Pulled from the comments, another amazing otter story

Commenter and Sancho fan Dave was kind enough to tell us the incredible story of the river otter he raised as a kid in Florida. Dave writes:

I was about 13 or 14 when my otter turned up behind my house. We lived on a small river down in Florida. The otter my mom named Samba was alittle older than Sancho. His mother had been killed by something, it looked like maybe a boat or a gator. He took to my dog (Golden Retriever) like it was his mother. The two where always together they would meet me at the bus stop in the afternoons and we would play and fish most days. I didn't have the knowledge of Carolina to help him get back to being on his own. So he would mostly just sit lay next to me while I fished for his food.

To me otters have the best outlook on things they are always playing and socializing with there family and friends. He could sence if I was stressed when I would get off the bus from school (everybody knows middle school can be a stressful place) and he would always do something funny or make weird noises and before I knew it whatever had happed that day was long forgottin. Alittle like Sancho's story mine does not have the best ending. One day Samba was in the garage under my fathers car and he was running late to work or something and he was trying to get Samba to come out (my father and Samba did spend alot of time together so Samba did not know him that well) so he reached under his car to pull Samba out and grabbed him by the tail and Samba bit him. It was not a bad bit I asked my dad and he said it didn't even draw blood but like any caring parent he was concerned and he called the local wildlife department.

Thats the sad part like Sancho's story. Here is the nice ending many years later with what would later become my wife, we where at Seaworld and I was telling my to be wife that a had raised in otter for about a year just like the one in show we where watching. I also told her that the local wildlife department didn't have the right habitat ect to keep my otter so they gave him to Seaworld. So she pressured me to go ask after the show if he was still around. So I did knowing that the likelyhood was very slim. But I did knowing my soon to be wife would not let me off the hook if I didn't.

I walked up to the trainer after the show and asked if they had an otter named Samba he said no, "I know it" is what I was thinking. The trainer asked why I told him my story and where I was from and how long ago it was. He told me that was really weird because they have an otter that came from the same area I lived same age as Samba would have been ect... But his name was Otis. He asked me if I would like to see him, Of corse I said yes so me and my wife went behind stage to the otter habitat.

I had no idea they had as many otters as they did there must have been 10-12 otters of all different types and before we even got up to the habitat the guy was going to show us I pointed out Samba and he saw me. He was standing up tall at the back of his little river area and he ran up to the front wall so I could see him. The trainer laughed and said so you do know Otis. I talked with the trainer for quite some time then and he told me that I answered alot of the question he and the other trainers had as to why Samba was the way he was. They told me he was by far the oldest otter they had but still the fastest out of the water he said that he runs more like a dog than the others and that it now make sences being that my dog and him where like a Mother - son relationship.

So I am holding out hope that one day Sancho and Carolina will be reunited like me and Samba where.

Thanks to Dave for sharing this great story! I love it.

You know what's neat?

What's neat is when you go out to lunch and put your 115-year old dog into your bedroom with bowls of food and water so the youngsters can't get in there and steal her vittles, and then you come back and open the door and step into the room and, too late, realize that said 115-year old dog has taken a dump in front of the closed door and you have tracked it all over the room and smeared it on the underside of the door.

That's what's neat.

She may look like a sweet old lady in a laundry basket,

but this rabble-rousing menace will defile the bedroom carpet without a second thought.

That's not good

That seems to be the universal response when I tell people about this:



Fortunately, we have a fenced yard. So the biggest problem with this is that when I ask the The Kid to let the dogs out, he now replies that he is busy, and I should tell Thomas to do it.

And yes, yes that is dog snot on my door. We have that in abundance.

The Homestead

About a mile south of the house are the remains of an old homestead built more than a hundred years ago. Dr. G and the Professor, with help from their dogs, horses and kids, have worn a serviceable trail out to the homestead over the twenty years they've been here. Even with their kids grown and gone, the G's and their dogs still make regular trips to the homestead. Their Newfoundland has treed more than one bear on that trail.

