Brief Rant About a Sad Place

For those of you who don't know a lot about me yet, let me just state that I'm not really an animal lover.

I had a dog (Bichon Frise) growing up, and I did love her with all my heart, right up until that li'l girl passed away on February 13th, 2001. There will never be another like her, and I accept that. Every animal is different; not necessarily better nor worse. The next day, February 14th, 2001, I had all four wisdom teeth removed and then learned I'm allergic to penicillin. But that's a different story. This is a story about animals.

Later that year, I moved off to college. My experience with pets since then has been off-and-on; mostly off. I joined a fraternity and we had a community dog (American Bulldog) named Miller who was a decent creature. Others were more attached to him than I was; I accepted him for who he was and we had a few moments together but nothing that made me feel too attached to him.

I had a brief ownership of a newt, who I believe was suicidal. He refused to eat his food and instead ate one of his arms off. It was a short-lived experience and put me off of pet ownership for a while.

I moved out and into an apartment. It was several years later and I took in two red-ear slider turtles from Chinatown. I'm going to rationalize the decision with "I was young enough to be stupid enough to make such a decision." Their names were Tank and Tardy. Tank lasted a month. Tardy lasted a little over a year. That was the end of my pet ownership for a long time. I had enough friends to keep me socially occupied, although they all had CATS.

Eventually they had four cats, all female, living in their apartment. It was a big enough apartment, and a few of them stayed away from people (for the most part). I'm not a cat person. Never have been, probably never will be. Visiting their place and seeing the cats, it just reinforced my mindset that I'm not a cat person. I never had any malevolent thoughts about them (except for ONE time involving a window and what some could consider "dangling" but I still maintain was "prolonged rescuing"), but I knew I'd never really like them in any capacity.

It's about at that point I resigned myself to the belief that I was probably not a nice person because I really don't care for animals much.

And then we fast forward a few years. Those friends and I lost touch, I eventually wound up with a girlfriend, and she moved in with me. She made a decision that we were going to own rats as pets.

Now I have other friends who were also rat-owners. I knew a fair amount of stuff about it; I'd played with them on occasion, and I wasn't completely adverse to the idea.

So we got our first pair, Moose and Reese. When Reese passed away, we knew Moose shouldn't be alone, so we went with a rescue group and adopted Bubsy and Scampi. Moose passed away a while later (he was my favorite rattie and the one I've really connected with the most), and we planned on getting two more to join Bubsy and Scampi. An unfortunate situation arose and Scampi passed away recently. Our idea to adopt two more then became a decision to get three - and this time we went with a breeder so we'd hopefully have less random problems by not knowing their genetic history. So now Bubsy has three young'uns to play with (or get annoyed by): Michelob, Bailey and Guinness.

So now that you know the full story, and hopefully you understand that while I'm still the guy who'll propose that we eat all the overpopulation of dogs and cats to solve both the overpopulation and the world hunger problems at the same time; I'm not a completely heartless individual.

Except for cats. I still remain fairly heartless towards their kind.

And this brings me to The Sad Place. I live in the city of Chicago, and near the Orange Line, which is on the south side. I've done my exploring, and around the Pulaski station, I found this place called the "Super Mall". I was expecting to find something akin to a mall like in Los Angeles, but bigger. Instead, I found what can only be described as (and FourSquare has it labeled as) a "flea market". A mishmash of 4' by 6' stalls where an almost-entirely Spanish-speaking populous have set up their little shops full of overpriced trinkets, gewgaws and outrageous clothing. Also it contains at least TWO different tattoo parlors / piercing stations. And deep in the heart of this claustrophobic nightmare, there sits The Sad Place.

The Sad Place is a "pet store".

Now, the entrance to Super Mall clearly states "No Pets" are allowed, so it's curious to see a store selling pets inside. It would suggest that anyone buying a pet is in violation of Super Mall rules and needs to be punished. Well, the owner of this "pet store" needs to be punished more.

