As you may know if you follow my tweets, I’m still in the UK staying with my husband’s family. Last night on a history show we were watching, there was a reference to a Roman archaeological dig at the site of a suspected brothel;
Dozens of unwanted babies born during Roman times were murdered and buried on the site of a Roman brothel in Buckinghamshire, archaeologists suspect.
An extensive study of a mass burial at a Roman villa in the Thames Valley suggests that the 97 children all died at 40 weeks gestation, or very soon after birth.
The archaeologists believe that locals may have been killing and burying unwanted babies on the site in Hambleden, Buckinghamshire.
While it seems incredibly brutal to us that newborns would be killed as a form of ‘birth control’, historians claim early Romans believed that babies didn’t receive a soul until they were nearly a year old (a child attempting to speak was a sign that his soul had entered his body) and killing them was widely considered no more evil than slaughtering an animal. (Yes, some of the British history I’ve had over the last week or so has been pretty ick!)
But it did get me to thinking…with the near constant breakthroughs in the areas of understanding how animals think, act and feel, are our future selves going to look back at our time on earth and think it similarly ugly? Will everything we feel we know about animals now turn out to be a vast underestimation of their capacity to value their life, and that we are as a society are just unenlightened about their understanding and awareness?
If we equate ‘consciousness’ to some cognitive stage, then its very easy to see why Romans thought it ok to swiftly end the life of a newborn child through an opiate overdose (or worse). Yet few today would defend infanticide. Could our assumptions that animals don’t have ’souls’ or their lives value, because our culture says they don’t, turn out to be an equally misinformed position?
While it’s unfair to use current knowledge and societal framework to condemn those in history who simply didn’t know better, imagine for one moment what it means if we’re living today, in a similar ignorant absolution. Are we the barbarians of tomorrow?
… that cats should be indoors, that cats should be registered and desexed by law and that free-roaming cats need to be trapped for their own good; then you can’t say ‘it’s not our job’ when they ask you for help.
(Cat pic) It’s hard to imagine that a face like this lives off discarded food scavenged from rubbish bins. Sadly, this is the reality for dozens of stray cats who have sought refuge around the Parkway Rd McDonald’s and the Caltex Service Station at Quakers Hill.
Resident Sarah King says Blacktown City Council and the RSPCA seemed disinclined to help so she has launched a petition urging the council to take action against the growing feral cat population.
Ms King and a group of friends plan to trap as many cats as they can and petition the council to find them new homes or destroy the animals humanely.
She said businesses, the council and the RSPCA were caught up in a game of “finger pointing”.
“The response has been pretty appalling, but something needs to be done,” Ms King said. “These cats are starving, carrying disease and living a … horrible life. They keep breeding and it’s getting worse.”
Driving through the area the Advocate saw cats in bins, kittens hiding in the hedges – even remains on the side of Parkway Rd and a carcass in a garden bed.
McDonald’s hired a private firm to remove kittens and adults but numbers are again getting out of hand and they don’t believe it’s their sole responsibility.
[...]
Two RSPCA spokeswomen told the Advocate the cats were not their responsibility and “economic pressure” prevented them taking further action.
Ms King has now lodged a formal complaint with Blacktown City Council who declined the opportunity to comment when contacted by the Advocate.
Animal lover Chris Lyall says a cat and her four kittens could be buried alive if the bulldozing of four derelict houses on Woodland St, Balgowlah, continues.
The Manly resident said the family of strays has taken refuge under one of the houses with all efforts to rescue them so far unsuccessful.
[...]
Hoping for action to delay the demolition, Mr Lyall contacted Manly Council but claims they are yet to act.
Manly Council general manager Henry Wong said the council was aware of the situation but it was the RSPCA or other animal welfare organisations that were the appropriate bodies to assist with the matter.
The cats’ plight, however, has created confusion, with the RSPCA indicating that the welfare of the mother and her kittens was the council’s responsibility under the Companion Animals Act.
Mr Lyall said the lack of help was frustrating.
[...]
Ellen McGinness, from the Cat Protection Society, said it appeared the issue was being palmed off.
“It should be the council’s responsibility – the RSPCA only deal with owned cats. There is a huge problem with councils not taking responsibility.”
Health and Regulation Committee chairman Councillor Andrew Antoniolli said the incident highlighted the importance of parents to supervise their children around dogs.“A good percentage of the dog attacks that we’ve been seeing lately are attacks that are occurring within the dog property,” Cr Antoniolli said.
“It just indicates that at all times you must ensure that you’re vigilant with children and dogs.”
Congratulations to Cr Andrew for his considered response to this attack. All dogs can bite.
The city’s health and regulation committee chairman Andrew Antoniolli said the redefinition of the American Staffordshire was the result of a drawn-out court case on the Gold Coast.
