This beautiful woodpecker was working her way through her to-do list the other day, holes to drill, bugs to eat, rivals to intimidate — you know, the usual — when BAM! She flew right into a plate glass window at a commercial establishment:
Luckily for her, my sister-in-law, who loves all animals, was there. Upon ascertaining that the woodpecker was alive, SIL picked the bird up to keep her safe from nearby predators while trying to figure out how to save her life. As SIL researched options for injured wild birds, the woodpecker regained consciousness.
The woodpecker was still woozy, though, so SIL stayed with her. The bird eventually found she was strong enough to fly to a nearby tree. After hanging out there for a bit, the woodpecker seemed to recover completely and flew away.
Moral of the story? Be careful out there. And if you crash, have the good sense to do so near a kind-hearted person who will help you.
Open thread!
UPDATE: Valued commenter newdealfarmgrrrll convincingly makes the case that the bird is female rather than male, so I’ve edited the above to reflect that.
Abo gato
Great job, SIL! Beautiful bird.
Baud
Should have titled the post “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Tommy
Kudos to your sister. Kudos big time.
And I just have to say what I assume many will say here, that is one handsome bird.
Germy Shoemangler
That is one handsome woodpecker.
Am I the only one who finds their sound strangely soothing? When I hear that tapping in the distance, I feel endorphins being released. Not sure why.
Made a mental note to ourselves last night not to eat while watching Doc Martin. We were enjoying our shrimp stir fry when the Doc Martin Medical Mystery turned out to be an older gentleman who ate his own hair. He gags and coughs up a hairball (to the Doc’s disgust). Later in the same episode a man loses his finger and sprays blood on the Doc.
We looked at each other and said “No more watching Doc Martin during dinner.”
MattF
Aren’t woodpeckers protected from this sort of thing by the structure of their skulls?
Germy Shoemangler
@MattF: It might have been the unexpected nature of the experience. He’s fine pounding his face against trees because it’s his decision but flying into glass took him by surprise.
I’m still amazed that my cat can do the rapid head shake thing. If I tried it I’d dislocate my neck.
And don’t get me started on animals who can change their color to blend into the background. Our animal friends possess strange superpowers.
Germy Shoemangler
Corgi attempts to convince human baby to play:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6olQ-GGfCJE
What a sweet dog.
MattF
@Germy Shoemangler: Right. Octopus camouflage skills.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: It is soothing to me.
I bought the house I last grew up in from my parents. It was Arbor Day at my school many, many years ago. We were all given a tree (does this still happen?), little sapling to take home and plant. I planted it almost 35 years ago. It is now a massive, massive tree right outside of my home office.
Got a woodpecker that is always there. I will admit I like the rhythm more than the sound, but the sound isn’t bad either :).
Joy in FL
That is a lovely story. I have never been able to look closely at a woodpecker, so the photo was a great bonus.
Eric S.
A handsome bird he is.
Last Sunday Ozzie, the cat and matster of this household, caught a sparrow on the deck and brought his prize into the condo. I didn’t realize what he had – I thought it was one of his inanimate toys – until he let go and it flew into the 2nd bedroom. Once I locked Ozzie in another room the little guy found his own way out.
WereBear
@MattF: Not only that, woodpeckers have a useful cushion for their brain, always kept nearby.
Since I would assume the tongue was not in use during flight, it was acting as a safety device.
JPL
@Germy Shoemangler: My dog ignores videos, but my son’s dog first hid and then got in the play position to attack my computer. lol
Baud
@Germy Shoemangler: Dogs are awesome.
MattF
@WereBear: Yikes. The strangest things are out there every day, just bangin’ their heads against trees.
ETA: And, yes, evolution is responsible for it.
Woodrowfan
One of my favorite XKCD’s.. (about a woodpecker)
https://xkcd.com/614/
Tommy
@Eric S.: Happy the bird got away. My cat is the total master of my household as well. I think at times I live to support her :). I don’t mind that much I should add.
