It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
A sad Christmas tale, that is seasonally appropriate. Not all Christmas songs or tales are joyful. They are often tales of sacrifice and redemption, such as O Henry's famous short story The Gift Of The Magi or Dickens tale of the haunting of Scrooge.
I just wish it wasn't so damn popular on CKUA this season, I never can just turn it off, to late and I get teary eyed again when I hear it.
Score; 5/5 kleenex.
It is basically a retelling of the little match girl story for todays children. The author Bruce Evans is Canadian and the singer Meryn Cadell. gives the song it's haunting apprehensiveness. It is a sad carol despite the uplifting ending.
The Cat Carol
The cat wanted in to the warm warm house, But no one would let the cat in It was cold outside on christmas eve, She meowed and meowed by the door.
The cat was not let in the warm warm house, And her tiny cries were ignored. 'twas a blizzard now, the worst of the year, There was no place for her to hide.
Just then a poor little mouse crept by, He had lost his way in the snow. He was on his last legs and was almost froze, The cat lifted him with her paw.
She said "poor mouse do not be afraid, Because this is christmas eve. "on this freezing night we both need a friend, "i won’t hurt you - stay by my side."
She dug a small hole in an icy drift, This is where they would spent the night. She curled herself 'round her helpless friend, Protecting him from the cold.
Oooooo
When santa came by near the end of the night, The reindeer started to cry. They found the cat lying there in the snow, And they could see that she had died.
They lifted her up from the frozen ground, And placed her into the sleigh. It was then they saw the little mouse wrapped up, She had kept him warm in her fur.
"oh thank you santa for finding us! "dear cat wake up we are saved!" ..."i’m sorry mouse but your friend has died, There’s nothing more we can do.
"on christmas eve she gave you her life, The greatest gift of them all." Santa lifted her up into the night sky, And laid her to rest among the stars.
"dear mouse don’t cry you are not alone, You will see your friend every year. "each christmas a cat constellation will shine, To remind us that her love’s still here."
An illuminated cat sculpture in downtown Reykjavik on November 29, 2021. Icelandic folklore tells of a giant cat that eats children who don't wear their new clothes at Christmas time. Credit: AFP via Getty Images
Christmas time is upon us, and though children loathe getting new clothes for gifts, they best put on that new itchy sweater or slide on those unwanted socks. Or else risk being eaten alive by a giant cat, at least according to Icelandic folklore.
That's right. A child's worst nightmare — new clothes under the tree — could only be outdone by a somehow worse nightmare, being devoured by a ferocious feline that hunts down children caught not wearing their new clothes.
The tale of Jólakötturinn, which translates to Yule Cat, is an Icelandic Christmas classic dating back to at least 1932, according to the Icelandic Folklore website, a research project managed by the University of Iceland.
Jóhannes úr Kötlum, an Icelandic poet, wrote about the Yule Cat in his book, Jólin koma (Christmas is Coming), published in 1932.
Kötlum's poem tells the tale of a cat that's "very large" with glowing eyes. It roams the contryside, going from house to house looking for children who aren't wearing the new clothes they got for Christmas, according to the poem
Memes of the Yule Cat have been making their way around social media, some are meant to be spooky, while others are a blend of fascination and satire.
"I am really fascinated by other culture's holiday traditions so shoutout to my boy the Yule Cat," one meme reads. "A monstrous cat who roams Iceland eating people who aren't wearing the clothes they got for Christmas."
The Yule Cat isn't the only sinister character that comes around Christmas.
Another European folklore character is Krampus, an anti-Santa demon that kidnaps and punishes naughty kids, according to mythology.net. Munich, Germany, hosts an annual Krampus run, which attracts hundreds of participants — and more spectators — every year.
A sad Christmas tale, that is seasonally appropriate. Not all Christmas songs or tales are joyful. They are often tales of sacrifice and redemption, such as O Henry's famous short story The Gift Of The Magi or Dickens tale of the haunting of Scrooge.
I just wish it wasn't so damn popular on CKUA this season, I never can just turn it off, to late and I get teary eyed again when I hear it.
Score; 5/5 kleenex.
It is basically a retelling of the little match girl story for todays children. The author Bruce Evans is Canadian and the singer Meryn Cadell. gives the song it's haunting apprehensiveness. It is a sad carol despite the uplifting ending.
The Cat Carol
The cat wanted in to the warm warm house, But no one would let the cat in It was cold outside on christmas eve, She meowed and meowed by the door.
The cat was not let in the warm warm house, And her tiny cries were ignored. 'twas a blizzard now, the worst of the year, There was no place for her to hide.
Just then a poor little mouse crept by, He had lost his way in the snow. He was on his last legs and was almost froze, The cat lifted him with her paw.
She said "poor mouse do not be afraid, Because this is christmas eve. "on this freezing night we both need a friend, "i won’t hurt you - stay by my side."
She dug a small hole in an icy drift, This is where they would spent the night. She curled herself 'round her helpless friend, Protecting him from the cold.
Oooooo
When santa came by near the end of the night, The reindeer started to cry. They found the cat lying there in the snow, And they could see that she had died.
They lifted her up from the frozen ground, And placed her into the sleigh. It was then they saw the little mouse wrapped up, She had kept him warm in her fur.
"oh thank you santa for finding us! "dear cat wake up we are saved!" ..."i’m sorry mouse but your friend has died, There’s nothing more we can do.
"on christmas eve she gave you her life, The greatest gift of them all." Santa lifted her up into the night sky, And laid her to rest among the stars.
"dear mouse don’t cry you are not alone, You will see your friend every year. "each christmas a cat constellation will shine, To remind us that her love’s still here."
Even if out of office, Hansard the cat connecting Albertans to the legislature
Story by Lisa Johnson • Friday DEC. 23,2022 - Edmonton Journal
If you cross paths with a black cat in Alberta’s legislature building, consider yourself lucky.
House Speaker Nathan Cooper with Hansard the cat, in his office on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022 in Edmonton. Hansard is a rescue cat the House Speaker got and named after the official legislature record.
When Hansard was rescued at just a few days old, she needed round-the-clock care in Speaker Nathan Cooper’s office, but nowadays the more independent five-month-old cat doesn’t come to work with him every day.
Still, being out of the office most of the time hasn’t stopped Hansard from doing an important job. She’s helping Cooper tell Albertans about the history, and function, of the legislature.
On an early December morning, before Cooper would don his speaker’s robe and tricorn hat to oversee proceedings in the legislature, he sat down with Postmedia to herd a few facts, and help get his cat to sit still for some photographs.
Hansard is a rescue cat the House Speaker got
Cooper said the cat has given his public engagement efforts a big boost, including getting people thinking about the work of the legislature, and how democracy works in the province.
Thanks to her, he said, thousands more people know there is a detailed transcript of everything said on a daily basis in the assembly by elected members who represent every corner of the province — also known as the Hansard .
“It makes me super happy because we’ve tried a lot of different ways to engage people … and of all of the efforts, the winner, for sure, hands down, has been Hansard the cat,” he said.
Meanwhile, Hansard the cat was making non-partisan inroads, drawing the attention of Opposition NDP MLA Janis Irwin, whose cat Oregano is perhaps the most notorious of an elected lawmaker in Alberta. In a recent tweet, Irwin posed for a photo with Hansard and Cooper, saying she had finally met the Alberta legislature cat.
The house pet has sparked the creation of a Twitter account, written from the cat’s perspective , dedicated to “using my cuteness to make sure the Alberta UCP and NDP stay civil.”
Cooper said he had no idea who is behind it, but he gave the account kudos. Postmedia reached out to the account through a direct message, but the mysterious tweeter didn’t pounce as of press time.
Speaking in the speaker’s suite, an apartment now used mostly as a meeting and reception space, Cooper highlighted how important it is to him to help everyone, especially new Canadians, feel connected to Alberta’s democratic institutions. He also said part of his role, as the head of the legislative branch, is to build trust.
“My jam, if you will, is around these educational pieces,” said Cooper.
The Speaker’s cat sometimes visits Cooper’s office, which on a normal weekday, is full of staffers, and a few small cat toys to bat around. The cat, when she’s there, can hop onto Cooper’s desk or wander into the giant walk-in bank safe once used to hold payday cash, before cheques or automatic transfers existed.
In 2022, that safe is a coffee room with a photocopier, where Hansard can lurk below the assembly’s mace, a ceremonial gold-plated staff that symbolizes the Crown’s authority in Alberta, and an object the assembly can’t conduct business without.
If you take a public tour of the 109-year-old building, you’re more likely to catch a glimpse of the mace, often on display in a glass case, than the face of Hansard the cat, who is not allowed to roam the hallways.
Your best bet to see the speaker’s pet is to follow Cooper’s social media accounts, like on Twitter , Facebook and Instagram , where he posts photos of Hansard, always with an eye on teaching followers a thing or two about the legislature.
Move over Dr. Kervorkian make room for Oscar the Cat. A truly American creature ala Edgar Allen Poe. Of course being raised amongst the demented and dying, how Poe-tic, a cat would 'sense' death it's a component of its sentience. Making it not such a strange animal.
