Putting aside the gorey details (sorry) for a moment, a brief aside: I think I’ve talked about this before, but until only a few years ago, I didn’t really know that bullfighting involved killing the bull. I suspect I’m not alone in this, at least in the generation that grew up with stuff like this:
Sure, maybe the bull would get tricked into running into an anvil or something, but every kid knows it’s hard to get an anvil in real life, right? The idea that swords would be used in a manner that actually hurts and kills anything seemed so distant a possibility that it didn’t even enter my mind. After all, the average person sees swords in real life about as often as she sees an anvil.
This is where the internet has been a help, along with a hindrance – it’s a lot easier to see everything about everything these days, so the truth is definitely more in your face, but there’s a bias towards the absurd stuff that you’ll forward to your friends (like, say, pictures of bullfighters getting stabbed in the hey now,) so even though it’s right in your face, it’s hidden on a level that your brain can’t always uncover.
Sadly, I have no information on the medical condition of either the bull or Mr. Purple Pants. I suspect the bull’s long dead, and I’m less than pleased about that but I’ll be the bigger man and offer the obligatory helpful advice to Cornholio here: a high fibre vegan diet would be a great idea right about now – trust me, you really don’t want to have to deal with constipation on top of everything else you’ve got going on. Oh, and since you need new pants, I recommend, as always, the hammer pants.
I’ve been away for a few days, which of course leads some of you to wonder the natural most likely excuse: was Jason mauled by a bear? Thanks for your concern, and no, I wasn’t.
Hunter (or shall we say, former hunter) Gerald Marois survived an extended encounter with a large black bear about a week ago, and his choices of words are interesting: “He was eating my meat and he was licking the blood and licking himself and just enjoying every bite of it.” As Colleen (who sent me the story) wondered, are hunters more honest than most omnivores about what “meat” really means? Of course, in this case, it seems like English isn’t Marois’ first language, so it could just be a translation thing. A translation into truth bombs, that is.
Marois says he may never hunt again, which would be lucky for some deer out there, since he was in the woods preparing a future kill zone at the time of the attack. This is probably a more challenging news story to outreach-itize, with various legal issues, not to mention the ethical concerns of “using” bears to get people to stop hunting.
I’ve only seen a bear up close one time, and it was from my car. Neither of us were hunted, and we didn’t (to my knowledge) exchange lusts for each other’s meat, but I like sharing the picture, is all:
Who do you think he's working for - your country or your imprisoned cows and chickens?
I’ve been saying this for some time now – not out loud, or online, of course, because they might be listening – that when the Great Animal Uprising finally occurs, squirrels will play a key role. Think about it: they’re everywhere, nobody pays much attention to them, and yet they’re capable of causing massive power blackouts.
I mean really, did they expect I wouldn’t notice the circumstances of this incident? Normally, if a branch or some debris or, yes, a squirrel falls on a power line, there’s a process in place to deal with that, but workers were just about to do some work in that area, so the protective override was in place, which of course is the perfect time to strike.
In my area, we’ve got a lot of black squirrels, which I gather aren’t found in many other parts of the world where grey and brown are more common. I’ve heard that they’re a more aggressive species that are forcing out the other types by getting the food faster, but my theory is that they’re the foot soldiers of the Animal Uprising Army.
Which would put me right in the midst of their training camp. I know posts have been sporadic here, but from this day forward, if I miss a few days in a row, don’t think I’m slacking; wonder instead if I’ve been taken.
Taken for what purpose, I don’t know, but in case they’re reading, I for one certainly welcome our nut-chomping overlords. Seriously, everyone goes to zombie movies, but the next Food Inc style picture needs to be a modern rendition of Animal Farm so the populace can learn how to handle it. Hint: continuing to eat dead animals isn’t the best way to win friends and influence people.
In the wake of this week’s killer whale: human killer incident, Angela sent me a list of 15 animals who are cute, but terribly deadly. Normally morning emails from Angela have hints embedded in them, like “man who forgot to put away dishes impaled by samurai sword,” so on our next trip to the cassowary sanctuary I’ll refrain from hand-feeding them Froot Loops.