But she doesn’t like to go outside. Well I don’t let her outside. I live in a rural area with about a 10,000 acre field in front of my house. After they harvest the corn and for many weeks after so many birds they almost blackout the sun when they take to flight.
I fear of my cat, Mather was an outdoor cat, she’d bring me birds on almost a daily basis. It is just her nature, wouldn’t be mad at her, but it would still make me sad.
WereBear
Speaking of animal enjoyment, I am having a ridiculous amount of fun with my new PetToGive app.
It’s from the Greater Good people. At odd moments you can pet a kitteh or goggie and accumulate points, which leads to food for shelters.
I pet cats and get purrs. Me like.
A Ghost To Most
@Germy Shoemangler:
Banging on a tree in the distance, nice. Banging on my fireplace flue, as the flickers around here like to do, can be maddening
Shell
Happy ending. Always a relief when you’re dealing with a wild critter.
But I was sure there was gonna be a little bittersweet, like you SIL getting pecked for her trouble before he flew away.
donnah
I’m glad the woodpecker was only stunned and your sis was there to help. My grandmother’s house had a huge plate glass window, and it seemed that cardinals were the most frequent victims.
In an “ain’t life grand?” scenario yesterday, I put down a chunk of cash on an antique car and within three hours of that, our two-year-old washing machine died. Usually I don’t let our major appliances hear about the outlay of big money, but apparently the washer heard me discussing the car and got jealous.
Eric S.
@Tommy: I’m sure Ozzie would like to explore more but his outside access is restricted to my private, 3rd floor deck. The only access is via my kitchen. The sparrow had to have come to him.
Tommy
@WereBear: That looks so COOL but I’d feel like I would be cheating on my pootie :). Since you posted that comment my cat has been on my desk, pushing both my hand off my mouse and the keyboard. Wanting to be petted.
Because it has been like ten minutes since she last got some love from me.
Ten minutes. Call the ASPCA …. pootie abuse!
ShadeTail
@Woodrowfan: That’s a good one, but this one is my all-time favorite.
Tommy
@Eric S.: Doesn’t sound like that smart of a gene pool for that sparrow!
It is my opinion, and I could be wrong, cats don’t need to venture long and far outside. One of the reasons I don’t let my cat out is I live in a rural area. Honestly she isn’t near the top of the food chain. And even a rural area, the road outside of my house is pretty busy.
I’ve seen cats as road kill, I don’t want to see that of mine. It would break my heart at like 100 different levels.
RSA
Our house has an open floor plan, which means that if you look through our front windows you can see all the way through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the back. I keep our front curtains closed most of the time, because otherwise it fools too many birds, and that huge unexpected bang on the glass is a terrible sound.
Fred
About ten years ago our Golden Retriever, Amber was on our enclosed porch when a bird flew in and couldn’t find it’s way back out. It was flying around frantically with Amber’s nose following it’s every swoop. Suddenly Amber snatched the bird out of mid air with just it’s tail feathers sticking out. She stood there with a bewildered look on her face wondering what to do.
I pried the dog’s mouth open (she wasn’t happy about me taking her bird) and carefully extracted the bird. The little thing just sat in my hand with it’s mouth opening and closing.
I figured the poor bird must be broken and dying so I set it out side by the house, where it sat for a long time. Suddenly it jumped up and flew to a nearby tree.
It was a strange thing from start to finish. How the bird reacted to having it’s head down the throat of a dog. Mostly I will never forget how Amber just grabbed that bird out of the air without hurting it.
Tommy
@Fred: About once a month a bird flies into a window in my house. I’d say 75% of the time they find themselves and get up and fly away. It is rare I have to bury one. Birds are pretty resilient.
Betty Cracker
@Fred: She was built for that very purpose! :)
Zinsky
A conservative, happening upon the injured bird, would have stomped his head into the sidewalk, deeming it an unnecessary burden on society. Good on your sister-in-law!