Oscar barely tolerates anyone on the ward who's not hours away from death, says the article. Even if they're barely conscious, brains barely registering the world anymore. But if someone's about to go?
Oscar arrives at Room 313.The door is open, and he proceeds inside. Mrs. K. is restingpeacefully in her bed, her breathing steady but shallow. Sheis surrounded by photographs of her grandchildren and one fromher wedding day. Despite these keepsakes, she is alone. Oscarjumps onto her bed and again sniffs the air. He pauses to considerthe situation, and then turns around twice before curling upbeside Mrs. K.
One hour passes. Oscar waits. A nurse walks into the room tocheck on her patient. She pauses to note Oscar's presence. Concerned,she hurriedly leaves the room and returns to her desk. She grabsMrs. K.'s chart off the medical-records rack and begins to makephone calls.
Within a half hour the family starts to arrive. Chairs are broughtinto the room, where the relatives begin their vigil. The priestis called to deliver last rites. And still, Oscar has not budged,instead purring and gently nuzzling Mrs. K. A young grandsonasks his mother, "What is the cat doing here?" The mother, fightingback tears, tells him, "He is here to help Grandma get to heaven."Thirty minutes later, Mrs. K. takes her last earthly breath.With this, Oscar sits up, looks around, then departs the roomso quietly that the grieving family barely notices.
"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.
After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He‘d sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.
Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill
Oscar wouldn‘t stay inside the room though, so Teno thought his streak was broken. Instead, it turned out the doctor‘s prediction was roughly 10 hours too early. Sure enough, during the patient‘s final two hours, nurses told Teno that Oscar joined the woman at her bedside.
No one‘s certain if Oscar‘s behavior is scientifically significant or points to a cause. Teno wonders if the cat notices telltale scents or reads something into the behavior of the nurses who raised him.
I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point --and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.
Pluto --this was the cat's name --was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.
Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character --through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance --had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me --for what disease is like Alcohol! --and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish --even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.
One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.
When reason returned with the morning --when I had slept off the fumes of the night's debauch --I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.
In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart --one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself --to offer violence to its own nature --to do wrong for the wrong's sake only --that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; --hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; --hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offense; --hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin --a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it --if such a thing were possible --even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.
Of course I would suggest you read the rest of the story as the protagonist gets his just comeuppance as I suggested here; Animal Crimes.
'Stray': How a virtual orange tabby is helping real cats
Thu, August 4, 2022
NEW YORK (AP) — The virtual cat hero from the new video game sensation “Stray” doesn't just wind along rusted pipes, leap over unidentified sludge and decode clues in a seemingly abandoned city. The daring orange tabby is helping real world cats as well.
Thanks to online fundraising platforms, gamers are playing “Stray" while streaming live for audiences to raise money for animal shelters and other cat-related charities. Annapurna Interactive, the game's publisher, also promoted “Stray” by offering two cat rescue and adoption agencies copies of the game to raffle off and renting out a New York cat cafe.
Livestreaming game play for charity isn't new, but the resonance “Stray” quickly found from cat lovers is unusual. It was the fourth most watched and broadcast game on the day it launched on Twitch, the streaming platform said.
Viewers watch as players navigate the adventurous feline through an aging industrial landscape doing normal cat stuff — balancing on railings, walking on keyboards and knocking things off shelves — to solve puzzles and evade enemies.
About 80% of the game’s development team are “cat owners and cat lovers” and a real-life orange stray as well as their own cats helped inspire the game, one creator said.
“I certainly hope that maybe some people will be inspired to help actual strays in real life — knowing that having an animal and a companion is a responsibility,” said producer Swann Martin-Raget, of the BlueTwelve gaming studio in Montpellier, in southern France.
When Annapurna Interactive reached out to the Nebraska Humane Society to partner before the game's launch on July 19, they jumped at the chance, marketing specialist Brendan Gepson said.
“The whole game and the whole culture around the game, it’s all about a love of cats,” Gepson said. “It meshed really well with the shelter and our mission.”
The shelter got four copies of the game to give away and solicited donations for $5 to be entered into a raffle to win one. In a week, they raised $7,000, Gepson said, with the vast majority of the 550 donors being new to them, including people donating from Germany and Malta. The company also donated $1,035 to the shelter.
“It was really mutually beneficial,” Gepson said. ”They got some really good PR out of it and we got a whole new donor base out of it.”
Annapurna also bought out Meow Parlour, the New York cat cafe and adoption agency, for a weekend, as well as donating $1,000. Visitors who made reservations could buy “Stray” themed merchandise and play the game for 20 minutes while surrounded by cats. (The game also captivates cats, videos on social media show.)
Jeff Legaspi, Annapurna Interactive’s marketing director, said it made sense for the game's launch to do something "positively impactful and hopefully bring more awareness to adopting and not shopping for a new pet.”
Annapurna declined to disclose sales or download figures for the game, which is available on PlayStation and the Steam platform. However, according to Steam monitor SteamDB, “Stray” has been the No. 1 purchased game for the past two weeks.
North Shore Animal League America, which rescues tens of thousands of animals each year, said it hadn't seen any increase in traffic from the game but they did receive more than $800 thanks to a gamer.
In a happy coincidence, the shelter had just set up a profile on the platform Tiltify, which allows nonprofits to receive donations from video streams, the week the game launched. The player channeled donations to the shelter, smashing her initial goal of $200.
“We are seeing Tiltify and livestreaming as this whole new way for us to engage a whole different audience,” said Carol Marchesano, the rescue's senior digital marketing director. Usually, though, organizations need to reach out to online personalities to coordinate livestreams, which can take a lot of work, she said.
About nine campaigns on Tiltify mention the game “Stray,” the company’s CEO Michael Wasserman said. JustGiving, which also facilitates charity livestreams, said it identified two campaigns with the game.
For his part, Gepson from Nebraska reached out to an Omaha resident who goes by the name TreyDay1014 online to run a charity livestream. Trey, who asked that his last name not be used, has two cats, one of which he adopted from the shelter.
Last week, he narrated to viewers watching live on the platform Twitch as his cat character batted another cat’s tail and danced along railings.
“If I found out my cat was outside doing this, I’d be upset,” Trey said, as his character jumped across a perilous distance. Moments later, a rusty pipe broke, sending the tabby down a gut-wrenching plunge into the darkness.
“That is a poor baby,” Trey said somberly, “but we are okay.”
A $25 donation followed the fall, pushing the amount raised by Trey for the Nebraska shelter to over $100 in about 30 minutes. By the end of four and a half hours of play, donations totaled $1,500. His goal had been to raise $200.
“This has opened my eyes to being able to use this platform for a lot more good than just playing video games,” Trey said.
___
AP business writer Matt O'Brien contributed to this report.
___
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and non-profits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
Despite the fact that Canada does not have capital punishment it does when it comes to animals. Unfortunately the same law does not apply to the animals owners.
My object all sublime I shall achieve in time — To let the punishment fit the crime — The punishment fit the crime; And make each prisoner pent Unwillingly represent A source of innocent merriment! Of innocent merriment!
In this case the dog owner could well do without his ears....
Owner of dog with ears cut off may face cruelty charges but could still reclaim canine
CanWest News Service
Published: Monday, May 14, 2007
The owner of a dog that was found with its ears cut off could face animal cruelty charges, but under the law he can reclaim the dog if he pays its medical bills and other fees. The Windsor-Essex County Humane Society received a call from an anonymous concerned neighbour after the five- or six-month-old dog, a German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix, was spotted in an apartment building on Friday. "Both his ears were severely injured," said Nancy McCabe, the manager of field operations for the humane society. "We believe he [the owner] either took a kitchen knife or a hand saw and cut the dog's ears off." Ms. McCabe met with the owner yesterday. "He said he had nothing to do with the injuries and that he bought the dog from some guy named Jay and that it was already like that," she said. "He said it got attacked by another dog."
In the case of the Tiger mauling, the tiger was like any cat, playing with a loose piece of clothe, attached as it was to the body of a woman, whom it clawed. The cat was summarily executed for this crime. Perhaps its macho hillbilly owner should also share its fate, since the cat was only doing what comes natural and the stupid humans were at fault.
Woman killed by tiger routinely petted wild animals good night
VANCOUVER - A woman killed by a tiger last week had a routine of petting the family's wild animals good night under spotlights turned on to illuminate the animal pens. Over the weekend, more details emerged on last week's death of Tania Dumstrey- Soos, including her relationship with the wild animals who lived at her fiance Kim Carlton's privately owned Siberian Magic Zoo in Bridge Lake, B.C. "Kim told me yesterday that at night, he'd turn the lights on -- the spotlights on -- so that Tania could go down and pet them," Williams Lake Mayor Scott Nelson said yesterday. "She loved those animals dearly." Mr. Nelson, who employed Ms. Dumstrey-Soos at the 100 Mile House Advisor paper, said she always carried around photos of the tigers with her at work. No one knows why the three-year-old tiger, Gangus, lashed out through the cage. Mr. Nelson said six-year-old Nicholas Dumstrey-Soos witnessed the attack and ran to get his mother help. An RCMP media report released on Saturday said the tiger was humanely euthanized and will undergo a forensic examination. Police are investigating the incident. B.C. Agriculture Minister Pat Bell said he will meet with Environment Minister Barry Penner, the SPCA and the Humane Society this week to discuss new laws.