For starters, you know you're approaching The Sad Place because you can hear the unmistakable cacophony of about 200 parakeets trapped in about 5 different cages. And that's where you can feel your heart start to ache. I'm not ever going to agree with PETA on pretty much anything, but seeing a bird in a cage just makes me as angry as it makes me sad. Bird ownership just seems like a completely rotten thing to exist in the world, except in circumstances where it's allowed to exist outside of a cage. If a bird can't fly, you had better be fattening it up to eat, because keeping it in such a sad existence is just abhorrent to me. I'd rather EAT a parakeet than be responsible for having it live and die in a flightless caged existence.

Now I've been to The Sad Place a few times, and the only things he used to have there were the multitude of Pitiful Parakeets, and some tanks full of Doomed Fish, and maybe a cage of feeder mice and some snakes in terrariums. But today on our visit, it looks as though his business has expanded.

Well, it's still the same 4' by 6' space, but now there's a wider variety of animals suffering and waiting to be taken to a possibly-better life.

The first thing I saw (because I recognize them now from a distance) was the Rat Tank.

They were all black hooded (that I could tell, since there were about 8 to 10 in there, all huddled together on one side of the tank) and it took me a visit to the other tanks before I made some realizations. At first glance, it just looked pitiful, seeing them squished together and looking depressed. No activity, just a clump of animals banding together and possibly trying to sleep (don't know how anything can sleep near the incessant squawking of the Pitiful Parakeets). I moved on to see they now have a tank of gerbils, a cage of guinea pigs, and a cage of rabbits.

My girlfriend pointed out when she saw the rabbit cage that it's hovering over a pan that catches the droppings, and there was a ton of poop just sitting there, technically in the open air. That's when my eyes went to the water bottle hooked up to the rabbit cage: EMPTY. I saw one attached to the guinea pig cage: EMPTY. Then I went to see if the rats had water. Well, you can't strap a water bottle to a glass tank. And there was no water dish inside the tank, so I'm now under the assumption they had NO WATER. My girlfriend pointed out that it looked like the wood chips used for bedding/lining in the rat tank looked to be pine, which she knows better than I do is a not-good thing for rats. I was more concerned over the lack of water, the absence of food in ANY of the cages (though we're used to having free-fed rats and maybe I can give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that he might have feeding times for them - none of them looked particularly underfed/malnourished, but I'm not a vet), and the general inactivity of almost all of the creatures.

This is where we started whispering to each other about what constitutes as "animal cruelty" and if it would be better to contact the ASPCA or the BBB to make a report against The Sad Place.

Just to confirm one of my suspicions, I asked the guy running the place how much he was charging for the rats. Once he understood my English, he told me they are $7 apiece. I asked if they are all boys, and he replied that "It's a mix." I didn't need to ask if they were all spayed/neutered because I am 100% certain the answer is no.

I took another long look at the poor ratties, and saw one of them with its paw out on the glass. As if it were reaching out for someone to notice and rescue it from this existence... I couldn't stop myself from getting in one last photo...

It wasn't until I got home and took a closer look at the photo that I realized why I was subconsciously drawn to that paw, reaching out. Take a look at the fingers. You'll see that one of them is missing. I can't jump to any conclusions about how it happened or place any blame on anyone or anything for that particular circumstance. I just know that it affected me and has made me that more depressed to this about The Sad Place.

As we walked away from The Sad Place and off to try and find something less depressing to fill our Saturday, I told my girlfriend that if it weren't for the fact that I know there's nothing I could have done for those ratties, I would have bought them all and considered it a rescue. She reminded me that 1) it's not a rescue if it's just putting more money into that guy's pocket, 2) we don't know anything about them and don't have quarantine space for them to keep our current pet rats safe, and 3) maybe there's something else we can do to help.

She reached out on Facebook and got some suggestions to call 3-1-1 and make a report against them. She's already done so tonight, and I know her particular complaint includes a lot of more-specific things about The Sad Place, like the fact that they're keeping a bearded dragon in the same tank as iguanas or something and that they're non-cohabitable species.

(There's also a tiny tank with a scorpion and one with a tarantula. There's nothing reportable about it, I just don't care for either of those things.)

So I'm asking for some reader support and if you're in the Chicago area, please also call 3-1-1 and file a report about them and their deplorable conditions. The address of the Super Mall is 5220 S Pulaski Rd, Chicago, IL 60632. The phone number for the Super Mall is (773) 581-9200.

Maybe we can complain to the Super Mall, since these little spaces for vendors don't seem to have much by way of shop names or phone numbers or anything.