WereBear
@Fred: I once didn’t properly fasten the door to the parakeet’s cage. I came back into the room to find Cyril perched on the leg of a chair, making speeches to about five cats.
My entering the room broke their WTF spell, and within nanoseconds he was in my Maine Coon’s mouth. My horrified reaction paused him, and I asked Bubby to please give me the bird.
And he did. Unharmed.
The cage door got a twist tie after that.
OzarkHillbilly
I rescued a loon from a commercial fishing net once. My lame and mostly inadequate attempts would be a comedy of errors except for the fact that they almost drowned the poor bird. Anyway, I did finally manage to grab him and cut away the net with a knife (I’m sure that was one unhappy fisherman) and took him back to the island. With one hand always holding his head (they have very long sharp pointy beaks) I slowly and carefully untangled him from the net. The whole process took about five minutes and thru out he never once struggled, sitting on the table quite patiently waiting for me to finish. ”
When I was done and the last of the net was cut away, I took my hand off his head and started to step back. In a flash the ungrateful little bastard immediately tried to stab me with that very long sharp pointy beak. I damned near jumped out of my boots avoiding the impalement.
And without even a glance of gratitude towards me, he flopped off the table, then flopped*** across the dock and dove into the water never to be seen again.
***Loons can’t walk on land, their feet set too far back on their bodies.
PurpleGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: Re: Reaction to Doc Martin
LOL. That wouldn’t bother me but then during one breakfast with a boyfriend, who had made pancakes from scratch, the topic of conversation with his roommate was the first time they worked with a certain medical problem. Never bothered me. But I understand how other people feel. (Then too, when touring the NYU Medical School during college, the spare parts room didn’t phase me but I had to leave the anatomy dissection lab.)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Woodrowfan: That is adorable; thank you. There’s a lovely pileated woodpecker who shows up every early spring. And most early springs M. Q and I have the same discussion about whether he’s a pileated; he is, as his size (about that of a crow) demonstrates.
In the late fall we had to have a dead pine taken down because it was shedding limbs quite regularly, some of which landed inconveniently. Including atop a car with <2k miles. This spring when Woody arrived, he was visibly quite put out that his favorite spot was gone. He samples the oaks, but does not enjoy them nearly as much. I miss seeing his as much as in the past.
ArchTeryx
Alot of the ‘stunned bird’ reaction people see is because of shock. Small birds, especially, go into shock at the drop of a hat. If they’re robust and haven’t sustained major injury they usually will come back out of it, none the worse for wear. People in the thread, including the author, are doing exactly the right thing – protect the bird from predators, give it a safe place to recover, and let nature take its course.
A shocky bird is very easy to mistake for dead.
(Apropo of nothing, raptors actually invert this reflex into something called yarak, basically, when they’re really, REALLY pumped up to hunt. With certain birds of prey, if they AREN’T hunted immediately afterward, they can promptly go into shock and die, just as if they’d hit a tree).
Violet
Awww…good for your sister. Poor little woodpecker. I hope it’s really okay for the long term.
I think I mentioned that last year when my mom had to have surgery we were in the hospital and walked from one area to another area so she could do her pre-admittance paperwork. To do that we walked along this hallway that was floor-to-ceiling glass on both sides. Outside, the ground along the glass was littered with dead birds. I guess they were trying to fly through what looked to them to be clear space and hit the glass and BOOM.
It was terrible to see in any case but even worse being a hospital where families are worried about their loved ones or patients are heading into scary surgeries or treatments. It just did not help to see the dead birds along the walkway.
No idea why the hospital didn’t do something–decals on the windows, reflective film, something–and at least clean up the dead birds.
OzarkHillbilly
An animal rescue story from my childhood. My old man was mowing the lawn when a baby rabbit jumped in front of the mower. The old man was unsuccessful in his attempt to avoid it and the poor thing was scalped. My father brought it in to show my mother the scared, quivering, in shock baby bunny with the flap of scalp hanging over it’s eyes (the only apparent injury). My mother promptly sewed it back together and after an hour or so it was acting normal enough and they let it go again.