Yes, the cassowary. Many of the animals on the list are on the lines of “Bears! Did you know they are deadly? Internet list go web!” but the cassowary reminds me of that prolapse monster from Star Trek. It’s the one on the list where “deadly” wasn’t a stretch but “cute” likely required a cage match with the editor:
Photo by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen under the Wikimedia Commons. I don't know if he survived.
So here’s the interesting thing: most of the animals on the list aren’t widely considered food. Let’s face it; forks aren’t particularly sharp and deep down, most omnivores are scared that their meal will arrive underdone and leap off the plate and burrow, well, probably deeply into the groinal region.
We can use this.
Everybody says Diet For a New America turned them vegan, but this is the book that deserves the real credit.
I think we’re doing it all wrong. Activist speeches go on and on about experiences being near farm animals and the strong emotions the connection evoked, and we encourage people to visit sanctuaries, but I suspect fear is a stronger motivator. We need to make sanctuaries even harder to get into than a factory farm. For your protection. Cows will kill you as soon as look at you. Do NOT make them angry. By, you know, killing their parents.
Batman references will continue until morale improves. Also, Batman’s secret identity? Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne’s secret identity? A DEADLY COW.
Longtime readers know I like to post stories about birds doing clever things, like making tools or robbing car washes, it isn’t much of a surprise to see I’m all over Zed’s post about birds jousting. Once the great avian uprising happens, we’re all going to laugh about how worried we were about bird flu.
Kirk must have realized that we haven’t marvelled at the cleverness of birds lately, so he sent in a story from the car wash (talking ’bout the car wash…), wherein a car wash operator was convinced that his employees were stealing from the coin-operated machines, so he set up a little stakeout, and what do you suppose he found? Well, you may recall that we mentioned clever birds a very short while ago, and indeed it was clever birds that he found – one would actually crawl into the machine and pull out quarters (possibly because they were shiny), while others would take the coins and fly away. Now, consider for a second that it’s not just the shinyness that attracted the birds – maybe the animal kingdom has a bankroll! OK, maybe not, but birds are clever.
darrek reports that a group of bull sharks managed to stand up for their local shrimp population by ramming a fishing boat until it sank in Florida earlier this week. We’ve written about this kind of aquatic teamwork before, and some may accuse me of having anthropomorhic tendencies, but this case really highlights that this wasn’t just a random collision; apparently the sharks spent four days ramming the shrimp boat. The day is surely coming when fishermen will hear a knock at the door from a voice offering flowers and a candygram… Link.
A dolphin at a Florida aquarium managed to create a bomb scare after playing with a toy that a bunch of people thought looked like an explosive of some kind. Details are sketchy, but it seems that most of the people who evacuated were employees of the facility, who I guess weren’t aware that their dolphin was even allowed to have any toys. The item in question was some kind of glass jar about the size of a softball, and as toys go, it sounds pretty lame, but if I was a dolphin stuck in a tank and I found something that managed to disrupt an entire aquarium, it’d be my new favourite thing. Link.
jeremytough sent in a story about a duck, and while the papers are presenting it as a tale of triumph over adversity, I’m confused about a bit in the middle. See, this guy goes out hunting and shoots a duck, and then he stores the body in his fridge. The thing is, the duck’s not actually dead. Two days later, the guy’s wife opens the fridge and the “dead” duck moves. Something mysterious happens at this point, like I said, and now the duck’s at an animal sanctuary with a 75% chance of surviving. I don’t understand why the hunter had a change of heart and took the bird to the vet, not that I’m complaining, but anyway, near as I can tell we’ve got the worst hunter ever here, and the thing of it is, there’s a continuum of knowledge in the, uh, huntosphere. We hear a lot about “responsible hunting,” “one shot, one kill,” and other rhetoric about clean kills and minimal suffering, but how do hunters learn how to be all “responsible” without inflicting all kinds of cruelty while they practice? Link.
