Here, in Texas, we have an annual influx of ‘snowbirds’ … large masses of gente norteña fleeing the winter weather ‘up north’ to enjoy a season of clear skies and milder temperatures ‘down south.’ It’s a long and time-honored tradition … for many years, my great-grand-aunt and uncle made their own annual migration from Leisuretown, New Jersey down to the sun and surf of Florida. And it’s also a tremendous economic boon to parts of Texas that enjoy an annual influx of cash in return for all things leisure – goods, services, opportunities, you name it.

Not all snowbirds travel to Texas by R.V. … and it is THEY who provide US an opportunity, a chance to observe something not-often-seen in these parts of the U.S. Here’s a shot I took of two extraordinary snowbirds in Llano County, Texas, this past week. Regular visitors in the process of raising a brood of future snowbirds.

So anyway, yesterday I was driving down a country road when I spotted a decapitated stag lying in a ditch. The strange thing was that its head had been cleaved neatly from the body, leaving a perfect anatomical cross-section-type view of the interior of the neck. A car accident doesn’t do that – and even if it did, I’d still expect to see the head nearby, surrounded by turkey vultures pecking at the soft parts.

I briefly thought about vivisectionist aliens before settling on a redneck with a chainsaw as the likeliest explanation. No doubt he’d spotted the dead stag during the day then returned under cover of night to remove the “rack” for his collection. Each to his own; I just hope he doesn’t tell friends he killed the thing while hunting – that would be deceitful.

Still, the incident made me think about animals, how we sentimentalize them, and how we use them. A few weeks back the English chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingtsall provoked a scandal in the British media when he mused aloud that eating puppies was as legitimate as eating pork. His comments even crossed the Atlantic where various bloggers huffed and puffed about this outrageous “moral equivalence”.

Of course, there’s nothing outrageous about it. HF-W (I’m too lazy to write his preposterously aristocratic name in full) was correct: in mainstream Western ethics pigs and dogs are not viewed as Kantian “persons” deserving of respect but rather dumb creatures which we are free to exploit, so long as we don’t cause unnecessary pain. Outside of that, it’s all sentiment – some animals are lovely and cuddly so you shouldn’t eat them. Tell that to the Koreans, who regard dog meat as a scrumptious teatime treat.

Indeed, compared to some of the things we do to other animals, the idea of eating puppies is very tame. We could skin puppies and use their fur in coats; or extract their bones and carve them into curious shapes. Puppies could be locked in small cages in zoos for children to stare at, or dissected in schools, or tortured in medical experiments and product testing. We could blend the genes of puppies with other animals and then harvest their organs for transplant. And so on.

Verily, the uses of animals are countless. We slaughter them and use ‘waste products’ in industrial processes; we anthropomorphize them and make them the heroes of cartoons and children’s stories. Sometimes we worship them- in Egypt the cat was a sacred animal, for Hindus it is the cow. And so too we subject them to religious anathemas- observant Muslims and Jews consider pork taboo; according to Islamic tradition angels will not enter a house where a dog is kept as a pet.

Still, just when you think you’ve seen it all, some new usage comes up. For instance, this October a man in Dallas deployed a frozen armadillo as an assault weapon. No, seriously. He met a woman in a car park (she wanted to eat the armadillo) but they couldn’t agree on a price. So he whacked her with it and then ran off.

That’s nothing compared to this story from Portland, Oregon. For those not in the know, Portland is a seething hotbed of well-heeled pasty-faced radicalism of the eco-friendly nude bicycling kind. No surprise then that locals were appalled when a 21 year old “aspiring model” named Jasha Lottin killed a horse, gutted it, and then climbed inside (after stripping naked, naturally). Her goal apparently was “to be one with the animal”, and also to pay tribute to the scene from The Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker slits open the belly of a tauntaun and climbs inside for warmth. As I recall Luke Skywalker did not strip naked first, but then again he was on an ice planet in the Hoth system.

Anyway, Ms. Lottin posted photographs of her nude self inside the horse online and was soon the subject of headlines and a police investigation. But she had broken no laws. The horse was 31 years old and dying. A friend shot the withered steed dead and only then did she pull out its guts, etc. There was no torture, no cruelty: the whole process was exceedingly humane.