Who knows if it lived or not, but it certainly hopped away with great energy and purpose.
Catherine D.
I freed a sparrow this morning who had gotten trapped inside the laundromat. Luckily, it was the crack of dawn and no other humans were around, so I just had to prop the door open with a trash can and sit very still.
NotMax
Not quite as stupid as it sounds but when a kid, ran through a plate glass storm door, ending up slumped over the broken pane.
105 stitches.
Frankensteinbeck
Birds are built to survive flight crashes and banging their heads into things. Woodpeckers in particular, of course, but in general a bird that hits a window can be assumed to be unharmed. Protecting it from predators until it recovered from the shock like that was really kind, because they have no defense against that!
Amir Khalid
A few weeks ago I saw a guy try to walk out of a bookstore through the plate-glass window by the entrance. He hit the window so hard I heard it go wibble-wobble.
ETA: The window must have had laminated safety glass, which was lucky for him; a regular glass window could have cut hm very badly.
Betty Cracker
@Tommy:
I wish more people shared that sentiment. Some folks down the road from us feed feral cats, and it’s a huge problem. If I were a cat owner, I’d keep my cats inside to protect them from the almost certainly diseased feral cats, let alone predators, cars, etc.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: My philosophy is the same one I used with my teens:
Yes, cats like to go outside. My teenagers wanted to hit Manhattan with a fistful of cash and fake ID.
I say “no” to all of them.
raven
Her sis is in my backyard. I’ve been stalking a couple of owls but this is the best I’ve gotten so far.
JPL
Rain, rain go away. It’s dreary here. Finch is under a throw on the sofa and Nona is cuddled near me.
@raven: Your pictures are wonderful. There are owls that roost near me but I haven’t been able to find the nest.
Botsplainer
@MattF:
In November in Bonaire, I was doing a 6 am dive and following an octopus which was working the reef in the darkness just before dawn. He was mottling red and beige to match the appearance of the reef according to the wave spectrum of my light.
Phenomenal – I followed his hunting for a full five minutes.
raven
@JPL: These are undergoing “mobbing” from other birds and the racket helps me find them.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Lately the barred owls have had to compete with the whippoorwills for the main musical stage in my hollows. I have a couple of red bellies that regularly visit my suet feeders. Always fun to see them. Nice pic, good luck with the other.
newdealfarmgrrrlll
yay! A rare chance to be a know-it-all … “HER,” folks, not “him.” That is a female red-bellied woodpecker (yep, poor name, the red on the belly is just a faint blush that is not very visible), the red on females is on the nape of the neck, on males the beautiful scarlet red continues up over the crown all the way to the beak.
And YAY WELL DONE for letting her recover safely. I love red-bellied woodpeckers and enjoy hearing their “kwirrrr! kwirrrr!” As they move around the neighborhood.
Betty Cracker
@newdealfarmgrrrlll: Thank you!
Amir Khalid
Liverpool are going out of their last FA Cup with Stevie Gerrard as captain. Pout.
PlanetPundit (used to be Sir Laffs-a-Lot)
The Doggy pix were great John; thx and yes that is a handsome pecker,Betty!
Mike E
We had a dead sapsucker at our building, so the survival hinges on the impact…I’d imagine it’s a case of “the punch you don’t see” when they encounter glass.
The local Audubon does a pretty regular dead bird survey of the downtown area.
NotMax
The vagaries of English:
Woodpecker is a perfectly acceptable word in polite company, whereas peckerwood isn’t.
adepsis
Al Giordano on the 2016 race –
Germy Shoemangler
Good to know Social Security survivor benefits were of help to Lindsey Graham’s family:
Fox News host Chris Wallace told Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday that he wished that he could put him on the “psychiatrist couch” to find out why the 59-year-old bachelor had never been married.