And since clubbing a dog to death after running over it with a car results in a less than satisfactory sentence, perhaps the thoughtless dweebs who did this should be run over by a car and then have their heads wrapped in plastic and bashed in with a shovel to understand that this is not the proper medical procedure for dealing with injuries.
A central Alberta man who pleaded guilty in a horrific case of animal abuse involving a pet dog has been sentenced to three months of house arrest followed by two years of probation.
The young man from Didsbury, Alta., was less than three weeks away from his 18th birthday when he became involved in what his defence lawyer told court was a "poorly thought-out euthanasia attempt."
A young Alberta man was sentenced Thursday to house arrest and probation after he pleaded guilty to animal cruelty towards Daisy Duke, above, a lab-border collie cross. (CBC)
Court heard the accused accidentally backed over a lab-border collie cross belonging to his best friend's mother. The teen helped try to kill the dog, named Daisy Duke, by taping a plastic bag over its head, dragging it behind a car and hitting it over the head with a shovel.
The dog was found still alive in the middle of an intersection, but had to be put down by a veterinarian.
The young man will also have to abide by a curfew for nine months after his house arrest is up and do 240 hours of community service.
Another male accused, Daniel Charles Haskett, 19, has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go on trial May 23.
Poor Bruiser. He regularly patrolled the auto body shop company where he was kept as a guard dog. As usual when dogs are kept as guard dogs around here they have little to keep them company, are treated badly, often lack a dog house or any shade, may go days without water or food, etc.
In this case the owner abandoned the dog to its fate, with little regard for the fact that it was his fault the dog somehow got out of the compound. As for his biting, it is a natural reaction for a 'guard' dog, who only sees others as possible invaders of his space. Confused, lost and wandering around, he is a threat, but not one deserving of being executed.
The owners callous disregard for his dog, shows he thought of it as just another piece of property. He abandoned the dog to its fate, and abdicating his responsibility. Certainly euthanasia of the owner is warranted since he is responsible for his dog loosing its life.
The city's animal control department put the animal to sleep yesterday morning. The dog's rampage last month saw it seized and quarantined at the city pound.
In the April 23 attack, near 101 Street and 81 Avenue, two victims were sent to hospital with bite wounds. A third person was nipped, but not injured.
The city's investigation concluded Bruiser got out of the fenced property he guarded, Extreme Velocity Custom Autoworks & Detailing Ltd., through a weak spot in the fence.
Bruiser’s owner skipped the first two meetings scheduled with the city, but finally gave permission to have the dog euthanized this week.
Bruiser had been involved in another incident, and the city's legal department is considering charges.
How a University of Missouri researcher and colleagues have helped advance the field of anatomical research from scalpels, scissors to 3D models using artificial intelligence.
IMAGE: CONTRAST IMAGING DATA AND MACHINE LEARNING APPROACHES CAN NOW MODEL THE 3D ARCHITECTURE OF JAW MUSCULATURE.view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI
There was once a time, not so long ago, when scientists like Casey Holliday needed scalpels, scissors and even their own hands to conduct anatomical research. But now, with recent advances in technology, Holliday and his colleagues at the University of Missouri are using artificial intelligence (AI) to see inside an animal or a person — down to a single muscle fiber — without ever making a cut.
Holliday, an associate professor of pathology and anatomical sciences, said his lab in the MU School of Medicine is one of only a handful of labs in the world currently using this high-tech approach.
AI can teach computer programs to identify a muscle fiber in an image, such as a CAT scan. Then, researchers can use that data to develop detailed 3D computer models of muscles to better understand how they work together in the body for motor control, Holliday said.
Holliday, along with some of his current and former students, did that recently when they began to study the bite force of a crocodile.
“The unique thing about crocodile heads is that they are flat, and most animals that have evolved to bite really hard, like hyenas, lions, T. rexes and even humans have really tall skulls, because all those jaw muscles are oriented vertically,” Holliday said. “They’re designed that way so they put a big vertical bite force into whatever they're eating. But a crocodile’s muscles are oriented more horizontally.”
The 3D models of muscle architecture could help the team determine how muscles are oriented in crocodile heads to help increase their bite force. Helping to lead this effort is one of Holliday’s former students, Kaleb Sellers, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago.
“Jaw muscles have long been studied in mammals with the assumption that relatively simple descriptors of muscle anatomy can tell you a great deal about skull function,” Sellers said. “This study shows how complex jaw muscle anatomy is in a reptile group.”
Holliday’s lab first began experimenting with 3D imaging several years ago. Some of their early findings were published in 2019 with a study in Integrative Organismal Biology that showed the development of a 3D model of the skeletal muscles in a European starling.
Transitioning into a digital world
Historically, Holliday said anatomical research — and much of what he did growing up — involved dissecting animals with a scalpel or scissors, or what he calls an “analog” approach. He was first introduced to the benefits of using digital imaging to study anatomy when he joined the “Sue the T. rex” project in the late 1990s. To date, it remains one of the largest and most well-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever discovered.
Holliday recalls the moment when the T. rex’s giant skull was transported to Boeing’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California to be imaged in one of the aerospace company’s massive CAT scanners normally used to scan jet engines on commercial airplanes.
“At the time, it was the only CAT scanner in the world big enough to fit a T. rex skull, and also had the power needed to push X-rays through rocks,” Holliday said. “Coming out of college I had looked at becoming a radiology technician, but with the Sue project I was learning all about how they CAT scanned this thing, and that really caught my fancy.”
Nowadays, Holliday said many of his current and former students at MU are learning to understand anatomy by using the “cutting edge” imaging and modeling methods that he and his colleagues are creating. One of those students is Emily Lessner, a recent MU alumna who developed her passion for “long-dead animals” by working in Holliday’s lab.
“The digitization process is not only useful to our lab and research,” Lessner said. “It makes our work shareable with other researchers to help hasten scientific advancement, and we can also share them with the public as educational and conservation tools. Specifically, my work looking at the soft tissues and bony correlates in these animals has not only created hundreds of future questions to answer, but also revealed many unknowns. In that way, not only did I gain imaging skills to help with my future work, but I now have more than a career-worth of avenues to explore.”
Holliday said plans are also in the works to take their 3D anatomical models a step further by studying how human hands have evolved from their evolutionary ancestors. The project, which is still in its early stages, recently received a grant from the Leakey Foundation. Joining Holliday on the project will be two of his colleagues at MU, Carol Ward, a Curators Distinguished Professor of pathology and anatomical sciences, and Kevin Middleton, an associate professor of biological sciences.
While about 90% of the research done in Holliday’s lab involves studying things that exist in the modern world, he said the data they collect can also inform the fossil record, like additional knowledge about how the T. rex moved and functioned.
“With better knowledge of actual muscle anatomy, we can really figure out how the T. rex could really do fine motor controls, and more nuanced behaviors, such as bite force and feeding behavior,” Holliday said.
Editor’s Note:
“New frontiers in imaging, anatomy, and mechanics of crocodylian jaw muscles,” was published in The Anatomical Record. Other authors include Kaleb Sellers, Emily Lessner, Kevin Middleton and Conner Verhulst at MU, Corrine Cranor at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Stephan Lautenschlager at University of Birmingham and Matthew Brown and Matthew Colbert at University of Texas-Austin. Funding was provided by grants from the National Science Foundation (EAR/SEB 1631684, NSF IOS PMB 1457319, EAR-1762458 and DBI-1902242), Missouri Research Board, University of Missouri Research Council and Jackson School of Geosciences Geology Foundation. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies.
CAPTION
Contrast imaging data and machine learning approaches can now model the 3D architecture of jaw musculature
In the early 19th century it was common practice to hand write seasonal messages on calling cards or in letters. In 1843, in order to save himself having to hand-write dozens of Christmas messages, Sir Henry Cole had his friend, John Calcott Horsley, design and print a batch of cards. The words printed on the card were 'A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year' much the same is still found in cards today.
Donalda and I are taking our dogs; Trooper and Tami, off for a jaunt in the mountains for Xmas. So I won't be blogging for several days.
We are going to Jasper. Like Banff a national park created by slave labour, after WWI, using Ukrainian Internees. I will raise a glass in their memory.
Have a great Yule all. Drink a cup o' cheer to keep away the winter cold.
Credit: Ian Davies; Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library
ITHACA, N.Y. —A groundbreaking study published today in Science reveals that North American bird populations are declining most severely in areas where they should be thriving.
Researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology analyzed 36 million bird observations shared by birdwatchers to the Cornell Lab’s eBird program alongside multiple environmental variables derived from high-resolution satellite imagery for 495 bird species across North America from 2007 to 2021.
The team set out to develop reliable information about where birds are increasing or decreasing across North America, but the patterns they uncovered were startling.
Birds are declining most severely where they are most abundant—the very places where they should be thriving. Eighty-three percent of the species they examined are losing a larger percentage of their population where they are most abundant.