Mr. T and I have hiked out there several times as well. This weekend was balmy and sunny, and in accordance with the arrival of spring, we set out for the homestead with boots instead of snowshoes. We even put a dog pack on Alaska, to introduce her to the accessories required for her new life as a trail dog. The weather was glorious and warm, and The Kid abandoned his shirt after about twenty minutes.

Almost nothing of the original homestead remains except some grizzled old apple trees that still dutifully bear fruit every year. The trunks of these trees have been scored every which way by bear claws, but still they stand. At first I wondered whether the trees were contemporaneous with the homestead, because this would have made them quite old indeed. But then I read that apple trees can live to quite advanced ages.

The homestead is situated near the rear edge of a natural meadow ringed with aspens, larches and other evergreens, and with a clear view of the Cabinet Mountain range. The property was acquired by a lumber company long ago, and the surrounding area was logged two years ago. The lumber operation left piles and piles of discarded tree trunks, and the logging trucks carved deep tracks that still linger in the grasses. But the homestead is still and silent again, except for the twittering of the birds.

The meadow must have looked different in the heyday of the homestead -- the trees were no doubt older and taller, for one thing -- but the fundamentals are probably the same. Elk bed down here now, and the bears, of course, have broadcast their presence on the trees. Coyotes, driven off an adjoining mountain by a newly established wolf pack, traipse back and forth across the meadow and the trail, discarding bones and other pieces-parts along the path.

Looking out at the mountain range, I had a sense of what a felicitous place this would have been to locate a home in the late nineteenth century. Game would have been abundant. The home site was two miles away from the brand new railroad and the town growing up around it. The seasonal stream at the edge of the meadow offered water, and the river in the valley would have been thick with trout and, during part of the year, chinook salmon. Huckleberries grew on the mountain. And then there were the apple trees. The winters would have been harsh, and along with the abundant game would be grizzly bears and mountain lions. But if they could deal with the cold and the predators, this was as good a spot as any to make a go of it.

I wonder what happened to the people who lived here, and their house.

A day may come, very soon, when another home -- and another, and another -- is built in this idyllic meadow. The whispers in town are that the logging done on the surrounding forest was a "real estate cut." Plans have apparently been drawn for big houses on large lots. I worry, as always, about the animals, but particularly the bears. They need the space. The Professor and Dr. G have 130 acres that surround our paltry six, and they care about the wildlife -- The Professor thinned some forest last year but made sure to leave enough thick passages for the bears. But further fragmentation of habitat can only drive them further into the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, away from people. Always away. And then my own habitat becomes more sterile as the chances of seeing bears on the road I now share with them diminish ever further.

The dire real estate market has likely given the wildlife of the homestead a reprieve. This town has never really bustled, even during the most prosperous of times. As The Professor says, the best thing about this town is that it has so little to offer. And with the amount of housing stock languishing on the market, it seems unlikely that anyone would invest in this little corner of the world. But time and "progress" march inexorably on.

And I worry about the bears.

Yawn

My newest fixation is sitting around with my camera trained on a dog, waiting for it to yawn.

I know.

But it's fun.

Turtles

I've been perusing this today. Read the stories of the individual turtles - they're fascinating, but sometimes sad.

And you'll find a familiar villain in some of the hatchling deaths.

Plastic.

Isn't it nice we're having weather? Or, bits about the emotional lives of boys and dogs

I woke up this morning and stumbled downstairs to let the dogs out (all THREE of them), whereupon I was greeted by the sight of two inches of snow on the ground. Folks, I am long past the time when I find the sight of delicately falling snowflakes even remotely charming. Goes out like a lamb, my ass. Not this year.

In other news, I've been reading "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys," and I'm about halfway through. I know I have a habit of beginning to talk about books when I'm only part of the way through them, but I'm an EFNP, so I can't stop myself.