If you don't want to believe me, or call the city to address a problem you haven't seen for yourself, I suggest you go and see for yourself and maybe it will affect you the way it's affected me. I consider myself to be a fairly-heartless individual when it comes to animals, but even a monster like myself doesn't believe that animals deserve this kind of life. (Except maybe for cats, but that's something to address another time in more detail.)

So that's my story about The Sad Place. If you want to help, please do so and reach out to me and let me know we're not alone in this. If not, I don't really blame you. I've scoffed at my fair share of boo-hoo animal stories, especially the ones on TV where they show you the sad pictures and try to make you give money.

Well I'm not asking for money. Just maybe a call to 3-1-1. Or a comment of support. Or a comment that I'm a monster anyway - at least I'll know you read this.

Oh, and if you are a person who 1) disagrees with my statements about bird ownership, 2) finds me to be a worthless shell of a human being for my loathing of cats, or 3) thinks that rats are disgusting and not actual pets, then let's agree to disagree for now and maybe we can address those issues in future posts.

Other types of comments are more than welcome. Please comment and let me know you've read this and also have an opinion about it. Read more!

PETA Not Versus Britney?

If there's ever been an organization that could be known for backhanded compliments, backhanded complaints and just plain backhanded EVERYTHING - it would almost definitely be PETA. Sometimes it even backhands its own logic just to get more public attention. For example, Ingrid Newkirk (the evil dictator of the evil empire) has it in her PETA mission statement that animals are not ours to own and should be free, which means NO PETS. So every time PETA gets in a tizzy about dogs and cats, I keep wondering why their stance isn't "no pets" every time.

Eventually I learned that PETA apparently just wants them all dead so nobody can own any. They want all the breeders shut down, they want all current pets spayed or neutered, and they routinely go around "rescuing" animals from shelters (when not protesting shelters) and kill them all in puppy-killing deathmobiles and dump the carcasses in dumpsters. Which means you can't breed them, nobody else can breed them, and they'll kill any of them not currently owned. All dogs and cats would be dead after this generation. Thanks, PETA. If that's not a backhanded slap in the face to all your members who think you're trying to HELP animals when in reality you want SPECIES GENOCIDE, I don't know what is.

But I digress, this is about Britney Spears. Seriously, it is. The problem is that PETA seems to want to excuse Britney while still calling her inexcusable. They want to give her leniency by shining a spotlight on her and berating her. It all begins with the "PETA Worst-Dressed-List" - a crock of shit that's basically a list of celebrities who wear fur or perhaps have a clothing line that uses fur, and uppity PETA members vote for which one they'd like to assassinate most. Britney was on their initial list this year and, despite being the front-runner in the first few days of voting, PETA recently decided to remove her from the list. Here's what PETA said about the decision (and watch for all the backhandedness):

Given her recent trip to the psych ward, it's becoming more and more clear that she's not entirely accountable for her actions — and that includes her poor fashion choices just as much as it does her bad parenting decisions.

With that in mind, we've decided to give Britney a bit of a break this year, and take her off the Worst-Dressed-List poll, despite the fact that she had established herself as a strong front-runner in the first two days of voting. Here's what PETA Vice President Dan Mathews had to say about the decision:

"People with l'il kids shouldn't dress like L'il Kim. But at this point, Britney needs a break — from everybody. Maybe when her head is clear, she'll have a change of heart about wearing fur. If not, we'll be back biting at her heels."

So there you have it, but the question is, did we make the right choice in giving Brit a break this year despite her unfortunate penchant for, um, flaunting her fur in public?

Okay, so they want to give her a break - but had to at the same time call her out for wearing fur anyway, insult her parenting, make an offhand remark about the public exposure incident and basically call her insane? That's just plain stupid and backhanded. Especially when you finish up your "let's leave Britney alone" message with a "we will not leave Britney alone" message.

I still can't tell if they seriously want to attempt leaving Britney alone, despite their jackassedly-persistent tendencies of insulting everything that doesn't fit into their collective mindview. Of course, once you remember that their collective mindview is more psychotic and insane than the ramblings of most mental patients - who's really the insane one here, PETA? For once, maybe it's not Britney Spears.