“We're not just seeing small shifts happening, we're documenting populations declining where they were once really abundant. Locations that once provided ideal habitat and climate for these species are no longer suitable. I think this is indicative of more major shifts happening for the nature that's around us,” said Alison Johnston, lead author and ecological statistician. Johnston initiated this study as a research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and now she is a faculty member in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St. Andrews, UK.
This news follows on the heels of other recent research that documented widespread losses of birds in North America. The 2025 U. S. State of the Birds report showed bird declines in almost every biome in the nation, and a 2019 paper published in Science reported a cumulative population loss of nearly 3 billion birds in Canada and the U.S. since 1970. “The 2019 paper was telling us that we have an emergency, and now with this work we have the information needed to create an emergency response plan,” said Johnston.
This research published in Science features recent bird population trends at 27 km by 27 km scales, the smallest parcels of land ever attempted for an analysis across such a large geographic area.
“This is the first time we’ve had fine scale information on population changes across such broad spatial extents and across entire ranges of species. And that provides us a better lens to understand the changes that are happening with bird populations,” said Amanda Rodewald, faculty director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Previously national and continental monitoring programs could estimate population trends only across entire ranges, regions, or states/provinces, but with advances in machine learning and the accumulation of vast amounts of data from participatory scientists, researchers can look at how well species are doing in areas about the size of New York City. Some species appear to be doing well across their range or within a region, but are fairing very poorly in specific locations within those regions.
“The thing that is super interesting is that for almost all species we found areas of population increases and decreases,” said Johnston. “This spatial variation in population trends has been previously invisible when looking at broader regional summaries.”
Areas where populations are increasing are the bright spots, said Johnston: “Areas where species are increasing where they're at low abundance may be places where conservation has been successful and populations are recovering, or they may point to locations where there may be potential for recovery.”
Key findings from the study include:
83% of the birds are faring worse where they are most abundant
Grassland and Arctic tundra birds show particularly troubling trends
Population decreases are not uniform across a species range; nearly all species (97%) had some areas where the populations are increasing, a positive sign that can help direct conservation action
Knowing exactly where on the landscape declines are happening helps scientists start to identify the drivers of those declines and how to respond to them.
“It’s this kind of small-scale information across broad geographies that has been lacking and it’s exactly what we need to make smart conservation decisions. These data products give us a new lens to detect and diagnose population declines and to respond to them in a way that's strategic, precise, and flexible. That's a game changer for conservation,” said Rodewald.
The study's detailed mapping of population changes will help conservation organizations and policymakers better target their efforts to protect declining bird species, which according to the authors is sorely needed to help reverse the declining population trends.
The research also reveals the power of participatory science data. “Knowledge is power. Because of the volunteers that engage in programs like eBird, because of their enthusiasm and engagement, and generosity of time, we now know more about bird populations and more about the environment than we ever have before,” said Rodewald.
“Without the massive amount of data available from eBird, we would not have been able to complete this study,” said Daniel Fink, a senior research associate and statistician at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. But, Fink shared, with all of that information comes many analytical challenges. “We employed causal machine learning models and novel statistical methodologies that allowed us to estimate changes in populations with high spatial resolution while also accounting for biases that come from changes in how and where people go birding,” Fink said. To ensure the reliability of the data the team ran over half a million simulations, stacking up more than 6 million hours of computing, which would take about 85 years to run on a standard laptop computer.
This research was made possible by funding from a number of different sources over several years: The Leon Levy Foundation, The Wolf Creek Foundation, and National Science ABI sustaining: DBI-1939187. Computing support was provided by grants from the National Science Foundation through CNS-1059284 and CCF-1522054. This work used Bridges2 at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and Anvil (Song et al. 2022) at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing at Purdue University through allocation DEB200010 (DF, TA, SL, OR) from the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program, which is supported by NSF grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296.
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Reference: Johnston, A., A. D. Rodewald, M. Strimas-Mackey, T. Auer, W. M. Hochachka, A. N. Stillman, C. L. Davis, V. Ruiz-Gutierrez, A. M. Dokter, E. T. Miller, O. Robinson, S. Ligocki, L. Oldham Jaromczyk, C. Crowley, C. L. Wood, and D. Fink. (2025). North American bird declines are greatest where species are most abundant. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.adn4381
Editors: Download images. The use of this material is protected by copyright. Use is permitted only within stories about the content of this release. Redistribution or any other use is prohibited without express written permission of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology or the copyright owner.
Population trends of American Robin. Red dots indicate population decreases, blue dots indicate population increases, and the size of the dots indicates relative abundance. The darker the red and the larger the dot indicate strong declines in places where American Robins are most abundant.
Credit
Courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Williamson's Sapsucker
Credit
Steve Wickliffe; Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library
Great Blue Heron
Credit
Daniel Grossi; Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library
North American bird populations are shrinking most rapidly in the very areas where they are still most abundant, according to a new study leveraging citizen science data for nearly 500 bird species. The findings reveal both urgent threats and potential opportunities for targeted conservation and recovery. Bird populations are experiencing steep declines globally, with North America losing more than 25% of all breeding birds since 1970. While long-term monitoring has revealed these troubling trends, effective conservation requires knowing where populations are declining most. However, this goal has been limited by the lack of fine-scale, spatially comprehensive data on bird population trends, making it difficult to prioritize efforts or detect localized patterns of decline and recovery. To address this need, Alison Johnston and colleagues compiled citizen science data from over 36 million eBird checklists, spanning 2007 to 2021, to generate fine-scale population trends for 495 bird species across North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. By analyzing changes in bird sightings at a high spatial resolution, the authorswere able to separate actual shifts in bird populations from differences in observer behavior. Their approach involved using a specialized machine learning model, which enabled the detection of nuanced population changes with high statistical reliability.
The analysis revealed a complex patchwork of local population dynamics; although overall trends show that 75% of bird species are declining across their ranges – and 65% significantly so – nearly every species (97%) is experiencing both gains and losses depending on location within their ranges. Notably, Johnston et al. found that bird populations are declining fastest in the very places where they remain most abundant. This pattern – observed in 83% of species – suggests that even the strongholds of bird populations are no longer safe. The declines are especially severe in birds that breed in grasslands and drylands, and declines are more closely tied to local abundance than geographic position within a species’ range, the findings suggest; this points to ecological stress – climate change and habitat loss – as the primary driver of decline. Habitats that support abundant populations may be more vulnerable to these pressures, while species in marginal habitats may have greater resilience. Yet, despite widespread declines, the study revealed pockets of stability, such as in the Appalachians and western mountains, which may offer refuge or point to conditions that could facilitate recovery.
For reporters interested in trends, a 2019 Research Article in Science reported that North America had lost nearly three billion birds since 1970.
Pollen analysis is a powerful method for reconstructing historical ecosystems. Preserved pollen grains in lakebeds and peat bogs offer detailed records of past plant communities. Since plant distribution is tightly linked to environmental factors such as temperature, rainfall and humidity, identifying the types of pollen present in different layers of sediment can reveal how ecosystems have responded to natural climate fluctuations over time and how they might react in the future.
Imagine trying to tell identical twins apart just by looking at their fingerprints. That’s how challenging it can be for scientists to distinguish the tiny powdery pollen grains produced by fir, spruce and pine trees.
But a new artificial intelligence system developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington, the University of Nevada and Virginia Tech is making that task a lot easier—and potentially bringing big relief to allergy sufferers.
“With more detailed data on which tree species are most allergenic and when they release pollen, urban planners can make smarter decisions about what to plant and where,” said Behnaz Balmaki, assistant professor of research in biology at UT Arlington and coauthor of a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Big Data with Masoud Rostami from the Division of Data Science at UTA. “This is especially important in high-traffic areas like schools, hospitals, parks and neighborhoods. Health services could also use this information to better time allergy alerts, public health messaging and treatment recommendations during peak pollen seasons.”
Pollen analysis is a powerful method for reconstructing historical ecosystems. Preserved pollen grains in lakebeds and peat bogs offer detailed records of past plant communities. Since plant distribution is tightly linked to environmental factors such as temperature, rainfall and humidity, identifying the types of pollen present in different layers of sediment can reveal how ecosystems have responded to natural climate fluctuations over time and how they might react in the future.
“Even with high-resolution microscopes, the differences between pollens are very subtle,” Dr. Balmaki said. “Our study shows deep-learning tools can significantly enhance the speed and accuracy of pollen classification. That opens the door to large-scale environmental monitoring and more detailed reconstructions of ecological change. It also holds promise for improving allergen tracking by identifying exactly which species are releasing pollen and when.”
Balmaki adds that the research could also benefit agriculture.
“Pollen is a strong indicator of ecosystem health,” she said. “Shifts in pollen composition can signal changes in vegetation, moisture levels and even past fire activity. Farmers could use this information to track long-term environmental trends that affect crop viability, soil conditions or regional climate patterns. It’s also useful for wildlife and pollinator conservation. Many animals, including insects like bees and butterflies, rely on specific plants for food and habitat. By identifying which plant species are present or declining in an area, we can better understand how these changes impact the entire food web and take steps to protect critical relationships between plants and pollinators.”