The first requirement for me in a book about the problems of boys, and by extension, men, is that the authors not blame feminism, or the greater freedom of women generally, for those problems. Such simplistic argumentation is a sign of such impoverished thinking that I just won't waste my time. But in Raising Cain, the (male) authors, two psychologists who have spent years counseling boys, offer the closest thing I've read to a woman friendly analysis of the damage our culture does to boys. If you have a boy, teach a boy, know a boy, or used to be a boy, or just care about other people generally, this book is a must-read.

More on this when I've actually finished the book. Let's just say for now that it did nothing to alleviate my panic over the upcoming educational decisions we have to make for The Kid.

And in that vein, we'll be visiting a Montessori kindergarten program in the next few days. Last week was a school for "gifted" (whatever the hell that really means) children, where the kindergarten teacher was frank about the fact that the kindergarten is run like a first grade. Thanks, but no thanks. The Kid is arguably doing first grade level work in math, but is nowhere near ready for first grade reading. (Although he's demonstrated that he can sound out words, he still has not an iota of real interest in doing so.) This was a bummer, because they have a great phys ed program -- kids are allowed plenty of move-around time, to the point that they spend six Fridays every winter teaching the kids to ski. So, bummer. But I'm just not ready to subject the Kid -- already reluctant to go to school -- to a program where he's expected, out of the gate, to be doing work that's a year ahead of him. That's not the only reason, of course, but it's a big one.

In dog-related news, we have never found Alaska's humans. So it looks like we're her new humans. She and Thomas have negotiated a tenuous peace that occasionally breaks down over a rawhide chew or when she tries to steal his pink squeaky octopus, but they're mostly doing okay.
We took them to Montana last weekend, and the abundant space really helped them to get used to each other. On Monday, Mr. T IM'd me and said he wanted to keep her.

Perhaps realizing her newfound security, she promptly ate my silk duvet.

Mickey

There are few sights more disorienting than a deer running toward you. I realized, in that quick moment, that I'd never actually seen a deer from that angle -- galloping at full speed down the road, straight at me. Oddly, even though she was running right at us, the doe was paying us no mind at all. At the last second she realized she was hurtling straight at a car, and veered off the road and up into the woods.

Mr. T and I looked at each other quizzically. "Something must have scared it pretty badly," observed Mr. T, as we continued down the road. Ten seconds later, a dog careened at full tilt out of the woods, a swollen tongue dangling joyously from its mouth. The dog was trailing a rope with a chewed end.

"Ahh," we said simultaneously. Mr. T got out of the car.

Oh hell, I thought. Not another one. "Now we have four dogs!" chirped The Kid from the backseat.

"Please tell me it has a tag," I begged Mr. T. "It does. And it even has a number," reported Mr. T. It took little persuasion to get Mickey into the car, and five minutes later we were pulling into his owners' driveway. It was the fastest stray-return we've ever accomplished.

But what gives with the strays all of a sudden? When it rains it pours, I guess.

Our latest houseguest

Unfortunately, our babysitter, pictured in part here, has eight cats and is not in the market for a dog.

We're calling her Alaska. I know it's not terribly original, but that was the extent of our creative output the night we found her. We've searched high and low for her owners, but there were no tags, no microchip, nothing on Craigslist or other internet sites going back to January, and no flyers in the neighborhood. So now we're focused on finding her a new home. She and Thomas get along about as well as two angry wolverines, so keeping her is not really an option. I've made liberal use of the Dog Appeasing Pheromone spray in the last two days.

The legacy of Peanut

Peanut was a dirty beagle I saw crossing the street in a run-down part of Indianapolis on a winter morning several years ago. He trotted along the crosswalk next to an old woman with a big shopping bag. I assumed he belonged to her, until she turned around and swung the bag at him.

I pulled over, got out of my car, and called to him. I was on my way to work in my lawyer car* and a business suit, but that didn't matter. Peanut came right over -- he didn't seem dissuaded by his encounter with the shopping bag -- and licked my hand. He was a very young dog. I could tell he had been out awhile, because his very small collar was nearly choking him. He had clearly outgrown it. And he smelled like hell. Wasteland Fan used to rib me and say I was really picking up animals that actually had homes, but I'd learned that there's a look (and often a smell) about a real stray dog, and he had it.