Besides, something tells me that this incident of backhandedly excusing Britney from the Worst-Dressed-List is going to get MORE publicity than the actual results of a PETA Worst-Dressed-List anyway. Which means you really haven't given her a break at all.

But I guess it just holds true that you can't believe a single word coming from an organization that considers "rescue" to take the form of a puppy-killing deathmobile.

(PETA's statement about Britney)
(PetaKillsAnimals.com)


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PETA vs CraigsList

Apparently not satisfied with targets as large as Michael Moore, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears or even the NBA, PETA has decided to take a blind stab at something possibly bigger than all of them combined:

PETA is going after CraigsList.

For those of you unfamiliar to the series of tubes we call "the internets" - CraigsList.com is a huge internet site known for classified ads of all varieties. While it's most popular for personal ads, selling an eBay's worth of items and job offers - we're already aware of the darker side of anything large and internet-based.

The spam, porn site links and scams are one thing. You're pretty much going to encounter those anywhere. Recently, CraigsList has hit big in the media spotlight regarding "erotic services" ads and linking them directly to prostitution rings. But I digress, because PETA doesn't give a damn about PEOPLE being treated ethically, just ANIMALS (and maybe one of these days, they'll realize that human beings are animals as well).

PETA is attacking the website for their allowing of "free to good home" ads for people who wish to give their pets to others.

You know, those "cruel individuals" who'd rather spend the effort to find a new home for their pets instead of tossing them into the street or dumping them at an animal shelter.

PETA is claiming that the practice of giving away pets online should be banned from CraigsList because of one incident of an animal-abuser who admitted that at least one of the three cats he tortured and mutilated was obtained through CraigsList.

While I'm sure that this is NOT an isolated incident and that more than one animal-abuser has probably acquired an animal from CraigsList - I'm willing to venture a safe bet that it's a very small percentage when compared to those who acquire a pet thanks to CraigsList and DON'T wind up torturing or abusing the animal. That's like saying that if ONE serial rapist/killer targeted his potential victims through speed-dating events, we should ban all speed-dating because it enables serial rapists/killers. The logic itself doesn't even make sense.

You know what logic DOES seem probable in this scenario?

PETA just doesn't want you to own pets. PETA would rather kill them.

No, seriously. All of these people who want to give their pet to a good home, for free, obviously do not want their pet or can no longer own their pet. If they're banned from trying to advertise and give away their pet, odds are it will wind up on the streets or in a shelter. And we all know what PETA does to animals on the streets and in shelters.

PETA "rescues" them. By which I mean PETA takes the animals in, and over 90% of them are killed by PETA members.

Heck, they've even admitted to owning puppy-killing deathmobiles! Vans driven by PETA employees who go to shelters, pick up a few puppies and kitties, euthanise them with lethal injections IN THE VAN, and then dump the dead bodies in nearby DUMPSTERS.

Oh, but let's not allow people to give their pets to good homes and avoid the shelters! That would lead to crazy things like happy people with new pets and fewer animals for PETA to kill!

Now that I'm done with my logic-process of PETA preferring to kill animals than have them find good homes, I'll go back to the issue at hand - PETA thinking that CraigsList banning the use of their site to give away pets would mean less ability for animal-abusers to have access to animals. The way I see it, people (generally) CARE about their pets. That's why they put "good home" in their ads - because they don't want their pet to go to a person who might BE an animal-abuser. What's really causing the problem is when people post all of that, but don't really care about who their pet goes to. They don't bother meeting or talking to the person who wants to adopt their pet until the switch is made. The question is: if these non-caring people weren't allowed to post on CraigsList to give away their animal, wouldn't the animal just wind up on the street or in a shelter, where there's both little chance of it finding a good home and just as much chance of it winding up the victim of an animal-abuser? I mean, animal-abusers get their animals from SOMEWHERE - and I'm pretty sure most of them get pets through shelters. Or animals they find on the street.

Which all means that no matter what, animal-abusers are going to find animals. So it makes no sense whatsoever to try and limit one of those possible pathways, especially when it does so much more benefit than potential harm to the animals. I personally have friends who have found pets thanks to CraigsList - and they did so from caring people who interviewed them and talked to them before making the official switch.