“We are concerned that we have at least 126 of the 30,000 dogs registered in Ipswich which were identified on their registration as American Staffordshire terriers,” Mr Antoniolli said.
Ms Clements and Mr Bartling had erected a locked 2m-high cage in their backyard, but had not finished the required roofing and guttering when their pet was impounded.
Four days later they received the devastating phone call.
“They said they had put the wrong dog down,” Ms Clements said.
“They said he was in the fridge and when did we want him dropped down?”
Mr Bartling described Syphon as his best mate and said there was no excuse for the mistake because his pet was microchipped.
The dedicated dog zone will be fenced off to give pets a safe place to run free off-lead and to socialise with other dogs. The park will also feature drinking water taps for dogs, and extra seating for pet owners.
Cool! Single use, fenced and patrolled parks are vital to the health of the dogs in any community, especially as people’s backyards shrink. Patrols are also vital; not only to ensure that people using the park are doing so in a responsible manner, but as a chance for council animal management to have positive interactions with the pet owning community.
Cr Grant Hudson told the meeting it was the council’s role to intervene in cat problems, not a neighbour’s job.
“These days a lot of neighbours don’t even know each other and making complaints about pets is one way to create neighbourhood friction where none existed before,” he told the Eastern Courier Messenger after the meeting.
If the bylaw is passed, which will force cat owners to register and microchip their pets from August 1st, the only way to actually enforce the model would be some kind of ‘neighbourhood spy’ campaign. Cats don’t carry their licences in their wallets and those people with ‘too many’ are going to go to ground. So with neighbours dobbing on neighbours and everyone now complaining about that free-roaming cat that no one owns, Mitcham Council animal control is going to be busy! busy! busy! trapping and impounding cats.
A team of experts are bound for a remote island equipped with helicopters guns and dogs to eradicate rabbits, black rats and house mice.
The imported species have wreaked environmental havoc on Macquarie Island, a tiny piece of Australian territory halfway between New Zealand and Antartica.
The World Heritage listed island serves as the mating and nesting place of countless penguins, seabirds and seals who are under threat from the pests.
This exercise has been required after parks and wildlife management, removed all the feral cats from the island to save the native seabirds. Unfortunately, the decision allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover. The resulting “environmental devastation” was estimated to cost $24 million Australian dollars to remedy. Whoopsies.
Councillor Rudi Steffens said the current facilities were “old and aged”.
“There is still no exercise area for the animals, the kennels are constantly wet through the day and animals are susceptible to cutting their feet on the cages,” he said.
“I don’t believe this facility is standard, I believe it is substandard.”
Councillor Alan Blencowe agreed.
“Six dogs die every day in the City of Wanneroo, that is 2000 dogs per year and we only have one crematorium in the northern suburbs,” he said.
“As a council, we need to be a little bit more responsible than to have these animals’ bodies just being put into landfill.”
You could try not killing them – just a thought.
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Slashdot is arguably one of the world’s most famous websites. As a provider of news for nerds and the intellectual set, Australia doesn’t rate a mention very often, but we got a mention with this:
Australian Farmers Told To Dynamite Rabbits
The South Australian Environment Department has told farmers that they should use poison gas or even explosives to deal with the out-of-control rabbit population. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization Invasive Animals chief Professor Tony Peacock, owner of the largest business card ever, says that blowing up rabbits isn’t as inhuman as people might think, and has been ranked by the RSPCA as one of the best ways to destroy warrens.
Honestly. This is the animal welfare equivalent of a ‘Hey, Hey It’s Saturday’ skit.
They’re territorial pests who threaten native wildlife, but Indian myna birds are being shot, electrocuted and tortured by those who refuse to use baited traps.
More than 100,000 Indian mynas have been killed using a legal, do-it-yourself trap and several NSW councils have introduced eradication programs.
But the RSPCA is concerned about cruelty to the introduced species by those using weapons such as air rifles, poisons and other unsanctioned methods to kill them.
It has warned that those destroying and disposing of the birds illegally could face heavy fines or jail time.
Several people on an online forum offered “simple” suggestions to eradicate mynas.
“I have shot, poisoned, trapped and electrocuted them, but the most effective way is to shoot them with an accurate air rifle,” one user said.
Another posted: “An excellent result was achieved by sprinkling dog food with an aphid poison. They’re dead within minutes.”
Birds caught in legal traps are usually destroyed after being administered euthanasing gas, usually from the exhaust pipe of a car while the engine is cold.
But RSPCA inspector Matt French said he believed only pest-control companies should destroy the birds.
“If you catch a Indian myna bird, you shouldn’t take euthanasing into your own hands,” Mr French said.
“If people connect a tube to the exhaust pipe of a car, depending on the make, model and age of the car there could be an uncontrollable mixture of gases.
“If the engine is hot, the birds’ lungs can be burned and scalded.