What are we to make of this? Well, I doubt Ms. Lottin would have provoked the same level of outrage had she climbed inside, say, a very big coyote, and even less if she had kept her clothes on. As with puppies, most people are very sentimental about horses. Rich folk breed them. Hollywood types make films about them. Country musicians sing songs about them. Coyotes on the other hand are large varmints that kill livestock. Climbing inside a coyote would simply be an act of freakishness, not an attention-seeking transgression of Western aesthetics.

I personally don’t feel qualified to judge Ms. Lottin. I’ll leave that to vegetarians, though not the sort who wear leather shoes, or eat fish, of course. You see, I ate horse meat once, in Kazakhstan. It had a smoky, tender quality and was not unpleasant. I doubt, however, it was as delectable as dog.

Originally published at RIA Novosti, the home of awesomeness

10. As a youth, he was always having wet dreams

9. They were thrown together when he was out scuba diving one day and accidentally got caught up in a tuna net

8. After seeing the recent Morgan Freeman movie, he was inspired to go out and get some of that ‘dolphin tail’

7. He loves the ocean, but felt a non-mammal would be a bit too kinky

6. He was trying to make his goldfish jealous

5. In his teens, he completely flipped for Flipper

4. He thought a killer whale might be a bit too risky

3. He didn’t fall in love with her on porpoise

2. There was just something about her ‘come hither’ blowhole

1. He always heard Finnish girls were the best
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

A couple of my pals live in Vietnam. I want to visit them sometime soon, and one of the things I wish to see is the slaughter of live cobras at local restaurants. It happens, apparently. The Web site Matador Nights has the skinny:

“Munching on cobra parts is likely an adaptation of the Chinese medical belief that ingesting an animal will endow the eater with its positive attributes. This is why tiger penises are so expensive nowadays…

“…The ritual is primarily a northern Vietnamese thing and tends to be far more elaborate around Hanoi. Snake restaurants rarely advertise to foreigners, but ask any tour guide in the Old Quarter and they’ll be able to point you in the right direction.

“…your reward is a multi-course meal made from the remains of your victim. You’ll feast on snake soup, snake spring rolls, barbecued snake and just about any other culinary option the chef can dream up.

“And yeah, it tastes a little like chicken.”

I’m game.

There is a dog room and a cat room. The dog room contains stalls and cages built into the walls along with large, wheeled fourplexes for the young and the small. Also in the dog room is an endless peal of barking, howling and scratching. The cat room is more like the section in the old Woolworth’s where they sold the goldfish and parakeets. Basically there are aquaria but with grillwork instead of glass and within the grillwork are tiny mewling bits of fluff, at this time all nameless. Little cards describe them briefly with a guess at their breed and a good estimate of their age which is given in weeks or months. In a dog cage in the cat room there was one enormous middle-aged creature who had already enjoyed a breadth of life far beyond what his cave-cat ancestors could have expected. His name was Arthur.

With the coloring and dimensions of a healthy penguin Arthur was an old man on the pediatric ward. Unlike the youngsters he already had a name and a history on his cage card. It was related so; Arthur’s family added a human baby and they did not feel they could any longer give him the attention he requires. Loosely translated this means that Arthur WAS the baby until an actual baby made its coming plain. Do not disdain the people who named Arthur then turned him in to the authorities after eight years as the receptacle for their love. Housecats can and do kill babies, ignorantly seeking their little chests as a warm place to sit. But however wise or just the change it is unlikely that it was explained to Arthur’s satisfaction.

He was skittish, released into the playroom he dashed for what little cover there was. Even the lady who fed him every day couldn’t coax him out, instead he cried as if he were trapped in a well. Sought, he fled and would only be drawn out with patience but in the open he was a sight to see; twenty-two pounds of turgid muscle, tuxedo style and dandruff. “Oh, you’re playing with my big boy!” the lady observed. Doesn’t he get into the room much? “People bring him out to meet all the time but somehow they never do the deal. He’s been here the longest of all of them now.” And you know what that means. So, although I had little inclination to replace The Rat, a long-haired night hunter who had finagled his freedom by urinating on me in my sleep, I decided that this was Arthur’s lucky day. I was the governor and called in a reprieve.

They give you a cardboard carrier for a cat. Arthur stepped right through it so they gave me a big, plastic dog carrier. He seemed well suited to high-rise living. Unlike his predecessor who had been the parking lot king at my old apartment, Arthur showed no desire to learn of the outside world. It was enough to watch the occasional flock of pigeons tear past the windows. The tiny dogs across the hall terrified him although he never saw them.