So CraigsList - keep up the great work! Keep allowing pet owners to find new homes for their pets and letting them have the ability to choose who gets to adopt them.

And PETA - go find another target for your terrorist organization! Every animal given a good home by CraigsList is another animal that never has to see the inside of a shelter and run the risk of getting picked up by your puppy-killing deathmobile!

(PETA's press release about CraigsList)
(Petakillsanimals.org)







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Cats are on the Menu!

Hah! I come up with a great idea, and thankfully it is being utilized somewhere around the world! As some of you may remember from this earlier post, I suggested that our response to the overpopulation of dogs and cats in this country should be to simply EAT them. After all, animals are made of meat, and if we have too many of an animal, logic would dictate that we eat them to "thin the herds".

It's already happened in China, that the overflowing lake caused an infestation of rats, so their logical response was to catch and eat the rats. Of course, it was more of catching the rats and selling them to restaurants by the kilogram, where they'd then be killed and cooked and served as a delicacy. Nevertheless, a problem of too many animals resulted pleasantly with "eat the animals" as a solution.

So now we come to Australia. Feral cats (descendants of housecats who were left to fend for themselves) have become a huge problem in the outback. The cats are killing off all of the smaller animals in the wild, which apparently is a bad thing for the Australians. Somehow. Anyway, one woman in Alice Springs has decided to take my advice (I don't know if she got the idea from reading my blog, but I assume she did, because I didn't hear about this until after I'd posted my idea, so it must have logically come from my post) and brought forth an entry in a cooking contest which was a wild cat casserole - kind of a stew with marinated feral cat meat.

The Aborigines have been eating them for years, actually - roasting the meat over an open fire - but apparently some of the others have more refined palattes. One of the cooking contest judges reportedly had to spit out the meat in a back room because she found it "impossibly tough".

For any of your gourmets out there, here's a rundown of the recipe:

Wild Cat Casserole

The meat should be diced and fried until it is brown. Then lemon grass is to be added along with salt and pepper and three cups of quandong, which is a sweet desert fruit.

It is recommended that the dish be left to simmer for five hours before being garnished with bush plums and mistletoe berries.

Wow! Sounds like a nice holiday dish! I guess the question that's on all of your minds (or it at least WILL be after I've posed the question now) is, "So what does feral cat taste like, anyway?" Well, the report says: "The meat is said to taste like a cross between rabbit and, perhaps inevitably, chicken." I guess sounds about par for the course, a bit of rabbit for the speed and jumping talents, and chicken because - well, doesn't everything default to chicken on our primitive tastebuds?

Say what you want, PETA - fact is, I CALLED IT! Cats are on the menu, and maybe someday this recipe will travel across the Pacific to our humble nation and our humble palattes.

(Proof that I can't make this stuff up - and that I totally called it!)







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Vick's Dogs Dying Anyway?

Yes, dogfighting is cruel. Yes, Vick and his cronies buying dogs, "training" them and then fighting them to the death is cruelty. You're not going to hear me say otherwise - it's a vicious thing to do and he deserves jail time for his misdeeds.

But at the end of the day - aren't they just going to die anyway?

Welcome to the life of pit bulls - a breed of dogs that has been bred over many years to be an aggressive animal used for guarding and attacking. Just as golden retrievers have been bred to be best at helping the blind get through their day as seeing-eye dogs, and just as border collies have been bred to herd sheep for their owners, and just as chihuahuas have been bred to shake nervously and pee - pit bulls were bred for vicious action.

No, I'm not blaming the dogs for the cruelty they were put through - I'm saying that they're the most likely candidates to fall victim to this bloodsport in the seedy underbelly of society. You're not going to train a poodle to kill in the ring - you'd want a dog that has the look and the potential to be a killing machine. Enter the pit bull. Then enter Michael Vick.

This guy and his friends admittedly purchased a location and owned a kennel specifically for these dogs. They trained them and put them through the wringers to hone in on their killing skills, and that does suck. But when you get right down to it, where do you draw the line between Michael Vick's dastardly ploy that winds up with winners and losers and potential death for any of these pit bulls - and the government's seizing of the pit bulls after locking up Vick and the others, creating a ticking clock for all of these animals to be simply put to death.

That's right - they're all destined to die.

