FROM LANETTE BAKER

Something I found on facebook will make you cry (or at least I did). This was written by Catherine Hedges:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Average Pet Owner:

Thank you for contacting us animal rescuers, shelter volunteers, and foster-homes about your inability to keep your pet. We receive an extremely high volume of inquiries and requests to accept surrendered animals (and none of us is getting paid, OK?). To help us expedite your problem as quickly as possible, please observe the following guidelines:

1. Do not say that you are "CONSIDERING finding a good home" for your pet, or that you, "feel you MIGHT be forced to," or that you "really THINK it would be better if" you unloaded the poor beast. Ninety-five percent of you have already got your minds stone-cold made up that the animal WILL be out of your life by the weekend at the latest. Say so. If you don't, I'm going to waste a lot of time giving you commonsense, easy solutions for very fixable problems, and you're going to waste a lot of time coming up with fanciful reasons why the solution couldn't possibly work for you. For instance, you say the cat claws the furniture, and I tell you about nail-clipping and scratching posts and aversion training, and then you go into a long harangue about how your husband won't let you put a scratching post in the family room, and your ADHD daughter cries if you use a squirt bottle on the cat, and your congenital thumb abnormalities prevent you from using nail scissors and etc., etc. Just say you're getting rid of the cat.

2. Do not waste time trying to convince me how nice and humane you are. Your coworker recommended that you contact me because I am nice to animals, not because I am nice to people, and I don't like people who "get rid of" their animals.

"Get rid of" is my least favorite phrase in any language. I hope someone "gets rid of" YOU someday. I am an animal advocate, not a people therapist. After all, for your ADHD daughter, you can get counselors, special teachers, doctors, social workers, etc. Your pet has only me, and people like me, to turn to in his or her need, and we are unpaid, overworked, stressed-out, and demoralized. So don't tell me this big long story about how, "We love this dog so much, and we even bought him a special bed that cost $50, and it is just KILLING us to part with him, but honestly, our maid is just awash in dog hair every time she cleans, and his breath sometimes just reeks of liver, so you can see how hard we've tried, and how dear he is to us, but we really just can't . . . ." You are not nice, and it is not killing you. It is, in all probability, literally killing your dog, but you're going to be just fine once the beast is out of your sight. Don't waste my time trying to make me like you or feel sorry for you in your plight.

3. Do not try to convince me that your pet is exceptional and deserves special treatment. I don't care if you taught him to sit. I don't care if she's a beautiful Persian. I have a waiting list of battered and/or whacked-out animals who need help, and I have no room to foster-house your pet. Do not send me long messages detailing how Fido just l-o-v-e-s his blankies and carries his favorite blankie everywhere, and oh, when he gets all excited and happy, he spins around in circles, isn't that cute? He really is darling, so it wouldn't be any trouble at all for us to find him a good home. Listen, we can go down to the pound and count the darling, spinning, blankie-loving beasts on death row by the dozens, any day of the week. And, honey, Fido is a six-year-old Shepherd-Lab mix. I am not lying when I tell you that big, older, mixed-breed, garden-variety dogs are almost completely unadoptable, and I don't care if they can whistle Dixie or send semaphore signals with their blankies. What you don't realize is that, though you're trying to lie to me, you're actually telling the truth: Your pet is a special, wonderful, amazing creature. But this mean old world does not care. More importantly, YOU do not care, and I can't fix that problem. All I can do is grieve for all the exceptional animals who live short, brutal, loveless lives and die without anyone ever recognizing that they were indeed very, very special.