“Obviously, they’re not a native bird and many people find them a pest, but there’s no justification for people to take matters into their own hands.
“Regardless of a personal opinion on these birds, the damage they do or the noise they make, they’re still animals that deserve to be treated with respect.”
A resident of the town of Orange is speaking out for the much maligned Myna bird.
A proposal to cull local myna bird populations goes against the natural pecking order for one Orange resident. After working with wildlife in Africa and Canada for several years, Terese Kerr says she’s learned human intervention is not the answer even if a species is considered a predator.
“I just believe it’s wrong to kill off any bird, even if you believe it’s a pest,” she said.“I’m anti-hunting and I’ve seen the impact those sorts of things can have.”
…….
Mrs Kerr said it was wrong to refer to certain species as “bullies” when they were simply trying to survive. She said she welcomed all birdlife into her own garden and wouldn’t consider feeding certain species and not others.
“There’s a pecking order, human beings can’t come in and say I don’t want this bird bullying another bird,” she said.
Nativism, or the human preference for one species of animal over another, is a dangerous game of whimsy that is often followed up with inhumane acts of abuse in the name of ‘conservation’.
A fox can be baited with a Sodium fluoroacetate (1080) and die a death of abdominal pain, sweating, confusion and convulsions. But if I fed poison deliberately to a domestic dog I’d be prosecuted under Australian animal protection law. If a cat is living without an owner, it can be trapped and shot with a rifle by local council agents. However, if I was to shoot my own pet cat, I could expect to spend some time in court. And when myna-haters trap and kill birds they do so in ways we wouldn’t accept for other animals and with no veterinary supervision or input whatsoever;
Once in the trap, the myna-catchers favourite topic comes up. Dispatch. No more controversial topic exists in the world of the myna-hater. The favoured method is exhaust gas from the car. No diesels or hybrids mind you, and do it off a cold engine before the catalytic converter kicks in. Pop the cage in a compost bag and shove a tube from the exhaust to the bag and it’s all over in a matter of seconds. The technique hasn’t quite gained the blessing of all the authorities as yet but the myna actioners aren’t going to wait for some soft bureaucrats to get their act together. ref
To further complicate the idea of the worthy-native and the un-worthy introduced animal, is the native who refuses to play nice. In Western Australia, rainbow lorikeets (an eastern states bird who found success in the west) are culled because they’re in competition with slightly more local bird species.
A rat plague of more than two hundred thousand animals that hit Queensland in December last year, caused havoc by upsetting the ‘natural balance’, with the rats stripping vegetation and breeding furiously… but didn’t rate much of a mention because they were a long-haired, native type. However, when a UK celebrity reality show visited Australia, and the participants killed an (introduced) rat and ate it, it caused a stir around the world and the production team was prosecuted by our RSPCA.
Australians value animal welfare regardless of species and seeing an animal killed for arbitrary reasons, or in an inhumane way goes against what the community stand for.
The science of biological xenophobia is finding it harder and harder to continue to carve its place in a modern compassionate society. While it used to be quite fashionable to be ‘anti-introduced animals’, people are starting to realise that trying to use culling as a way to turn back the ‘ecological clock’ to a time before human inhabitation, without actually removing the humans is not only futile, but unethical.
The ultimate goal of the environmental movement is to create a peaceful and harmonious relationship between humans and the environment. To be authentic, this goal must include respect for other species. Tragically, given its alarming embrace of Invasion Biology, the environmental movement has violated this ethic by targeting species for eradication because their existence conflicts with the world as some people would like it to be. And in championing such views, the movement paradoxically must support the use of traps, poisons, fire, and hunting, all of which cause great harm, suffering, and environmental degradation. ref
We must move beyond a place where we arbitrarily deem one animal more ‘worthy’ of life than another, for no reason other than we’d prefer nature to be fair and reasonable. She isn’t and never has been.
I recommend this fantastic piece of writing from Dr Marty Becker; when insight into animal suffering lends itself to compassion for even the ‘lowly’ mouse.
Buckley’s got a cute, new mate – his very own Buckley soft toy.
The stuffed toys are an almost perfect replica of the maimed pup, right down to his hacked ears and stumpy tail.
See others in the ‘ultra real LDH pound pets’ including a dead cat beanie baby (foster carers need not apply),
and the shy-dog, catchpole and euthanasia play kit (makes a great xmas gift for the outdated shelter manager who has everything).
I’m joking obviously. No one pays as much attention to a dead pet as a cute, mutilated one.
And sadly for the others who aren’t Lost Dogs Home pinups, not all pets are as valuable as Buckley.
……..
Edited to add comment from a co-worker: Perhaps we should create the convulsing dog as a replica of the pooch that died in the back of a ranger’s van last year.
Buckley’s got a cute, new mate – his very own Buckley soft toy.
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