Truth of the matter is, there's nothing anyone can do. They've tried notifying anyone they can of people who left their dogs at the kennel or sold their dogs to Vick and his cohorts. The dogs are sitting in shelters right now. The window to claim them was over a few days ago, 30 days after their initial seizure in late July. They're now currently owned by the federal government, and it's going to be a federal judge's decision that deems whether these animals live or die. Well, I mean live longer than if the judge demands euthanasia. Which is highly likely.

Even PETA - those douchebags who always pray for animal peace and welfare and then perform terrorist acts against businesses to "make a point" - says they're going to die. And PETA should know - over 90% of the animals "rescued" by this organization are killed and their carcasses are thrown into a walk-in freezer until they can be disposed of.

Says Daphna Nachminovitch, a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, "There's no dispute over who owns the dogs. Obviously this is not going to be a process where someone steps forward and says, 'This is my dog, can I have her back, please?' These dogs are a ticking time bomb. Rehabilitating fighting dogs is not in the cards. It's widely accepted that euthanasia is the most humane thing for them."

And that's PETA talking!

The damage has been done. The dogs are now "damaged goods" and nobody's going to be able to take care of them. They're too aggressive (beyond the aggressive nature of the breed in general) to be taken in as pets. It's bad enough to watch a family adopt a pit bull, knowing their violent tendencies, but to adopt one that's already been TRAINED TO KILL? I don't think so.

So they're going to die anyway. Whether they stayed at Bad Newz Kennels and fought to the death as valiantly as possible until the bitter loss of defeat ended their career and life - or were kept in a fenced cell for 30 days until a judge banged a gavel and they were injected with a lethal cocktail and died quickly and without a fight - they will be dying soon.

So what's the lesson in this? Do we regulate the breeding of these animals so there are less of this aggressive breed around to have people train them and fight them in the underground dogfights that simply cannot be stopped? (Let's face it, even the police have no idea how to stop the dogfights from going on because they almost ALWAYS find out AFTER the fights and the damage has been done and nobody is arrested because it's too late to find anyone.) Do we try and up the ante and make the penalties harsher for these crimes that so rarely get caught - just to satiate the public when a rare arrest is actually made? Do we just kill all the members of PETA? (Sorry, that's just for my benefit, so one of these rhetorical questions rings out as "yes" for me.)

Truth is - I have no idea. Which isn't that horrible of a thing. But it's the fact that the government has no idea either. And we still can't even decide if it should BE the government's decision to make. After all, we are the humans and they are the beasts - that gives us the right to own them and eat them, so why not let us fight them? And why not let us eat them, no matter what the beast? When you look at the delicacies of THIS country, let alone those of other countries (rat buffet, anyone?) - don't you get the impression that if it's made of meat, we can eat it?

That's my solution, anyway. I've heard the saying, "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." Well, mine's more of an "Eat 'em all and let the Intestines sort 'em out!" kind of plan.

Bob Barker led an amazing career of telling us to spay or neuter our pets to help control the pet overpopulation problem. I say that it's a lot more humane to kill 'em and grill 'em than it is to chop off their testicles and let 'em STILL wander the streets. We solve the pet overpopulation problem, and we provide meat to the impoverished, at home and overseas. We've already domesticated them and learned to breed them as well - isn't it a matter of time before they join the rest of the domesticated/bred animal kingdom like cows and pigs and sheep?

Now, before you go painting me as Cruella de Ville with a lovely Dalmation coat, it's just an idea. A crazy and seemingly insensitive one, true - but can you really argue that it's worse than rescuing over 50 dogs from a cruel underground dogfighting circuit and telling us that the only thing we can do for these dogs is to KILL THEM? At least in my version, a poor family can have Pit Bull Fajitas or something...

I'm open to hear other ideas - go for it. Tell me how YOU think we should stop what cannot be stopped - and then at the end of the day find something positive to do about it in the end. Because you can't stop the dogfighting. And you can barely attempt to stop the breeding of the dogs themselves. And you can't stop the killing of animals that can't be adopted even though you "rescued" them.

So what do we do? Leave a comment. Let me know YOUR ideas. Together, maybe we can do something...

(The article with the deadline and PETA bitch)
(A website with a friendly reminder that animal cruelty is bad - in case somehow we forget that)







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