For this study, the team examined historical samples of fir, spruce and pine trees preserved by the University of Nevada’s Museum of National History. They tested those samples using nine different AI models, demonstrating the technology’s strong potential to identify pollen with impressive speed and accuracy.
“This shows that deep learning can successfully support and even exceed traditional identification methods in both speed and accuracy,” Balmaki said. “But it also confirms how essential human expertise still is. You need well-prepared samples and a strong understanding of ecological context. This isn’t just about machines—it’s a collaboration between technology and science.”
For future projects, Balmaki and her collaborators plan to expand their research to include a wider range of plant species. Their goal is to develop a comprehensive pollen identification system that can be applied across different regions of the United States to better understand how plant communities may shift in response to extreme weather events.
About The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA)
Celebrating its 130th anniversary in 2025, The University of Texas at Arlington is a growing public research university in the heart of the thriving Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. With a student body of more than 41,000, UTA is the second-largest institution in the University of Texas System, offering more than 180 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Recognized as a Carnegie R-1 university, UTA stands among the nation’s top 5% of institutions for research activity. UTA and its 280,000 alumni generate an annual economic impact of $28.8 billion for the state. The University has received the Innovation and Economic Prosperity designation from the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities and has earned recognition for its focus on student access and success, considered key drivers to economic growth and social progress for North Texas and beyond.
“Pollen is a strong indicator of ecosystem health,” said Behnaz Balmaki, assistant professor of research in biology at UT Arlington. “Shifts in pollen composition can signal changes in vegetation, moisture levels and even past fire activity. Farmers could use this information to track long-term environmental trends that affect crop viability, soil conditions or regional climate patterns. It’s also useful for wildlife and pollinator conservation. Many animals, including insects like bees and butterflies, rely on specific plants for food and habitat. By identifying which plant species are present or declining in an area, we can better understand how these changes impact the entire food web and take steps to protect critical relationships between plants and pollinators.”
Since before New Mexico was a state, Catron County has been fighting against federal authority, resisting commonsense efforts to rein in logging- and grazing-based destruction, and insisting instead on self-governance and ecological ruin. The county encompasses nearly 7,000 square miles of forests and grasslands, rivers, archeological sites, unique geological formations and designated Wilderness. It’s largely unpopulated with just 3600 people, but they have loomed large on the western landscape for their anti-federal, county-supremacy positions and hostility to environmental regulation.
The latest example of this form of “governance” is the Catron County Commission passing a resolution asking the New Mexico governor to declare a state of emergency over the “natural disaster” of Mexican gray wolf reintroduction. A few squeaky-wheel ranchers have somehow convinced local residents to ignore the crushing poverty, high unemployment rate, the higher-than-average number of suicides, expensive housing, and percentage of high-school drop-outs, and instead blame their problems on the Big, Bad Wolf.
Mexican wolves are actually not that big – maxing out around 80 lbs for males – or bad at all: there is no case of a Mexican wolf ever harming a human. Not once, ever, in recorded history. Most of the approximately 280 wolves in the wild distributed between Arizona and New Mexico don’t even prey on livestock, but you wouldn’t know that from the horror stories shared on social media and at the April 3, 2025 commission meeting. Depredation rates have been going down overall, coinciding with an uptick in proactive coexistence measures like range-riding and the reformed standards being used to determine wolf involvement in livestock deaths, but being proactive and responsible for their livestock isn’t the solution these folks are after. They want the species defunded, delisted, and subject to “management” directed by the business end of a rifle.
Catron County has opposed Mexican wolf recovery from the outset. When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed its first Recovery Plan for the Mexican wolf in 1982, the county opposed it based on concerns it would decimate the livestock industry. In 1992 the County Commission passed ordinance 002-92, forbidding the release of Mexican wolves anywhere in the county; this was superseded by Ordinance 002-2002 ten years later, specifying fines of hundreds of dollars and up to three months’ jail time for anyone (presumably including federal and state officials) releasing predators within the county. By 2007 the county was building bus-stop cages to “protect” schoolchildren from Mexican wolves and passing ordinances to allow itself to trap or kill this federally-protected species, the Endangered Species Act notwithstanding. (This was overturned in court.)
It isn’t just the wolves, but a generalized hostility to the role of the federal and state government in regulating regional activities. Catron County’s 1992 land-use plan’s introduction says: “Federal and state agents threaten the life, liberty, and happiness of the people of Catron County. They present a clear and present danger to the land and livelihood of every man, woman, and child. A state of emergency prevails that calls for devotion and sacrifice.” The plan was revised in 2007 and updated to say, “Maintaining the custom and culture of the County is critical for community and economic stability. This stability is highly dependent on the right of Catron County citizens to pursue and protect their way of life and economic structures from outside forces such as federal and state regulations.” In 1994, the county commission passed an ordinance urging every county resident to own a gun, and County Commissioner Carl Livingston was quoted as saying, “We want the Forest Service to know we’re prepared, even though violence would be a last resort.”
The April 2, 2025 resolution accuses the government of lying about the extent of wolf predation on livestock, and the reintroduction project of threatening the State and Country’s food supply “and thus our national security.” Neither of these things are true: Mexican wolves mostly eat elk, and Americans mostly eat beef raised in places other than the arid public lands of the west. But the facts haven’t stopped the fear-mongering, and the public testimony of the anti-wolf crowd hasn’t changed much since 2007, despite the reality that no kids have been harmed by wolves, the livestock industry hasn’t collapsed, and the bus shelters sit like unused props in a state of disrepair.
Catron County’s acting is as transparent as it ever was, but the difference now is they might have a friendly ear in the Trump Administration. From Brian Nesvik at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to Karen Budd-Falen at the Department of Interior (who helped draft Catron County’s 1992 land use plan), to Donald Trump Jr., the radical views of anti-wolf ranchers are reaching high places. For this brand of political theater, Catron County may have finally found its audience.
Mexican Wolf. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
Greta Anderson is a plant nerd, a desert rat, and a fan of wildness. She is the Deputy Director of Western Watersheds Project.
Rational Analysis is Required Before Cutting and Burning Dry Forests
Fuels reduction treatments are the Forest Service’s primary strategy for reducing high severity fire and increasing “resilience” in dry forests. These treatments typically involve cutting large amounts of trees and understory from forests, followed by repeated prescribed burns. But do the benefits of such treatments outweigh the substantial ecological and social risks and costs? This question should be comprehensively considered in a cost/benefit analysis for each proposed vegetation reduction project. Conservation strategies should be developed that ensure forest restoration projects are a net benefit.
The Forest Service claims that it is not required to compare the ecological and social costs and benefits of its large-scale cutting and burning project proposals under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Whether this contention is legally defensible or not, failing to weigh the benefits of large-scale fuels treatments against the risks and costs is an egregious violation of the agency’s responsibility to the public. The costs of potential ecosystem degradation and escaped controlled burns require careful consideration. As the climate becomes warmer and drier, it is increasingly difficult to design dry forest vegetation treatment plans so that they provide net benefits. NEPA requires that the public be informed about the potential consequences of projects, and a cost/benefit analysis is key to understanding the relative importance of consequences.
Fire — including high-severity fire — is a natural and important aspect of forest ecology. Under the right conditions, fire can promote biodiversity and ecosystem renewal. However, in recent decades, acres burned at high severity have been increasing, although there is still a historical fire deficit. Climate transition has made conifer regeneration after high-severity fire much less certain: it is often delayed, and sometimes appears to fail altogether, resulting in some forested landscapes type-converting into shrublands. Fuels reduction treatments can reduce the number of acres that burn at high severity for a period of time, but this benefit must be weighed against serious tradeoffs.
The agency claims that vegetation management treatments improve ecosystem resilience, but their treatments often appear to degrade ecosystems. Cutting and burning treatments frequently cause substantial ecological damage, such as soil erosion and compaction, damage to the trees that are left standing, bark beetle infestation, tree blowdown (because removing trees from a grouping decreases structural support for the remaining trees), sediment flow into waterways, and disruption of wildlife habitat. Cut areas are subsequently treated with prescribed fire at overly-frequent intervals. The natural understory tends to not return, and uncharacteristic understory often develops, including invasive species. Or little understory grows back at all, except for some grasses. The remaining landscape often becomes overly open, dried out, and ecologically stunted and dysfunctional.
Current fire ecology research indicates that the number of fuels treatments that have been encountered by a wildfire have been fairly low, less than one percent per year, although encounters are increasing due to climate change. This means that most vegetation reduction treatments will provide no benefit in terms of fire mitigation. Fuels reduction treatments have been shown to be of decreasing benefit during the very high intensity fires that burn during increasingly hot, dry and windy weather. Additionally, very open treated forests tend to be drier, and in some cases more flammable than forests with more closed canopies.
Environmental impact statements consider a range of alternative actions, while less detailed environmental assessments typically include just an Action and No Action alternative. However, rarely, if ever, does the Forest Service complete a cost/benefit analysis of the alternatives, which should be part of any EIS. Although the agency must disclose potential environmental and social consequences of proposed actions, it is not required to select the alternative with the greatest net benefit or the fewest adverse impacts. Adverse impacts that are “necessary” to accomplish a project’s “purpose and need” are considered by the agency to be acceptable. A project’s purpose and need is generally based on a number of assumptions, some of which are often controversial, highly uncertain, or unproven.