Arthur loved company, girls especially, but hated commotion. He liked to play in his water but mostly he loved to sit on a human being and press his snaggle tooth across some virgin flesh. He was often alone. I’m not at home much. When I had been away for a few days he always wanted attention more than anything else. Only once did he ever really complain. After I had been gone for a while and came through the door he came out from his hide and walked glumly to his food dish rather than to me. He looked over his shoulder and let out one, disdainful, weary hiss but it was nothing some canned food and a long shoulder massage couldn’t paper over.

Some months ago he quit eating and took up barfing but it seemed to pass. Then he lost weight dramatically, deteriorated and finally needed some real medical attention. He was treated with great competence and obvious humanity at the vet hospital down the street and proved to be something of a curiosity. They never could come up with a full diagnosis but the prognosis was another matter. Fluid drained from his puffy carcass returned in a matter of days so any serious improvement was not in the cards.

The end was not bitter. Arthur got a half hour or so of the one thing he ever craved: attention. He must have gotten used to needles in the last five days as he seemed to not feel this last one. He purred and purred, more quietly and yet more quietly. I thought it was over when his head slumped down on the stainless steel but no. As I tried to close his eyes he looked up at me and licked his lips with the nibbling sound, tucked his feet under and settled in for a nap.

10. Runs Like A Girl

9. Papa’s Got A Brand New Nag

8. Lackluster

7. Sassy Sashay

6. Last Chance Harvey

5. Dances with Gluepots

4. Newt

3. Runs Sideways

2. Push ’Em Back! Shove ’Em Back! Swayback!

1. Limping Biscuit
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

A few months ago, I got pretty high and mighty about other people calling my son a dog. I was a little offended that another woman had the audacity to compare my child to her puppy. And now, I am heading out to buy him a child harness. Also known as a leash. Yes, dear reader, I’m buying my child a leash. Karma can be a real bitch, no?.

This is a picture of a dog leash

If you knew me, you’d know that I am not a Tiger Mom. For example, I employ the television as a babysitter. I serve ice cream for dinner. And I don’t really sweat the bumps on the head, the scrapes on the knee, or the occasional trip to the Emergency Room for stitches. I’ll admit that, on a few occasions, I forgot to buckle my son into his car seat. We survived.

"What else do you want for breakfast, son?"

But now, I’m searching the internet for the most expensive, top-rated child safety harness as a result of an incident I am now referring to as our “Dance with Death”. It happened like this. As we were walking from our car into the house, the little man decided to take off running down the street. Usually he stops a few houses away, turns around, and runs back. Only this time he didn’t stop; he just kept running. He ran all the way down the block. Then he turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

Allow me to interrupt this story to provide you with the setting. I don’t live on a suburban cul-de-sac. I live smack dab in the middle of the city. We’re talking stoplights, trash trucks, emergency vehicles, noise, utility trucks, busy intersections, and lots and lots of speeding cars. It sounds like hell on Earth, but actually, it is a nice neighborhood.

Back to the story. I have to say, in those few moments, I really thought he would turn around and run back to me. He’s a smart kid, I thought. He’s young, but he knows to hold my hand and he certainly knows not to run away. Well, I was wrong. He may be smart, but nothing stops an inmate from participating in a prison break, I guess.

When I finally realized that he wasn’t coming back, I took off running. This is when I realized that two-year-olds can run faster than women in their mid-thirties. So here we are: a slightly overweight and somewhat frazzled mom running down the street, with a way- too-large handbag flapping in the wind, screaming at her son to stop. I was scared, but at the same time, in the back of my mind, I was thinking that one day he could be a great track star. Olympic hopeful for 2032?

The moment I turned the corner, however, I got really frightened because I did not see him. The cars, the streets,  the trucks — it all was a blur. Finally, I spotted him. He stopped running, in the middle of a busy street, of course, and I caught up.

The interesting thing about all of this is that, while running, I passed at least three people standing there, watching this sprint. In fact, one of them said to me “I was going to start running after him”. He was going to. But he didn’t, he just stood there and watched. Nothing says good neighbor like a person who is “going to” help but instead, stands by scratching his ass during a minor emergency. Was it Fred Rogers who said he always wanted to live in the neighborhood with you?

In any case, one could argue that this is completely normal behavior for a preschooler, a way for him to assert his independence and his desire to separate from me. But the fact of the matter is, he could have been snatched up by a lunatic in a dirty, white van. He could have been attacked by one of the two pit bulls who roam the neighborhood daily on “walks” with their owner. (This is a good place to raise children, really! Won’t you be my neighbor?) Or he could have been hit by a car. I picture a number of horrific endings to our dance with death, similar to Black Swan. I’m trying not to think about how it could have turned out.