Last week, a Washington Post profile of the South Carolina Republican noted that Graham had helped raise his sister after his parents died while he was in college.
“Some of your friends suggested that might be the reason you never got married,” Wallace observed during an interview on Fox News Sunday. “We can’t put you on the psychiatrist couch. But those traumatic events, how did they shape your life?”
“It made me realize that the promise of tomorrow is just a promise,” Graham explained. “It taught me how much I was loved by the rest of my family. My aunt and uncle helped me raise my sister. Social Security survivor benefits coming into my family made a world of difference.”
“I understand we’re all one car wreck away from needing help, but what it told Lindsey Graham above all else is that family, friends and faith really do matter,” he continued. “And I’m a lucky man to have all the support I’ve had all these years.”
Graham, who said that there was a “91 percent” chance that he was running for president, insisted that he was trying his “best to pay back a country who has been so good to me.”
Germy Shoemangler
@NotMax: The vagaries of English:
Woodpecker is a perfectly acceptable word in polite company, whereas peckerwood isn’t.
Reminds me of the old George Carlin line about what is acceptable language on tv: “You can prick your finger but you can’t finger your prick.”
Ripley
Good on your sis-in-law for being humane and involved.
I end up with unconscious woodpeckers (ladder-backed variety) on my back porch at least three times a year, from them flying headlong into the sliding glass door, which I’ve done my best to obscure so they don’t think it’s a pass-through. They seem to be a bit less visually sophisticated than my other common yard birds (robins, mockingbirds, red-winged blackbirds, dog-sized great horned owls, etc.).
Most of them come around eventually, after I move them out of harm’s way and nurture them a bit. Some don’t make it – they break their necks of backs if they’re going very fast, which usually means when a male is chasing a female during breeding season. They’re a horny lot.
opiejeanne
We have two types of woodpeckers on our property, pileated and sapsucker. The little sapsuckers are not terribly afraid of us and allowed me to photograph them drilling holes in my birches.
One of them died last fall by crashing into our bathroom window and we realized that the reflection of the line of birches may have caused the problem, so we have stuck window gels* on the outside of the window to break up the reflection of the trees.
* slightly sticky seasonal designs. I need to take down Christmas and put up some of flowers, if I can find some.
opiejeanne
@Germy Shoemangler: The sound of woodpeckers is amusing even when they drum on the metal traffic signs, but not as much when they drum on the roof at dawn.
Ruckus
@PurpleGirl:
In premed I got shown through the USC anatomy dissection lab with a group of other students. There were 3 distinct reactions. Revulsion, not so much and wow, can I stick my hands in and see whats what? Hard to tell which was the biggest group, revulsion or not so much. The, can I stick my ungloved hands in and see whats what person got a pretty quick smack down from the presenter, whose dissection we were looking at.
Mike E
@opiejeanne: Pileateds are magnificent jackhammers.
opiejeanne
@Mike E: I think our dead sapsucker broke its neck when it hit the window, but I’m not sure.
Big ole hound
@Tommy: I did the same on an Arbor day in the 50s. Going back to visit that spot and seeing that huge Sugar Maple always makes my chest swell to know when I go I will have left a good mark on this world.
Betty Cracker
@adepsis: Giordano was a voice of calm and sanity for us early Obama supporters back in the ’08 campaign.
Tommy
@adepsis: My mother learned a long time ago if she had a question about politics asking me was the fastest way to learn something.
A few weeks ago mom asked me who Martin O’Malley was? Said CNN had talked about him more than a little. I explained in detail to her who he was. Said it was my opinion if anybody can mount an offensive against Hillary, it will be him.
But also said I had read a few long profiles on the guy. Best I can tell from them the dude is a total policy wonk. I find it sexy the guy gets into the details of a bill.