In order to rationally compare costs and benefits of alternatives, it is necessary to base analysis on valid assumptions. Often, the Forest Service uses models that do not reflect current or future conditions and rely on best or worst case scenarios, resulting in analysis that is fundamentally flawed. An example of this is the assumptions that underlie the air quality section of the Santa Fe Mountains Project environmental assessment. In the Santa Fe area, prescribed burn smoke is a major issue because it seriously impacts vulnerable residents’ health. In order to analyze the air quality impacts, the Forest Service based their analysis on two assumptions:
– Not implementing the proposed project would result in the project area burning in its entirety – that is, two discontinuous sections spanning 18 miles.
– Implementing the proposed project would result in no wildfires at all occurring over a 10-year or more period.
These types of clearly extreme and unrealistic baseline assumptions undermine any meaningful analysis. Such a skewed approach can support predetermined outcomes … and it usually does. The resulting analysis can be considered largely irrelevant – garbage in, garbage out. Responsible and legitimate analysis must be based on meaningful and real-world assumptions.
A meaningful comparison of costs and benefits of vegetation treatments also requires appropriate reference conditions. Reference conditions help define and inform what condition ecosystems should be restored to, after ecosystems have been damaged, degraded, or destroyed. The Forest Service continues to rely on historical reference conditions to determine the desired condition for projects post-treatment. But due to the rapidly changing climate, historical reference conditions are now largely obsolete for forest restoration project design and analysis. In order to truly restore forests, the agency must utilize current reference conditions that represent areas with high ecological integrity and that have the least amount of impacts from grazing, mining, logging and other fuels reduction projects, road construction, and invasive species, etc. Current reference conditions are virtually never considered by the agency, so little meaningful basis is provided for a cost/benefit analysis of potential project effects.
Without a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis, fuel reduction projects are essentially a shot in the dark and may result in disasters. The 342,000 acre Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, which was ignited in the Santa Fe National Forest in 2022 due to two separate escaped Forest Service prescribed burns, illustrates the need for balancing risks with benefits when designing and analyzing fuels treatment projects. The adverse consequences of these fires, including burning out entire communities and thousands of acres of forest in which conifers may or may not substantially regenerate, far outweigh any possible benefits that the fuel reduction treatments might have provided. The landscape was too dry for broadcast prescribed burns to have been implemented safely enough during the spring windy season. Fire can escape from smoldering slash piles when the snow has melted off of the ground, especially in very dry forests. Overly cut areas open up the tree canopy so much that vegetation dries out and becomes more flammable. Trees that have blown over due to overly aggressive thinning can create a fire hazard. These concerns should have been weighed against the potential benefits of the treatments in the project analysis.
By doing so, genuine mitigations could have been incorporated into the project plan, which may have greatly improved the outcome of the project. Appropriate mitigations could have included limiting burning to only the safest burn windows, which means refraining from burning during the spring when high winds are abundant. Also, refraining from overly opening up the forest canopy during tree cutting operations in order to retain moisture in the soils and vegetation, and greatly reducing the number of piles of thinning debris by implementing only very limited and strategic thinning.
In recent years, the Forest Service has been generally unwilling to prepare environmental impact statements for vegetation reduction projects. And the Trump administration is now in progress of rapidly and radically rolling back NEPA analysis and protections. Their impetus is to rush into cutting and prescribed burns as quickly as possible, with little environmental review, and increasingly under emergency authority. Such truncated review prohibits reasonable cost/benefit analysis and will likely bring about more disasters to our forests and communities. Recently the US House of Representatives passed the “Fix Our Forests Act,” which supports more logging of our forests, while further rolling back environmental analysis and safeguards for logging and other fuel reduction projects. The Act is now awaiting a vote in the Senate. The public still has the opportunity to let Senators know that the Fix Our Forests Act will not “fix” forests, but instead will degrade our forests. It will take immense pressure from the public to require responsible analysis, but it is absolutely necessary in order to maintain ecologically functional forests into the future.
It is incumbent upon forest managers and the conservation community to develop a new holistic management paradigm for dry forests in a warming and drying climate – an approach that strongly focuses on strategies that increase moisture retention in forests, instead of overly opening up tree canopy by aggressive cutting and burning. Vegetation treatment timing and soil and vegetation moisture must be carefully considered. Under certain conditions, a treatment may be a net benefit; under different conditions, the adverse impacts may substantially outweigh the benefits of the same treatment. Given the high potential for adverse impacts, careful analysis may support only limited, light-handed thinning that preserves substantial tree canopy and natural understory.
The primary focus of forest restoration should be to support the retention of water in ecosystems by very conservatively utilizing already known approaches – and by developing new conservation approaches suitable for dry forests undergoing climate transition. Approaches can include earthworks to allow water to infiltrate into soils, promoting beaver habitation in order to retain water, decommissioning unnecessary forest roads that cause water run-off, removing cows from forest lands, and restoring soil mycorrhizal fungi which hold soil moisture.
If there is a genuine desire to protect and restore forests, then there should be an effort to fully and deeply consider and weigh the short-term and long-term effects of all forest interventions, with an attitude of learning, a deep holistic understanding of forest ecology, and a concern for local communities. During the upcoming storm of NEPA rollbacks and ensuing forest degradation, it is more necessary than ever to actively support responsible and reasonable project analysis.
Forest apparently type-converting as a result of vegetation reduction treatments. Such a result was not realistically considered in a cost/benefit analysis — La Cueva fuel break, Santa Fe National Forest Photo: Sarah Hyden
Sarah Hyden has been working to protect the Santa Fe National Forest for well over a decade. She was a co-founder of the Santa Fe Forest Coalition and was the WildEarth Guardians’ Santa Fe National Forest Advocate. In 2019, she co-founded The Forest Advocate, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to protection of the Santa Fe National Forest and all western forests. The Forest Advocate maintains an active website that publishes forest advocacy news and resources — theforestadvocate.org.
How the United States Is Failing Elephants—and What You Can Do
After Ringling Bros. ended its 145-year-long tradition of forcing elephants to perform in 2016, many assumed that the protracted era of American elephant abuse was finally over. Unfortunately, that isn’t true yet.
To be sure, there has been tremendous progress. Localities across the country, followed by some states, have banned bullhooks—the fireplace-poker-like devices with a sharp point on the end that are deployed on the most sensitive parts of elephants’ bodies to force them into compliance. Without these weapons, circuses insist they can’t use elephants, massive animals who can easily kill a person, on purpose or by accident, with a single trunk swipe or foot stomp.
After being trained to perform under the constant threat of punishment with a bullhook—and taught that if they don’t perform as directed, they will face a violent “tune-up” with a bullhook while chained down—the mere sight of a bullhook can instill enough fear to keep these majestic animals compliant. At least, most of the time.
Ringling Bros. Shifts From Elephant Acts
Unable to use elephants in jurisdictions that adopted bullhook bans, Ringling Bros. began leaving elephants chained in boxcars at specific stops along its routes. Indeed, the circus cited the increasing patchwork of local laws when it announced in 2015 that it would finally bow to long-standing public pressure and stop using elephants.
Today, Ringling Bros. features only willing human performers. Other circuses followed suit. But not all of them. Numerous circuses continue to chain elephants up and haul them around the country for a few brief moments of demeaning entertainment. Often, these animals are supplied by Carson & Barnes.
Elephants have repeatedly escaped from this notorious outfit, including twice in 2024. Loose elephants pose serious public safety threats, and the animals themselves are often injured, sometimes even killed. Carson & Barnes’ head trainer was caught on video attacking, electroshocking, yelling, and swearing at elephants while the animals cried out. Yet, numerous circuses continue to lease animal acts from Carson & Barnes.
Challenges Elephants Face in Zoos and Captivity
And it’s not just circuses. Even the best-intentioned zoos can’t provide the vast acreage these wide-ranging animals need. Elephants evolved to traverse many miles every day. Unable to move in any meaningful way and often kept on hard surfaces, captive elephants frequently suffer from painful arthritis and foot disease. Indeed, these are the leading reasons captive elephants are euthanized. Some zoos, such as the Bronx Zoo, even continue to hold these highly social animals in solitary confinement.
In 2024, the Oakland Zoo, whose six-acre elephant enclosure was one of the largest in the U.S. yet still comprised less than one percent of an elephant’s home range, made the compassionate decision to send its last surviving elephant to the Elephant Sanctuary. This marked the end of three-quarters of a century of keeping elephants, but not the end of the zoo’s work to help elephants in the wild.
CEO Nik Dehejia explained, “Oakland Zoo’s ‘elephant program of the future’ requires much more than our habitat and facilities can provide today for this species to thrive in human care.” Two decades prior, the Detroit Zoo made a similar decision, sending elephants Winkie and Wanda to The Elephant Sanctuary in recognition of their complex physical and psychological needs.
But Oakland and Detroit are the exceptions. Many more zoos continue to hold and breed elephants. In 2017, a cohort of American zoos even imported 18 wild-captured elephants.