4. Finally, just, for God' s sake, for the animal's sake, tell the truth, and the whole truth. Do you think that if you just mumble that your cat is "high-strung, " I will say, "Okey-dokey! No prob!" and take it into foster care? No, I will start asking questions and uncover the truth, which is that your cat has not used a litter box in the last six months. Do not tell me that you "can't" crate your dog. I will ask what happens when you try to crate him, and you will either be forced to tell me the symptoms of full-blown, severe separation anxiety, or else you will resort to lying some more, wasting more of our time. And, if you succeed in placing your pet in a shelter or foster care, do not tell yourself the biggest lie of all: "Those nice people will take him and find him a good home, and everything will be fine." Those nice people will indeed give the animal every possible chance, but if we discover serious health or behavior problems, if we find that your misguided attempts to train or discipline him have driven him over the edge, we will do what you are too immoral and cowardly to do: We will hold the animal in our arms, telling him truthfully that he is a good dog or cat, telling him truthfully that we are sorry and we love him, while the vet ends his life. How can we be so heartless as to kill your pet, you ask? Do not ever dare to judge us. At least we tried. At least we stuck with him to the end. At least we never abandoned him to strangers, as you certainly did, didn't you? In short, this little old rescuer/foster momma has reached the point where she would prefer you pet owners to tell her stories like this: "We went to Wal-Mart and picked up a free pet in the parking lot a couple of years ago. Now we don't want it anymore. We're lazier than we thought. We've got no patience either. We're starting to suspect the animal is really smarter than we are, which is giving us self-esteem issues. Clearly, we can't possibly keep it. Plus, it might be getting sick; it's acting kind of funny. "We would like you to take it in eagerly, enthusiastically, and immediately. We hope you'll realize what a deal you're getting and not ask us for a donation to help defray your costs. After all, this is an (almost) pure-bred animal, and we'll send the leftover food along with it. We get it at Wal-Mart too, and boy, it's a really good deal, price-wise. "We are very irritated that you haven't shown pity on us in our great need and picked the animal up already. We thought you people were supposed to be humane! Come and get it today. No, we couldn't possibly bring it to you; the final episode of "Survivor II" is on tonight."

Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Pet Owner, for your cooperation.

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday’s News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1942 a UFO was spotted over Los Angeles. The incident became known as ‘The Battle of Los Angeles’ as a blackout was ordered, barrage balloons were sent out and searchlights combed the sky for the mysterious object. It was never found and 3 people died as a result of the panic. Over the years many possible explanations for the initial sighting have been put forward from hoax or possible scare tactics perpetuated by the Japanese right through to an alien spacecraft or the usual US government standby explanation of ‘weather balloon.’

And now, the news:

Pygmy goat arrives at Wildwood
Island of dwarf dinosaurs
Giant George enters record books as world's top dog
Dengue fever solution
Blurred vision?
Spaniel survives 90m cliff plunge

"Spaniels!"

SENT WEEKS AGO BY MARY BAILEY

MYSTERIOUS FOOTPRINTS IN SOUTH CAROLINA

This story came in via Tony Lucas at CFZ New Zealand. Thanks, matey.

I live in the USA; in South Carolina. My question is `Do all birds have three toes?` I won't tell my full story now, but I will send some of my pictures. I will say that the tracks started (yes, that's right, STARTED)
in my yard, just like something just fell from the sky. The tracks were in clean snow. I made a large hunt for where it could come from. After I followed the track it was gone again.

It ended in clean snow then came back down about 1/8 of a mile away. It walked over to a tree with its feet about three feet apart.

It peed. The pee was like it was sprayed out. It was not a hard stream like a man would do. The thing then walked about four steps (which were about five feet apart) then left the snow into the air. I know this may not be what you deal with, but no-one else can help me find out what this is...

Mr H.

THE AMATEUR NATURALIST IS BACK (or will be very soon)

Issue 8 of The Amateur Naturalist goes into production next week, and we hope that we will be finishing it soon after Corinna and I return from Texas.

So, in the meantime, we are inviting folk from the bloggo community to submit articles on the sort of fringes of natural history that we cover here on the bloggo. Not Fortean, and not crypto - those are strictly for A&M, but the sort of stuff that brightens up the day of folk like us who are desperately still trying to be naturalists despite the fact that the 21st Century gets ever grimmer.

DAVEY CURTIS: Giant Pacific octopus in Tynemouth Aquarium

Dear Jon,

I hope this is of some interest to you.