Not sure the public as a whole will feel the same way.
opiejeanne
@Mike E: And very shy here. We hear them and sometimes glimpse them as they fly from tree to tree.
I have used the recordings of their calls to “prank call” them on my iPhone, and they will answer. Sometimes they get curious and fly over us in the garden, but mostly they stay where there are lots of trees, across the street.
Germy Shoemangler
@Betty Cracker: Some folks down the road from us feed feral cats, and it’s a huge problem. If I were a cat owner, I’d keep my cats inside to protect them from the almost certainly diseased feral cats, let alone predators, cars, etc.
Our cat is strictly an indoor girl. We’d be terrified if we knew she was wandering outside. When I was a kid, I was walking to school one morning and came upon a cat lying in the gutter, his head jammed into a tin can. He wasn’t even struggling; probably exhausted from being there all night. I gently removed the can, and he shuddered and staggered away. That memory stuck with me my whole life.
The predators, the diseased animals, the cars that DON’T brake for animals are all a threat. The Cat Haters are a big problem, as well.
She’s curled up by the window right now in a patch of sun. She’s got her toys and the run of the house. She ain’t going outside.
And what’s the deal with the lady vet who shot an arrow through a cat’s head and was all proud about it (even after she was fired for it)? She’s reason enough not to let my cat wander. A psychopath.
Tommy
@Big ole hound: I recall after planting it, mowing the lawn and always being careful not to mow it over when it wasn’t even as tall as my knee.
The tree towers over my two story house. Now every time I look at it, which is many times a day, I think to myself “yeah I planted that. I did a little good for the world, that tree will be here many years after I am no longer.”
gogol's wife
@Germy Shoemangler:
I can’t watch Doc Martin (or Call the Midwife) at all for this very reason. People keep recommending them to me, and I’m sure they’re very well done, but I can’t stomach graphic medical scenes.
opiejeanne
@Germy Shoemangler: I didn’t hear about the cat being shot with an arrow, which is terrible.
We can’t let our cat out here because of predators, and it kills us because we’d love to have her in the garden with us when we’re digging out there. Too many coyotes and bald eagles, and several other critters. The coyotes have gotten so complacent here that they trot down the middle of the road in the middle of the day.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: What kind of tree is it? I can’t remember if you mentioned above.
srv
Courtesy bombing works.
Origuy
A friend of mine is a vet in the northern Sierra Nevada. He posted on Facebook some pictures of a baby hummingbird that apparently got in a house. He was able to release it safely.
opiejeanne
@Germy Shoemangler: Our previous cat, named Tommy, was a Maine Coon but a bit small for that breed at 15 pounds. They get about twice that size, so we think he might have been a mix but everything about him said Maine Coon.
He slipped out one spring evening and we never saw him again; he was about 14. He had been in the garden with us and he always stayed nearby, but was never allowed out at night. We had had him for 12 of those years, he was a Lost Kitty when he showed up on our doorstep.
During one of his vet’s visits when he was about 10 he needed an x-ray and they found a small bullet or a large bb of some sort lodged in his side so someone had shot him, probably before he found us. The vet was adamant that we keep him inside forever after that, but he wasn’t having it. He was very adept at making us toss him outside when he wanted out before we moved here. Tough guy.
Betty Cracker
@Germy Shoemangler: Yeah, I suspect she’s a psycho too. It’s a good thing she’ll be forced to explore other career options now. She has no business working with animals.
ixnay
A wonderful bird person up here in Maine referred to the “paper bag cure.” Put the stunned bird in a brown paper bag and roll down the top. Once the victim is thrashing around, it (1) probably has not injured itself further and (2) is ready to fly away.
Amir Khalid
@srv:
African people have been crossing the Mediterranean to migrate to Europe for centuries. In recent decades, a lot of the movement has been economic migration i.e. people seeking better prospects. It’s really got nothing to do with American bombing.
ruemara
Since it’s an open thread, I went to a big event yesterday. And snapped a lot of hoverdog shots. Lots of hoverdog, including this stylish poodle. Plus this very tired japanese quail that just broke out of it’s egg.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: Vet as in veterinarian??? I thought he meant veteran. Geez.