Given the extensive knowledge of how complex these animals’ needs are, how extraordinarily social and remarkably intelligent they are, how is it that hundreds of elephants are still confined across the U.S.? Why haven’t we banned these outdated exhibits? What legal protections do these animals have?
Insufficient Standards for Elephantson a Federal Level
The primary law governing the treatment of captive elephants in the U.S. is the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). Congress intended this law to ensure the humane care and treatment of animals like elephants who are used for exhibition. However, the AWA’s standards are truly minimal. They lack elephant-specific requirements.
Instead, elephants are governed by the same generic standards that regulate most animals, from bats to bears to tigers to zebras. For example, these standards don’t set forth specific space requirements. Instead, they vaguelyrequire “sufficient space to allow each animal to make normal postural and social adjustments with adequate freedom of movement,”—which inspectors and regulated entities alike have struggled to understand, let alone enforce. Nor do the standards require enrichment or social companionship for elephants.
What’s worse, even these minimal standards of the AWA are not meaningfully enforced. Congress tasked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with implementing this law. Still, time and time again, the agency’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG) has found the AWA enforcement to be appallingly paltry. When violations of the minimal standards are documented, the most likely outcome for an exhibitor is a meaningless warning. If they disregard said warning, odds are good the USDA will not take any follow-up action—or that, if it does, it will be in the form of another warning (sometimes even a third warning!) or a fine that is so heavily reduced that, in the words of the OIG, it is treated as a “cost of doing business.”
Minimal Fines and Consequences for Elephant Exploitation
The horrific abuse by Carson & Barnes’ head trainer that was documented on video resulted in a $400 fine. When two elephants were injured after a Carson & Barnes truck crashed and flipped on its side, the USDA fined the company $550. In 2016, the company paid a higher fine after three elephants were injured after escaping and damaging property, but it was still a tiny fraction of the potential penalty under the law. In 2012, the company paid just $3,714 for 10 Animal Welfare Act violations, including yet another escape, as well as public endangerment. Such trivial penalties do nothing to deter violations—hence, yet another elephant escape in 2024.
The USDA is fully empowered to revoke Carson & Barnes’ license to exhibit animals after such an extensive record of violations. But it has refused to exercise this authority. Instead, the agency continues to renew that license.
Nor have efforts to advocate for elephants in the courtroom fared well. Lawsuits seeking recognition of a right to bodily liberty for elephants have failed in the U.S., essentially on the grounds that, while elephants are remarkably intelligent and complex and fare exceptionally poorly in captivity as a result, they aren’t humans. Though courts have the authority, under the common law, to recognize such rights, they’ve declined to do so, instead instructing advocates to go to the legislature. And so they have.
State and Local Advocacy Succeeds in Protecting Elephants
In the face of court refusals and federal government and industry failure, animal advocates have stepped up their legislative efforts—and they’ve met considerable success. In 2024, Massachusetts became the 11th state to restrict the use of elephants and other wild animals in circuses. More than 200 local jurisdictions across the country have done the same. In 2023, Ojai, California, became the first city to “codify elephants’ fundamental right to bodily liberty, thereby prohibiting the keeping of elephants in captive settings that deprive them of their autonomy and ability to engage in their innate behaviors.”
But with hundreds of elephants still held captive without meaningful legal protections—some of them still subjected to grueling travel and performance regimens—the work is not done.
The Role of Every Individual in Supporting Elephant Protection
The good news is that every one of us can play a role in getting us closer to a world in which widespread public awe and respect for elephants is codified into our laws. We can start by not patronizing institutions that profit from elephant suffering and educating our family and friends about these animals and what they endure. We can also reach out to our city council members and county commissioners to ask them to follow in the footsteps of the many jurisdictions that have banned traveling elephant (and other animal) acts.
The Humane Society of the United States (now Humane World for Animals) created an extensive, step-by-step guide to help advocates pass such ordinances in their communities. If your local government has already banned traveling animal acts, or if none come to your town, you could go even further and work to enact an ordinance modeled on Ojai’s that prohibits elephant captivity. Similar measures can be pursued at the state level as well, especially if local jurisdictions within the state have already made strides.
And let’s not forget the possibility of federal protection. Animal protection is one of the few remaining bipartisan issues, and more than 50 other countries have already banned or restricted traveling animal acts at the national level. In 2022, despite extensive legislative gridlock, animal advocates successfully persuaded Congress to enact the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which prohibits private ownership and public interactions with big cats. Bills to ban traveling wild animal acts have been introduced at the federal level in the past and, with persistence, could meet similar success.
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Delcianna (Delci) Winders is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School, which trains tomorrow’s animal advocacy leaders, serves as a resource hub, and centers animals in the fight for environmental protection. She has practiced, taught, and published in animal law for many years in various settings. Captive wildlife—and captive elephants in particular—is one of her core areas of expertise. You can follow her on Bluesky, Instagram,LinkedIn, and X.
Just after New Years in 1979 I moved from the East Village to Brooklyn. Carol was pregnant, but her cramped digs on Carroll Street would not accommodate us. We found a loft building, very rare in Park Slope, on the lower margins of the neighborhood near 4th Avenue, a six lane artery running from downtown Brooklyn to Bay Ridge. Across the avenue a ruined commercial zone of dilapidated red brick structures of unknown provenance, mostly abandoned, spread over both sides of the Gowanus Canal, described in the tabloids as “the most polluted body of water in the nation.”
Creating a home in the loft was a stretch, financed on a limited budget, the $12,000 I’d saved from the combat pay of a first lieutenant in Vietnam, augmented by disability payments. We had a raw space 30 x 100 feet to enclose, electrify and plumb, roughly half the second floor off the center stairwell in the warehouse of a former wholesaler. Two existing partitions in lacquered beadboard divided the space in three sections, front, rear and center, and absorbed whatever light the windows on the street side provided, and photos show the interior was always dark even after a large metal door over an opening used for uploading deliveries from an empty lot along the side wall was replaced with a pane of glass half the dimensions of a typical storefront.
Plumbing was a major challenge, and I gaped in awe as our guy melted lead for joints stuffed with oakum in steel drainpipes lowered into the building’s basement to enter the urban sewage. We found sinks for the kitchen and bathroom, and a gas range and fridge in a used fixtures outlet on Delancy Street in Manhattan. And we used my brother’s econovan to transport a cast iron tub we found dumped on a street corner in the Bronx. Finding matching claw feet to support it seemed improbable until I picked through a brim-filled bin with demolition discards in a salvage yard on the fringes of Red Hook. I picked up translucent glass bricks in the same yard. These formed a rear wall in the bathroom to allow some natural light after windows along the building’s rear wall were obscured by the narrow corridor we erected leading to a fire exit. The front beadboard partition formed a T and one side became our bedroom, the other a study, dappled with daylight through four large greasy windows facing the street. To a working chimney we attached a Ben Franklin Stove in front of our bed, acquired how I no longer recall, but fueled by firewood consigned periodically in face cords from a Long Island supplier and hoisted to our loft on a freight elevator accessed from the sidewalk. A large gas blower suspended from the ceiling in the central space provided most of the heat.
Additional bedrooms were roughed out behind the beadboard to the rear paralleling the kitchen wall, for two kids, the child we were expecting and Carol’s daughter, Sarabinh, then six, in joint custody between her father’s nearby apartment in the upper Slope and our loft. A hodge podge of chairs, couches and hanging house plants was arranged near the large sidewall window and a hammock of acrylic fiber stretched between two lally columns that helped support the floor above us. A ballet bar was installed along the rear beadboard wall, which I used for stretching, and in front of that I laid my tumbling mat for acrobatics. In New York at the time, legal occupancy in a loft building required AIR – Artist in Residence – status. As a sometimes student of Modern Dance and other movement disciplines, my certification as a dancer was granted under the signature of Henry Geldzahler, the then reigning New York City Culture Czar. A small sign with AIR in black lettering was affixed near the building’s front door, and applied collectively to all the residents split among six lofts, mostly painters and a sculptor. In December that year, we hosted a party, a belated celebration of Carol’s birthday in October and Simon’s birth in August. It would also honor ‘Lofts Labors Won.’
The following August with our one year old in tow, we departed the city on Carol’s literary mission, destination Castine, Maine. Our first stop was at a commune near Brattleboro, Vermont, where old movement cronies of Carol’s had gone back to the land in the late sixties. They were an ingrown, argumentative lot which, on their periphery, included two columnist for the Nation in private summer residence. For three days we labored and convived with these old comrades, one of whom formerly in the Weather Underground and ensconced there pseudonominously, was still wanted by the FBI. Carol phoned to Castine to confirm our arrival time, and was informed by Mary McCarthy that the visit was off. This was to have been the first face to face with the subject of the biography Carol had just begun, postponed now because Mary’s husband had broken his leg falling off a ladder while cleaning the gutters.