As it was the last day of Rosie's school holidays we took her to the Tynemouth Aquarium. I don't know if you agree with these type of places or not, but from what I could see their hearts are in the right place and they do seem to have had some fantastic success stories in breeding rare and endangered fish. Anyway, here is some footage of what I thought was their star exhibit, The Giant Pacific Octopus.

As the Octopus is light sensitive I turned the light off on my camera so the footage does not do this magnificent creature justice.

The colours and texure were just out of this world! I could have stood there for hours but I was blocking the kids having a look so I moved on to the sting rays and said a prayer for the Crocodile hunter Steve Irwin instead.

Regards

Davey C

MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: A LIVING DINOSAUR FROM IDAHO 1909?

I found this article from the Carbon County News of December 17th 1909 on a North American on-line newspaper database. It seems to describe some sort of living dinosaur – or an intricate hoax.

IDAHO MEN FIGHT MONSTER BEAST. Bullet proof animal cause of great terror in quiet country. STILL TALK OF THE GIANT. Great creature crunches trees in its teeth and lifts rocks weighing tons, say two “sober” citizens.

Frozen Dog Idaho – The people of this quiet neighbourhood,as they gather around their fireside still talk of the unclassified monster seen by two men in the hills near Mendota.

It was first seen by Joseph Cliffe and Walt Glifford. They were hunting trip in the North Basin when they came upon the hideous monster. As described by them and others who saw it later,the beast bears no resemblance to any other animal extinct or in existence.

Cliffe and Gifford were following the trail through the dense forest of the Basin last Monday and had reached a point near Grizzly Gulch when a tremendous bellow echoed from the depths of the gulch and caused them to halt tremblingly. As they peered towards the point from whence the noise came an immense pair of horns, crowning a lizard like head of enormous size, appeared above the gully`s edge. Deep set in the creature`s slimy head a pair of round eyes glistened with a terrifying light. The hunters, nearly frightened to death, and not caring to make closer acquaintance with the strange animal,beat a wild retreat to the top of North Mountain.

Arriving there they halted, out of breath,and looked down furtively into the gulch. The creature, with head still darting hither and thither, almost filled the gulch with its colossal bulk. Its body resembling somewhat that of a dinosaurius, was sheathed with slimy scales, and all along the back were ranged a row of bony spikes. The forelegs were shaped like those of a horse, though only half the size. The hind legs, thirty feet in length,and as big around as a good sized pine tree, were like those of an ostrich. A kangaroo-like tail 80 feet long stretched its length down the bed of the gulch. Gaining courage Cliffe raised his 45 90 and aimed at the monster`s head, pulled the trigger. His aim was true enough, but the bullet`s force was half spent before it reached the mark. The bullet`s impact with the animal`s head was forceful enough however to arouse its ire and cause it to thrash about wildly.

Great rocks weighing tons were dislodged by the angry flourishings of the beast. Trees two feet through were gripped in the snapping maw and made into kindling wood by the things sharp teeth. Cliffe was preparing to take another shot when the animal leaped to the top of the gulch as if shot from a catapault, and bounded much after the fashion of a kangaroo up the trail. A wild race followed in which the beast gained with every leap until the terrified hunters the woods bordering Trout Creek. Here the thickness of the timber slackened the pace of the pursuing monster and made possible the escape of Cliffe and Gifford, who reached town in an exhausted condition.

A posse scoured the hill country and once or twice saw the strange beast at a great distance.

This reads like something a bored journalist invented on his/her lunch break - witness the ostrich-like hind feet; how were they supposed to have supported a dinosaur-like animal?

But who knows?


David Bowie Ziggy Stardust

Ziggy played guitar,jammin` good with
Weird and Gilly,
The spiders from Mars,he played it left
Hand
But made it too far
Became the special man,then we were
Ziggy`s band

Ziggy really sang,screwed up eyes and
Screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan,he could lick
`em by smiling
He could leave `em to hang
Came on so loaded man,well hung and
Snow white tan…….