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: When we were in Italy last fall we were told that there were a lot of Middle Eastern immigrants showing up, in part due to events in Syria was their take on it.
ruemara
@Betty Cracker: I have been surprised by the high levels of personality disorder in the profession.
Betty Cracker
@opiejeanne: Yeah, a veterinarian who shot a cat with a crossbow and posted a brag about it on Facebook. She claims it was a feral, but apparently it was someone’s pet. Here’s a link to the story. Warning — graphic photo at the linked article.
Amir Khalid
@opiejeanne:
Yes, she’s a veterinarian, and it’s been reported that the cat she shot through the head was likely not a feral but a lost pet.
Tommy
@opiejeanne: Maple.
Germy Shoemangler
@opiejeanne: I made the mistake of seeing her facebook photo. She holds up the poor dead cat with the arrow through its head. She grins like she’s so proud of herself holding her trophy.
She describes herself as “awesome” and I hope she is never allowed near any cat again.
jeffreyw
Saw our first hummingbird today! Yay! This one is from a while back, she got into the house through an open window and we were able to catch her. She flew away just as the shutter clicked. From a sitting start to gone, in a blink.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Germy Shoemangler: I’m still in shock over that. How can anyone – let alone a vet – “hunt” down a cat, shoot him with a bow-and-arrow, and then proudly display it on Facebook? And her proud mother took the picture of her proud daughter.
srv
@Amir Khalid: No one could have foreseen.
You should do more Condi impersonations.
Germy Shoemangler
Hummingbirds love bee balm.. We started with a few seeds, they started re-seeding themselves, and in a few year we had a ton of spreading bee balm. The hummingbirds are all over it.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Betty Cracker:
In general, I understand people’s qualms about internet storms depriving people of their careers, but this is one case where I can wholeheartedly say that woman should never be allowed to work as a vet again, ever.
Omnes Omnibus
@srv: Yeah, a few bombing missions did it, not the underlying crisis in the country. Try to step up your game, would you?
Germy Shoemangler
@PurpleGirl: My wife studied medical illustration in college and took part in dissections. She has a clear memory of a professor with a cigarette in his mouth showing the class a cadaver that had succumbed to lung cancer. The cigarette ashes were falling onto the body.
This was back when people smoked EVERYWHERE and nobody gave it a second thought.
I remember sitting in movie theater balconies smoking and seeing the smoke curl upward, illuminated by the projector light.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: I don’t let my cat out for all the reasons you listed. I feel a little guilty about it, but I just know she is spoiled beyond words so she has that going for her even if I don’t let her outside.
Heck I was watching Shark Tank a few months ago. A guy had this idea to send people that live in a large metro area or an apartment, well a patch of grass for their pets.
I have a 10,000 acre field directly across from my house. More grass then you can shake a stick at and I freaking order grass in the mail :).
As you might expect, Mather could have cared less. I don’t think she spent 5 seconds with it. I thought to myself, couldn’t you just act like you like it for a few seconds. Make me feel good about myself. Nope.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
Nowadays you see the screens of smartphones and tablets, as bright as goddamn flashlights.
WereBear
@ruemara: Basically, we have a huge percentage of outright dysfunctional people walking around, and a large part of it is how society just lets it go by.
And I guess we got that way because… what are we doing to do about them? Where will we put them? Why aren’t they seeking help with their problems in the first place?
Anyone who works with the public… had more than five bosses… had a few jobs with small business owners… knows exactly what I mean. Tantrums, irrationality, domestic abuse, a secret life that would gag a vulture. I’ve seen it all.