But into the Lawyer Car he went, and I turned around and took him back home, bathed him, cut off the collar and fed him. He was famished.

And he was also, as we discovered later, a complete doofus. It's really not possible to convey how dim this dog was. We would put him out in the sunroom and watch from the upper deck as he trotted a perfect circle around the sunroom. Over and over again. Without stopping. Mr. T took to calling him "Do Loop." He would not stop the circles until we intervened.

We had just moved into that house, which was a ranch with a walkout basement. An enormous deck stretched along the length of the upper floor. One afternoon, Peanut wiggled through the slats and took a flying leap off it, presumably to greet Mr. T, who had just appeared below. He landed on his head ten feet below with a crunch. I freaked.

Peanut got up and walked in Mr. T's direction, but careened leftward at the last second as if flunking a field sobriety test. He paused, shook his head and continued to Mr. T, this time accurately judging the directions.

He was quite a dog. I trolled Big Law Firm for possible homes for Peanut, and hit pay dirt in the IT department. The head of IT loved beagles, and was unable to resist Peanut's abundant goofiness. Rob and his wife had no kids, a lakeside home, a boat and a pool, and they wanted to share it all with Peanut.

Two weeks after Peanut moved, his new owner came to my office, chuckling, to tell me he'd had to jump in the pool after him that weekend. Peanut had fallen off the diving board. Eventually, Peanut grew to enjoy the boat, and I have this image of him riding on the bow, nose in the air. Before he jumps or falls off, of course.

Once we moved to Portland, the stray-finding ceased. Portland has remarkable animal welfare facilities, and in three years we found only a single golden retriever who'd busted his gate and gone on safari. We contacted his owners and he went home two hours after we found him.

Coeur d'Alene, it seems, has a much bigger problem with stray animals.

Ahem.

More later.




* Why, yes I was compensating for an empty and meaningless existence. Why do you ask?

Thomas gets appeased

The newly calm Thomas enjoys a good California chardonnay on a cozy winter night.

His PR people are going to kill me for writing this -- they've worked so hard after all, to keep the secret from the public -- but I feel like its really time to come clean now, so others can be helped.

Thomas is totally neurotic.

There. It's out. Now maybe other dogs won't be afraid to go public with their struggles.

Except for perhaps the week or so he spent in the shelter, we don't have the excuse of a traumatic puppyhood. We got him when he was only eight weeks old. He was pretty fearful back then, a little tiny scared pup who would curl up in our hands and try to bury his face in our armpits. But after about two days, he got used to us, realized he was home and let his fur down.

But he has this odd sort of uncertainty about his place in the dog world. He is thoroughly attached to me -- I can't get up to go the bathroom without him following -- but when he interacts with dogs, he gets confused. On his own turf he tends to be a real asshole. You can tell he assumes that any dog coming near is doing so for the sole and express purpose of taking What's His. Which he defines as everything, including and especially me.

Off his own turf, he's a great deal more inconsistent, alternating aggression and dominance with shows of submission, sometimes with the same dog. It's like he can't decide. He's had an ongoing psychodrama with the German Shepard down the road in Montana, who is bigger than he is and very dominant. She doesn't put up with a lot of crap, but she's gone fairly easy on Thomas. Still, he freaks out every time he sees her. Every time Bella and her comrade, an easygoing, sofa-sized Newfoundland, appear down by the road, Thomas lets out this tormented howl. Back legs stretched out, nose pointed to the sky, he yowls out a warning. He'll also do this if we simply mention their names.

Fortunately, none of this happens with people. He is uniformly submissive with people, to the point of peeing himself in anxiety when he meets people for the first time. And then there's the herding behavior.

I chalk up most of Thomas's issues to the fact that he's half Border Collie. Let's face it. Lots of Border Collies are nuts. Properly trained, managed, and worked, they can be great dogs. But they come with some mental challenges.