So, here we are. I ranted and raved about comparing my child to a dog, and now I’m buying a leash. It figures. If you see me around, try not to say “I told you so”, or laugh, or tell me what a bad mother I am, or mutter under your breath about helicopter parents.

See you at Pet Smart!

So, a cat in Boston has been summoned for jury duty and the court has ruled that he must attend.

In case you missed that or don’t understand, I said that a CAT

has been called in to JURY DUTY

and the court has stated that he MUST ATTEND.

The Esposito household put Sal the cat down on their census, stating that he is (here’s the shocker) a family pet.

She wrote that Sal was ‘unable to speak and understand English’ – and included a letter from her vet saying that the animal was a ‘domestic short-haired neutered feline’ … However, jurors are ‘not expected’ to have a perfect command of the English language … The other exemptions did not apply because Sal was not ill, too old or a convicted felon.

He may not be a convicted felon, but he’s a confirmed feline! amidoingthisrite?

…

Oh, it’s not funny? Oh well. Score one more for the Census Bureau. You guys are doing a bang-up job convincing me to give you more than the absolute bare minimum information. Tax money well spent.

I’ve read David Foster Wallace’s essay “Consider the Lobster” in the book of the same name, so I know why some people object to boiling live lobsters, just as I know the various reasons vegetarians and vegans object to eating animals. Some of the arguments do merit consideration and I respect that reasonable people can come to different conclusions about these things, but I remain an omnivore with an emphasis on the carnivore part and can’t get too worked up about the food chain. (I don’t eat lobster very often. It just isn’t something I think to order unless I’m in Maine or at a seafood place on the beach in summer, and even then I don’t usually order a whole lobster — eating it requires a bit more manual labor than I’m looking for in a relaxing meal.)

But carnivore or otherwise, and maybe for reasons that are not clear to me, there is something disturbing about the Lobster Zone game (pictured below) at Benny the Bums, a little seafood joint in Northeast Philadelphia. If the photo isn’t clear enough, it is just like those games kids play — the ones with a metal claw that you control with a joystick, which you use to try to pick up a prize or stuffed animal. Except in Lobster Zone, what you’re trying to pick up with the claw is a live lobster. It costs $2 per try and if you catch a lobster, they cook it for you for free. Buying a lobster dinner is in the $30+ range, so at $2 it’s a steal. Naturally, most people who play don’t win, so the restaurant is making far more money from people throwing away $2 than it loses on the rare occasions when someone wins a free lobster.

Maybe what I find disturbing isn’t that a living creature’s fate is left to a game of chance/skill — that pretty much describes fishing in general and could be said of all the lobsters caught and cooked in restaurants.

Maybe what I find disturbing isn’t the entertainment component — some people at the restaurant watched as others played. Why should I care how people entertain themselves? So what if Lobster Zone subverts a children’s game, one featured in that paragon of nostalgia and childhood, Toy Story, and uses it to allow people to hoot and cheer as their friends try to catch their dinner? Rooting for someone to win a free lobster might not be as civilized as attending the opera, but it beats forcing gladiators to hack each other to death with swords for our entertainment (which perhaps beats the latest season of The Bachelor – it’s hard to say).

Maybe what I find disturbing isn’t that people go after a particular lobster — that’s nothing new. Picking the specific lobster you want to eat from the water tank is common at many restaurants and even supermarkets. At least the claw game gives the lobster a chance (a good one) of not getting caught on any given attempt.

Maybe there’s nothing disturbing at all and Lobster Zone is just odd to me, unexpected, blatant, and really it’s no different morally or culturally from ordering and paying for a lobster. Maybe the feeling that it is disturbing would go away if only the lobsters could be more like the talking cow in the The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which is bred to desire to be eaten and says to Arthur Dent: “May I urge you to consider my liver? [...] it must be very rich and tender by now, I have been force-feeding myself for months.” Arthur, disturbed by the cow offering up its various body parts, wants only a green salad. The cow, rolling its eyes, tells him that it knows “many vegetables who are very clear on that point. Which was why it was decided to cut through that whole problem by breeding an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.” 

Apparently, eating a cow that wants to be eaten is morally preferable to eating a carrot that doesn’t want to be eaten. The brilliance of Douglas Adams aside, probably there would be nothing controversial about Veggie Zone.