Coffee and Provocation

Disrespecting Tintin:
Snowy (Milou), Tintin's dog, did not make the first list of inductees into the "Dog Walk of Fame." Dogs that did make the cut, include such lesser canines as Greyfriars Bobby, Gromit of the Wallace and Gromit films, Toto from The Wizard of Oz, Lassie, and Fang from the Harry Potter films. The fact that "Fang" was allowed to beat out Snowy/Milou suggests the whole thing is rigged and certainly a travesty. Adding insult to injury we find Bullseye from the movie Oliver made the cut, as well as two two ne'er-do-well dogs best relegated to a "where are they now?" special: Chance and Shadow from the saccharine-sweet Homeward Bound movies. Upon investigation, it was no surprise to find that the whole thing is a put up job by the U.K. Kennel Club working in conjunction with Sky Movies. You will note that all the dogs are big box-office movie dogs, while Tintin's Milou/Snowy was more of a literary dog (if a comic book can be described as literature, and I think it can). Balto? Gelert? Argos? Hachikō? Cerberus? These barbarians have never heard of them. In any case, the light-weight celluloid dogs that made the cut this year will be honored with a bench and plaque in London's Battersea Park, with more benches and plaques added in subsequent years. Hopefully Tintin, our favorite terrierman, will be added next year. Blistering barnacles!

Indiana Cougar: Real or Fake?
I rarely give a nod to incredible assertions, but sometimes an unlikely story is too easily written off. It seems a cougar has been spotted (repeatedly) in Indiana and a photograph has even been taken (a very grainy one). Some folks are quick to dismiss the claim, but not so fast: there are special circumstances here. It seems that a 70-pound female cougar named Donner escaped the Exotic Feline Rescue Center near Center Point just 80 miles away in January. The director of the Exotic Feline Rescue Center says she thinks her escaped cougar is dead, but she has no proof to support this claim, as the escaped cat was never found. It would not be hard for a young cougar to find deer and other food in Indiana, even if it were just roadkill. One wonders if the Center is simply trying to avoid liability and responsibility if something bad occurs. In any case, a naturally occuring wild cougar in Indiana is not out of the range of possibility either; roadkill lions have confirmed their presence in Iowa, and camera traps have confirmed their presence in Minnsesota. Rangers in Michigan and Illinois have seen lions in their states as well.

He's Dead Either Way:
There's a Lyle Lovett lyric that goes: "Was that the yacht club/Or just a fishing boat ; Was that the leg of lamb/Or was it a billy goat ; Was that a snail baby/ Or escargot?" Its the kind of lyric Kenton Carnegie might appreciate if he were alive today. Sadly, Carnegie is dead, either the first semi-confirmed person in North American to have been killed by a wolf, or else just one more name in a small sea of people killed by a black bear. No one will ever be sure, as no one witnessed the attack, and wolf and bear experts disagree. An autopsy (if that's what it can be called after someone has been ripped apart by a wild animal) shows Carnegie's stomach, kidneys and intestines had been eaten. Bear experts claim these are the "organs of choice" preferred by black bears, while wolves are supposed to prefer the liver, heart and lungs which have more fat in them. I am pretty certain neither bears nor wolves read such reports. Wolf-kill advocates will note that a coroner's inquest ruled that the killing was by a wolf, but in fact this may have been weighed to some degree by the natural desire of all parties at the inquest to make news and history. This is not to say that a wolf cannot kill a human; they most certainly can, and they have certainly done so in Europe. It's just that in 200 years, there has yet to be a confirmed case of a fatal wolf attack on a human in North America. And, like it or not, there still isn't a confirmed fatal attack by a wolf on a human in this hemisphere. I have no doubt it will happen one day, but it has not yet.

The Cut and Run Irish:
In other news, while Ulster boxer John "The Derry Destroyer" Duddy was in America training for a fight, he encountered a black bear on the side of the road. Did he lay down and play dead as he was told to do if he saw a bear? He did not! Did he go "bear knuckle" and punch it out with the bruin? He did not! Instead, he ran like a girl. And probably for no reason. Bears are all over the Poconos, where this occured, and they rarely do anything more violent that rip down a bird feeder and turn over a few garbage cans. More people are killed by golf balls in America every year than are killed by black bears, and it's not like we don't have a huge population of the animals to work with; over 500,000 wild black bears roaming all across the U.S. That works out to be one black bear for every 600 people in America.

"Crocodile Hunter" on Oz Stamp:
Australia has put Steve Irwin and family on one of the ugliest stamps ever made which also seems to feature a magazine cover in some sort of strange cross-promotion. Proceeds from the sale of the 50 cent stamp will go to Irwin's conservation charity, Wildlife Warriors, but it seems to me that they have denigrated the Australia's postal system and the memory of Steve Irwin more than they the charity (or the animals) will ever benefit. Enough is enough!

Good News from the Sudan:
Good news from the Sudan? Can it be? Well yes. Apparently after an end to 20 years of fighting, the wildlife of Sudan is beginning to return. Sudan's wildlife service estimates that 7,000 elephants have returned, along with an estimated 1,500 giraffes and 500 oryx antelopes. Lions, leopards and a wide variety of gazelles have also returned, and hippo numbers are again starting to rise. Elephants live a long time, and they remember, which means that older elephants have been able to lead younger members of their herds back to their historical haunts from neighboring Uganda. Another bit of good news is that Africa’s elephant population seems to be rebounding a bit thanks to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, which outlawed ivory sales worldwide beginning in 1989. Elephant populations across Africa (which is nine time bigger than the U.S.) may now number 400,000..

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