When we went to a new vet in Coeur d'Alene a few weeks ago, it was the first time Thomas had been to a vet as an adult. (He'd had all of his shots as a puppy, and there had been no illnesses requiring veterinary attention in the intervening year.) So the vet was able to view Thomas's neuroses in their full flower. I've done a lot with training, but sometimes I can tell he's just lost the thread of coherence and his anxieties are getting in the way. That's what happened at the vet.

So he suggested we try a Dog Appeasing Pheromone collar. It's a black collar impregnated with a synthetic version of the pheromones a nursing mother produces when she's feeding her pups. The idea with a DAP collar is that it ratchets down an anxious dog by several degrees, and allows them to face the world a little better, and also allows an opening for further training. One collar lasts for thirty days. I was skeptical. But it was only thirty bucks, so I decided to try it.

It didn't take long. The first day was remarkable. He was noticeably calmer and more reasonable after the first hour. I almost took it off the second day, because he seemed more like a sullen teenager, having lost most of the goofy charm that makes him who he is. But I decided to give it another day. And wow. We've gotten to the point where training is able to take place. He still herds, but has learned to respond quickly to the "off" command. He's less of an asshole to our other dog (free feeding helped that a lot too), he gets used to strangers much more quickly, and today he played with Bella the German Shepard.

When we take a walk down the road, it's not uncommon that one of the neighbor dogs will join us. This was always a source of angst for Thomas, especially when it was Bella. But today she joined us and they played. Hard. I was able to see for the first time what was going on -- Bella engages in a very aggressive play -- but it's just that. Play. But Thomas wasn't interpreting things that way before. Today he did, and they had just the kind of play session he's been needing -- lots of running, wrestling and jumping. We'll see if it happens again.

I'll be interested to see what happens after the thirty-day mark. The vet says that by the time the collar wears out, many dogs have learned a new way of thinking and experiencing the world
and don't need to wear another one. If you have a dog with anxiety problems, or is just generally kind of nutty to the point that its interfering with behavior or training, I'd talk to the vet about a DAP collar. I did a bit of research and in a small number of cases, the collar has the reverse effect -- more anxiety and/or aggression. So I think its something you want to watch carefully. But I can say pretty confidently that Thomas is a data point in favor of the collar.

What we did Sunday or, Why the long face?

How many times have I driven around the back corners of northwest Montana, keeping my eyes open for a moose? And then in the last month I've seen three, all in fairly well-traveled
areas of Idaho. The first was along the highway south of Bonners Ferry about three weeks ago. The other two we saw today, a cow and her yearling, pictured above. They were munching on some plants just off the side of the road, near the Spokane River in Post Falls. Next to a house.

(Out of about 150 shots, I got one worth keeping. The ones above aren't sharp enough, and the snow is overexposed.)

Here, kittykittykittykitty

Someone went to the Lion Habitat at the MGM Grand. And no, I don't particularly approve.

Big rawhide, huh?

Sancho, revisited

It's been a little more than three months since I first saw Raising Sancho. I wrote about it then with no idea how many people Sancho would bring to this blog, including Carolina Vargas. (Those of you landing here for the first time from a search engine can go here to read those posts. Start at the bottom, and don't forget the comments, as Carolina has left comments on several of the posts.) Nor did it occur to me then that the scene would be revisited every time the show airs again. And the BBC aired it this weekend, and people from the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe have been visiting all week, as well as some from Asia.

And the scene replays itself. The queries come in fast and furious, the exact same ones I plugged in when I was frantically looking for an update after the show: "Sancho found," "Carolina Vargas blog," or the more desperate "Sancho giant otter Pantanal Carolina Vargas." Everyone is sad and torn up about the ending, but on one issue they split down the middle like a overripe peach -- what really happened to Sancho?

Some say they can just feel it in their gut that Sancho was a victim of a predator, or didn't make it for some other reason. And the reason they cite is that they feel certain that, given the bond between Sancho and Carolina, Sancho would have returned to Carolina at some point in the following three months after he left. After all, he would only swim a short distance from her side in the underwater scenes, never venturing too far before returning to her to check in.