A majority of Carol’s forebearers had settled in Maine from colonial times, and a great aunt whose story she greatly revered was buried there in the family plot, along with a host of other Brightmans and Mortons. The Maple Grove Cemetery played like Thornton Wilder country. So, Maine trip on. While passing from New Hampshire into Maine we stopped to orient ourselves at a Visitor’s Center, where I haphazardly grabbed a few brochures, including a pamphlet of real estate listings. Except where work was concerned – I was also in the midst of a book project – Carol and I weren’t planners; we were impulsive doers. On occasion we daydreamed out loud about finding a place “in the country,” never projecting the fantasy beyond the nearer regions of upstate New York. One real estate offering showed an old federal house on a saltwater farm near where we were now bound. And when our route took us past the office of the agent representing the property, we joked that it was fated. We’d go check it out, “but we’re not serious,” Carol disclaimed.
The house, which had been empty for a quarter century, was structurally sound with a good roof, and came with several outbuildings, including a barn and the middle twenty acres of the old homestead, in field and woodlot. An old bachelor farmer had lived there without indoor plumbing or electricity until the early sixties, then in the local tradition took refuge with a younger family for his final years. Without thinking that this would become the rural equivalent of our recent urban undertaking, another residence to be mounted from scratch, we focused on the $45,000 asking price and bought it on the spot. We had to lean on friends and relatives to assemble the ten grand downpayment, and we had a rough ride to get a mortgage approved, but while we put that home back together, it became our summer escape for the next six years.
There were always wooded areas where I grew up on Long Island, and I was drawn to them. I’m sure looking back they were enlarged in a child’s eyes, and minuscule when compared to our twenty acres of tall pines and spruce that blended seamlessly into miles of contiguous woods where I now wandered on frequent constitutionals. The solitude was compelling and a balm to my mental wellbeing. That I would soon find on the mothballed Brooklyn waterfront a far from bucolic but equally suitable option for these frequent bouts of solitary wool gathering, not for only three months, but for nine, astounds me still.
Exploring the environs of the Gowanus was my first step toward Red Hook. Plans for the rehabilitation of the canal would become a topic for a deep investigative dive by Carol and me into the history of the canal from its idyllic indigenous setting as a healthy estuary where foot long oysters grew, to the contemporary canal in decay which civil minded community leaders in Carroll Gardens, the largely Italian American neighborhood bordering the other side of the patch surrounding the Gowanus, had long in their sights for cleanup and development. We dug into that story for a couple of years, wrote a serious proposal, but nothing ever came of it. Why, I no longer recall? When you live by your pen engineering projects from elevated states of endorphin fueled enthusiasm that never reach completion, certainly for me and Carol also, was a not infrequent occurrence. A colorful sidebar here would include the presence of the Joey Gallo crime family among these mostly silent empty blocks, and while remaining agnostic as to its veracity, news reports on the doings of the New York Mob if the Gowanus warranted a mention might note the neighborhood legend that held the canal was where the wise guys dumped the bodies of their rivals.
We’d soon settled into the neighborhood where a number of familiars from the anti-Vietnam War movement had also settled to start their own families. Carol was teaching remedial classes at Brooklyn College which had initiated open admissions, at the same time peddling articles, to a variety of outlets. I still commuted to my non-profit, Citizen Soldier, in the Flat Iron Building on lower Fifth Avenue in the city until early 1982. It was a movement job at movement wages, advocating for GIs and veterans around a host of issues, most recently the alleged health related illnesses from exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, and for vets who participated in Atomic Tests during the fifties, from radiation. After twelve years of full time activism primarily related to Vietnam, the move to Brooklyn had severed that umbilical and I was ready for a change, which initially took the form of painting someone else’s living spaces and querying magazines for assignments. Apart from family responsibilities, my time was my own.
When Simon turned three, we enrolled him in the Brooklyn Child Care Collective, one of those alternative institutions organized by lefties of our generation. It was located a fair piece from the loft near Grand Army Plaza. Shaded under the concrete infrastructure of the Williamsburg Bridge in Manhattan I found a shop to custom build a bike adapted to Brooklyn’s rough streets: ten speed, but thick tires, straight handlebar and a large padded seat. With Simon strapped into a red toddler carrier mounted over the real wheel, I peddled him to day care most mornings.
The exploration of the Gowanus along our stretch of 4th Avenue from 9th Steet to Union Street, and taking in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood where many of our informants resided, began during Carol’s and my investigative project. Often, however, I would walk these blocks on my own, camera at the ready. My way of seeing the material wreckage strewn along the banks of the canal was informed by the work of Robert Smithson’s, The Monuments of Passaic. Smithson sited installations “in specific out door locations,” and is best known for his Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake of Utah. In his article for ArtForum illustrated with six bleak black and white photographs Smithson described “the unremarkable industrial landscape” in Passaic, New Jersey as “ruins in reverse…the memory-traces of an abandoned set of futures.” This was the perfect conceptual framework for reflection on what I was looking at. Embedded in Smithson’s musings, his “set of futures” perhaps made predictable the upscale development that would totally transform the blocks around the Gowanus forty years later; but that’s another story.
In an earlier time, the canal had provided the perfect conduit for the materials from which the surrounding neighborhoods had been constructed. A small number of enterprises, the Conklin brass foundry, a depot for fuel storage, were still in operation but the vast acreage that once served some productive purpose was littered with industrial waste and the shells of abandoned buildings, some capacious like a former power plant. Idle cranes and derricks stories high stretched their necks over the canal like metallic dinosaurs. At three compass points along the horizon billboard sized signs on metal grids perched on spacious roof tops – Kentile Floors, Goya Foods, Eagle Clothes – were markers of manufacturing life, but if still active I never learned.
With my new bike, I began to wander farther afield, making stops along Court Street, the main drag in Carroll Gardens where you’d find an espresso stand where Italian was spoken that seemed to have been imported intact – baristas to stainless counter top – from Sicily. If only for the historical record, I insert here the presence of two storefronts that were likely unique throughout the entire city. Pressed tin sheets were still common for ceilings in commercial buildings in New York, and spares in a variety of designs filled upright bins at a specialty shop on Court Street. In the same block locals who kept roof top flocks of pigeons could buy replacement birds and the feed that sustained them.
The pigeon shop in particular conjured scenes from the Elia Kazan film of Budd Schulberg’s On the Waterfront in which Brando tends his own flock on the roof of a tenement, the typical dwelling for the families of stevedores who worked the Brooklyn docks, once the most active waterfront in the nation. After World War Two, container ships were rapidly replacing the old merchant freighters with their cargo holds, and increasingly making landfall, not in Brooklyn, but across the harbor in New Jersey.
Frozen in time, the old Brooklyn waterfront, adjacent to the neighborhood known as Red Hook, now became the cycling grounds for my long solitary ruminations. Access to the area was usually across the swing bridge over the canal on Carroll Street which, after emerging under the Gowanus Expressway, dead ended on Van Brunt Street, a long artery that ran for nearly two miles parallel to the string of wharfs that jutted into the harbor, terminating before an enormous stone warehouse dating from the Civil War. An old wooden wharf, long and wide, ran that building’s length on the water side, its thick rotted planking making an obstacle course I often ventured over despite the warning sign to keep off.
I could ride Van Brunt and up and down its side streets for an hour without ever seeing another person or being passed by a motor vehicle. Many of the roadways were paved with cobble stones, safely navigated by my bike’s thick tires. As with select locations on the Gowanus streets, a sprinkle of diminutive dwellings mysteriously still inhabited and surprisingly well maintained co-existed with the adjoining wasteland, the hold outs from more stable and more populated times. There was a storefront selling live chickens that, when open, filled small wooden crates on the sidewalk. And at the end of one particularly isolated block a small two story clapboard-sheathed home behind a chain link fence and next to a vacant lot, but where several late model gas guzzlers were parked at street side, I actually saw live chickens in the yard pecking at the ground. If I rode down Wolcott Street to the water’s edge, I’d have a close up 400 yards across Buttermilk Channel of Governor’s Island, a military installation for almost two centuries, and since the new millennium the site of a public park accessible only by ferry. Inhabited all those years, generations of soldiers had a front row view of the rise and fall of the Brooklyn waterfront.
The Loft in 2024.
Just before Christmas on an overcast day I was riding along one of these interior streets feeling hemmed in by the ghostly emptiness surrounding me between shuttered buildings to one side and the old dockside secured behind walls of security fencing on the other, when a pack of feral dogs appeared several hundred feet to my front. There was a wooden creche at road side – clearly the devotional installation of a local parish I could never identify – with oversized statues of the cast at the Manger that had become the territorial shelter that four gum baring yelping canines were now furiously defending. As they began to rapidly close on me, I swung my bike one-eighty and hit the peddles with a sprinter’s gusto, soon realizing I could never outrun them. In an instant I stopped my bike, dismounted and faced the charging pack, waving my arms high above my head growling and barking as loudly and aggressively as I could. They stopped in their tracks, turned in formation and low tailed it from whence they’d come. Not to push my luck, I did the same. Barely through the door back home, still in the flush of wonder and exhilaration, I yelled to Carol, “you’ll never believe what just happened to me.”
A young Alberta man was sentenced Thursday to house arrest and probation after he pleaded guilty to animal cruelty towards Daisy Duke, above, a lab-border collie cross.
