorado). So should Duke consider installing a safe-ride horse service to take students between East and West campus post-Wednesday-night Shooters (it may get you home faster than waiting for that C-2)? Not quite.

The larger issue at hand is what, exactly, it means to have a “safe ride.” The point of the public safety ad was not that drunk people should now start riding their horses around (although it was interpreted that way by many Montana residents given the horse culture there) but rather that an intoxicated person should make sure s/he has a ride home of which s/he is fully aware and in control. Which probably isn’t a horse.

On a college campus, there is always discussion about drinking alcohol and staying safe. Though it’s pretty strange to think about horses as a ride home, are some of the ways Duke students get home any safer? Is walking home drunk safe enough? What about flagging down the Jimmy John’s car? The dangers of drinking don’t stop at operating machinery. When you’re intoxicated, your judgment is impaired. This is the case whether you’re getting in your car or someone else’s, your motorcycle, your Nimbus 2000, and yes, even when you’re walking. The important part is to make sure you’re with someone you can trust to be monitoring the situation for things you may not notice in your après- St. Patrick’s Day haze. Tragedy involving alcohol can occur in any situation whether or not vehicles are involved; in fact, it happened here on campus this year.

We need to make Duke an even safer place for those who decide to drink. True, we have a bus system and a van service, if you’re so inclined to wait between 20 and 45 minutes at 1:30 AM on a Saturday.  Which you probably aren’t. How about a walking service, in which Duke provides a trained official to make sure you walk back safe to the boondocks that is Edens Quad? How about offering students safe rides in a more timely fashion so they aren’t standing in the cold or, more likely, stumbling back to their dorm by themselves? If the Duke administration is really as committed to keeping its students as safe as it claims, new ideas need to be encouraged and implemented with all due speed. In the meantime, if springtime in Durham leads you to party it up, leave your horse at home.

The contest occurred at a local NZ elementary school…after all, what third grader doesn’t want to toss a possum during recess? For the animal-tossing uncultured among us, a possum-tossing contest entails the following: one, catching and humanely killing possums; two, tossing them as far as you can. That’s about it. See the video below for an example.  Sounds like a normal Sunday for me…

The principal of the elementary school that had this contest has come under fire, but he maintains that the kids, who were almost all from rural NZ farms and “had a good understanding of life and death,” were just having “harmless fun.” Moreover, the contest was part of a larger fundraising gala for the rural school. So, really, they’re tossing for a good cause he seems to be arguing.

New Zealand animal rights activists, however, beg to differ on the harmless fun aspect of this argument and insist that “it is immoral to toss dead animals around.” Here, there may be a point. After all, how many of us would enjoy spending an afternoon tossing around Fluffy and Sparky in the backyard? (If you would in fact find this fun…please don’t get a dog.)

But, here’s the kicker that makes the possum tossing much more acceptable to most than simply killing the family dog for a tossing contest: in New Zealand possums are not native and are actually classified as pests. Essentially, it’d be like if we here in America found some really big rats, humanely killed them and tossed them around. Though I become queasy at the idea of this, it doesn’t seem like too terrible a thing. We kill bugs, mice, rats and other “pests” regularly. What makes a possum different?

In case you think this is an isolated occurrence, the art of tossing bizarre animals or people is not exactly a new phenomenon in society. And yes, that did say tossing people, for we need only look to the bar sport of dwarf tossing. In fact, the game is so widespread, particularly in Australia, that scholars have debated whether or not dwarf tossing is unethical. Before anyone gets too concerned, I should clarify that the dwarves are not “humanely killed” pre-tossing as in the case of the possums. They are alive, suited with padding, and are often paid for offering themselves to be tossed. Dwarf or possum, which one would you prefer to toss?

Of course, before answering that question, there is one huge aspect of this possum-tossing contest that we haven’t even touched on: the humane killing of the possums. In theory, humane killing sounds like a mixture of a great idea and a great euphemism to make us feel better about killing defenseless creatures…I mean pests. But, in practice, I think we all knew our fair share of sadistic ten-year-old boys, and I can’t see them being so humane to the possums they want to toss.

Personally, I find that the idea of tossing any dead animal (pest or not) makes me quite squeamish, and it’s certainly not something I’d want to do in a school sanctioned setting. As for the dwarves, I have neither the strength nor desire to ever toss one anywhere. In fact, the mere idea of relegating a dwarf to the status of a baseball is even more hard for me to handle than tossing possums.

So, when all is said and done, would you toss a possum?