This was, as a matter of fact, my exact opinion after watching the show. Through our tears, Mr. T and I agreed that the odds were heavily against such a bonded animal just up and leaving Carolina, the one other creature in the world to whom he was most powerfully attached.

But my opinion now is the exact reverse. In part that opinion is based on the facts Carolina laid out here: Sancho left at the beginning of the dry season, when otters will often follow the fish to the main water channel. He left after becoming acquainted with a pair of wild otters. He was nine months old, and otters of that age will occasionally just leave their families for long periods of time. And then, of course, the statement that sticks out most powerfully: "Some tour guides that work in the area where Sancho used to live told me that he was around...."

But what about that powerful bond?

Regular readers will recall that my view of the animal-human bond has been publicly developing on this blog. I wrote about it here, and here, both times in the context of my pet dogs. And I think my original belief that surely Sancho would have returned to Carolina, or not left in the first place, is an example of anthropomorphizing Sancho. (For those reading whose first language is not English and may not know, anthropomorphizing means to attribute human characteristics to animals.) I started to formulate this idea in a comment I wrote on one of the Sancho posts:

I understand your point, I really do. But after thinking about it for a long time, I think we may be expecting too much from the bond between Sancho and Carolina.

I think Sancho bonded with Carolina as his mother. Strong as it was, that bond could have eventually been broken even if Carolina had been an otter mother, by Sancho striking out on his own. (I do know that giant otters frequently stay with their family group, but they also sometimes break off to form their own, new family groups.)

Once I stopped looking at their bond in purely human terms and considered the other circumstances, it seemed much more likely that Sancho had simply grown up and done what many otters of his age do, which is to leave their family unit, sometimes for a long time, and sometimes forever.

In short, I think Sancho was being an otter. And I think he was able to do that because Carolina loved him enough to treat him as an otter.

In the posts linked above, I argue that people who view their animals as their children are bringing animals too far into their human world, and failing to venture enough into the animal world. Carolina's and Sancho's relationship is the opposite. Carolina did not bring Sancho too far into her world; rather, she ventured into the otter world as Sancho's surrogate mother.

This is strikingly evident in her refusal to keep him in captivity. She paid a high price emotionally for that decision, but it was a decision that honored Sancho, and saw him clearly for what he was: an otter. I think, for me, that is at the heart of why their relationship touched me so much. It was so deeply meaningful because Carolina gave so much of herself so Sancho could be an otter. Whether he lived or died, he would do so as an otter. It was a profoundly truthful relationship.

That is beautiful. And rare.

Staredown

I can't be the only one who hears The Good, The Bad and The Ugly when I look at this picture.

Venturing into the animal world

Cold mountain rivers seem to feel good on arthritic fifteen-year-old joints.

It's a good thing Jon Katz started a blog, because he says things so much better than I can. I guess a man with a jillion books under his belt ought to have a way with these things. Today he explains beautifully the distinction I wasn't really getting at successfully in this post. I couldn't articulate why not seeing animals as our children doesn't diminish the power of our relationships with them. Go read.

It's not that dogs or animals aren't "as much as" our children. Rather, they do things in our lives that children cannot, or should not. They're ambassadors from another world that we've left behind in our rush to mini-malls and suburbia.

I'm not objecting to those who feel a nurturing relationship with their pets akin to what we might feel with our children. But if that's as far as we go, we're bringing animals too far into our world, and not venturing enough into theirs. And that's a loss for both of us.

Dogs don't have existential crises. Lucky bastards.

Thomas the Dog stares at his mobile food dispenser,
who has inexplicably produced a camera instead of a treat.

On these issues, I'm with author Jon Katz*. I'm not one of those people who thinks of her dogs as her kids. That would be an insult to my kid. And, come to think of it, to my dogs. My dogs are one of the purest, simplest joys in my life. I don't have to worry whether my dogs are going to grow into empathetic, decent folks. I don't worry about whether they are going to inherit my neuroses, or whether they will still call and visit in twenty years. Yes, I want to make sure I train them well, and teach them to live and get along in a human world that often doesn't understand their animal nature. But they do not carry my heart around in the way that my son does, and I have never awakened in the middle of the night wondering whether I'm doing right by them.

