And I will warn you up front that it is hard to watch. It almost made me cry, and brought back some painful memories of Mojo as well. But I think it really brings home some hard facts, and in particular anyone who is thinking of getting a purebred puppy should consider these realities first.
Someone posted the show in six parts to YouTube and the link above is to the first of the six parts. I am not sure if they had BBC’s permission so the video might not be there long. This is also on BBC’s site but currently you cannot view their online shows unless you live in the UK.
For our donation last month, we thought it would be nice to send a check to On the Wing Again, a bird rehabilitation group back in Texas that took in two baby birds (there’s a picture of one of them in a previous post)we found at different times while we lived there, in appreciation of the work they do. Sadly, it appears that the organization is no longer operating, so we decided to look for a similar group locally. We found Wild for Life, who I’d also like to mention have a very informative web site with some great practical information on what to do if you find an animal that you think needs help. We sent them a donation and have also added their site to our links page.
I’ve hand raised several birds as well as cats, dogs, and pet rats, and it is very messy, round the clock work. It’s always amazed me how helpless birds and many mammals are at birth, and what a great job their parents do raising them just by instinct. A sparrow or rat, for instance, comes out looking like something that wasn’t quite ‘done’ yet – naked, blind, with skin so translucent you can see the organs inside, absolutely helpless. Getting the temperature wrong by just a degree or two either way or not feeding the exact right amount at the right time can doom the little one you are hand raising and yet an animal or bird parent with a brain about the size of a gumdrop can do it (usually in multiples!) perfectly.
Knowing the amount of work that goes into caring for orphaned wildlife, and also the importance of making sure that the babies grow up knowing how to survive in the wild, we have the greatest respect for anyone who takes on such a responsibility. As I write this, I am thinking that in addition to the donation we just made to Wild for Life, I am going to write a letter to the folks who used to run On the Wing again (even though they are no longer operating) to thank them personally. When we found those birds we knew we wouldn’t have the time to give them the care they needed and having that resource available was a wonderful thing. I am sort of feeling a bit ashamed, because at the time I was thinking “we did a good thing, we saved a life” but actually it was someone else who saved a life. We were just kind of in the right place at the right time to help that process along a bit.
We don’t really watch network TV anymore, and we listen to public radio so I am not sure whether this news item has made it out into the mainstream or not; something is killing thousands of bats in the northeast. Entire colonies have been ravaged, with some losing more than half of their populations last year and more bats affected this year. They are calling it white nose syndrome for the white fungus found on the muzzles of affected bats, but it isn’t clear at this time if the fungus is the actual cause of the infection, or just a symptom.
Bats are very misunderstood by many and the average person probably conjures up images of blood sucking vampires or rabies when they think of them, which is unfortunate. They are amazingly diverse and fascinating creatures that have been around for at least fifty million years, they are the only true flying mammal, they play a very important part in the ecosystem as pollinators, and many species are very capable predators of insects such as mosquitoes. Even if you are one of the people for whom the thought of leathery winged little flying mammals brings an involuntary shudder, you have to recognize that they have a very valuable place in the world and it would be greatly worse off without them.
We recently decided to make a point of setting aside a little money each month to donate to worthy causes, and our first donation went to the Bat Conservation Society’s Fund for White-Nose Syndrome Research. It isn’t much, but maybe if lots of people can chip in little bits here and there researchers can solve this mystery and find a way to stop the die-off.
Someone posted a link to this article on the Bull-Terriers Yahoo group and I was pleased (and surprised) to read a very fair, sensible, and well thought-out article for a change. Typically I cringe when I see a headline that involves breed specific legislation because I know I am about to get really angry and frustrated and it was refreshing to see a journalist actually using their brain and thinking logically instead of jumping on the hype bandwagon.
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