Perhaps I adore them so much precisely because they are not a part of me in the way my son is. They are a thing apart. Parenting the Kid is something that runs as deeply as anything can go. It's complex, rich and often frightening in its intensity.

I would do no service to my animals by trying to place such a framework on my interactions with them. To do so would be to project my own thoughts and feelings onto them. But they are different creatures, and absolutely not human. And thank goodness for that.

I try not to anthropomorphize my animals, at least in a way that can hurt them. People can and do hurt their pets by assuming they think and feel like humans. (No, your dog did not destroy your living room while you were out because it was angry with you for leaving.) Now, its probably impossible not to do that a little bit, because the line is so unclear -- animals clearly have their own characters or, to use the anthropocentric term, their own personalities. And they clearly do have emotions, though perhaps not of the same complexity as people, and their emotions do not interact, like ours do, with an established sense of cause and effect.

Make no mistake. My dog arrived at his "love" for me through the fact that I take care of him. He views me first and foremost as a mobile food dispenser.

But so what? Too many people would decry that statement as minimizing the depth of the human-animal bond. I don't think it does. After all, that's how my son thought of me for the first year of his life. And I don't think that's the sum of the human-animal interaction, of course. I've seen too much to the contrary to believe that.

But my dogs are not people. That's what makes them so wonderful.

*If you like dogs, farm animals, rural anything, art or life, start reading this guy. I'm thrilled because he just stated on his blog that his next book will be about his border collie, Rose, who is the dog of his that fascinates me the most. You may not end up liking him, or the decisions he makes (though I don't feel that way), but you will love his stories. I talked about Katz's work briefly here, and go here to see what his book A Good Dog did to me.

Your post-Thanksgiving, Monday morning dose of nature

From jlb over at Arboreality, go watch this video if you have a few extra minutes. (I didn't want to embed it due to the copyright notice on it.)

Try not to lose heart when the juvenile buffalo is attacked -- nothing about this video is predictable.

Endangered Species Thursday: The ends don't always justify the means

Thank goodness for the people who actually read this blog and send me things. I've been slapping myself silly this week trying to get images ready to submit to my stock agency, finish a project for the day job, get ready to go to Montana this weekend, finish some sewing I'm doing for Christmas, and a lot of other things you don't give the tiniest shit about.

But this means I haven't had much time to read the stuff that interests me on the internet and then share it with all of you -- you know, cheery stuff like turtles choking on plastic bags, the innumerable species on the brink of annihilation, and people who commit ugly acts against animals in supposed defense of those same species.

Michael, sender of all things good, is a cat-lover, and was appalled by this story. Me too. Apparently, a guy on the Gulf Coast is accused of shooting and killing a cat he claims was preying on endangered plovers in an area where he regularly leads bird-watching tours.

This has, of course, pitted bird lovers and cat lovers against one another, and the conflict has become somewhat ferocious. But why the binary thinking? Yes, of course feral cats preying on endangered birds is a problem. No, unilaterally shooting them is not an appropriate response to that very real problem.

One of the issues in this case is, no doubt, that the accused is being tried under a law where it's frankly a stretch for the prosecution. (Lawyerly Disclaimer: I am not a Texas lawyer and I don't know all the facts of this case.) It would have been a better use of government resources to round up and care for the feral cats in this area than it would have been to put this man on trial.

It's an ugly case. Look, I know how desperately depressing species loss is. But don't lose your head, people. Let's think of solutions that don't involve bloodshed. It's like that old joke: What do you do if you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?*

Well, damn sure you don't blow it away with a 22-caliber rifle, pally. Feh.



*Yes, I know domesticated house cats are not endangered. You still shouldn't shoot them.

For the giant otter fans among us

Reader MR has alerted me to Mission Giant Otter, a program airing on Animal Planet today at 2:00 p.m. The program covers researcher Diane McTurk's work with orphaned giant otters.