We shouldn’t put up with it.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Yep. The GLEE with which she killed the cat and displayed it on Facebook is just…sick. I wouldn’t want someone like her within a hundred miles of any pet of mine.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: I am stunned by what others have said, she is a flipping vet. I love my vet because I know she is a lover of animals. I often think she’ll need a larger office soon because of all the dogs and cats she has living there. She has rescued.
The love she shows my cat when I bring her in, you know just saying hello, makes me feel secure she is in good hands!
Germy Shoemangler
@Amir Khalid: And occasionally an usher will walk up and down the aisles and shine a flashlight in MY face, the one person in the theater WITHOUT a cell phone shining.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: Thanks but I won/t’ click that. The description of the deed is enough to make me furious and upset, don’t need a photo.
opiejeanne
@phoebes-in-santa fe: A family of psychopaths.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: Reason number 997 of why I’ve not been to the movies in a theater once in the last decade. I can handle living my movie life 8 or so months behind and getting the DVD or streaming it online.
Now with Google Play on my Roku I can often rent a new release for $3.99. Unlimited usage for 48 hours. In the world I live in that is a pretty good deal!
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: You have a more more than 15 square mile field across the street from you?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@opiejeanne:
Most of the news stories have been polite enough to put “warning: graphic photo” as part of the headline — some of them even put the photo at the bottom of the story so you can get the facts without have to look at the picture. I wish they had been as polite when that motorist was murdered by the cop in South Carolona.
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: As far as the eye can see. I’d think maybe larger if you count all of the land as it wraps to the left of me. The fields go all the way to the horizon.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Oh hell no. I understand hunting — I’m surrounded by people who eat that deer and turkey. And they likewise pride themselves on being professional.
But this woman hunted down someone’s pet. And even if it wasn’t, it could easily have been. Then she posts that photo on Facebook for the whole world to see.
It is, at the very least, a shocking lack of self-awareness of the parameters of her chosen profession. Like seeing your surgeon walk into the operating room covered in mud and horse manure.
bemused
The vet who killed the cat with an arrow is horrifying. It makes me wonder what other sick things she has done to animals.
My husband and I tag team window washing. I cannot convince him to stop using ammonia. I hate the smell and think vinegar, a squirt of Dawn and hot water works better. I don’t buy ammonia so he just ran to buy get some.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne (tablet): yes, although I would say that the worst part of the South Carolina video is that it seemed unreal. I watched it, not knowing at first what I was seeing, and when it was replayed on the news so many times it seemed… unreal. More like a reenactment than a real event, if that makes sense.
Tommy
@WereBear: That is not hunting, that is killing. I have a lot of friends and family members that hunt. Almost a way of life for them.
I have zero problems with this because at the top I like wild game. It has to come from somewhere. Second, they actually hunt. They don’t game the system. They don’t do anything illegal. Heck far more than half of the time a day is spent and nothing is bagged.
Let me say this again, she didn’t hunt that cat. She killed/murdered it. I sure hope the police went and had a long, long talk with her because something is fucked up in her head. Really fucked up.
Renie
@Germy Shoemangler: There’s a petition out there to get her license revoked.
Link
Tommy
@Renie: Wait, stop the bus. She still has a vet license? How is that possible? I’d think killing the animals you are supposed to help would kind of be against the rules.
Omnes Omnibus
@Renie: Jesus, that link had the picture. I really had no interest in seeing that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: A professional license is considered valuable property and, as a result, it cannot be taken away without due process.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: I love maples and I love that you still have the land that that tree is planted on.
My dad and his brother planted a Christmas tree when they were kids in the 30s, a cut Christmas tree, and managed to get it to grow. That tree occupies a huge part of my childhood memories; there was a large “room” created around the trunk by the removal of the lower branches and the mature shrubbery growing up around the outside of it. We had a kid-sized table and chairs that had been Dad’s when he was little, and we hauled it out there to play, and my grandpa dug out an old army cot and set it up under that tree. We could spy on people walking past, listen to their conversations and they never knew we were there. We lived next door to my grandparents, so that room started at the edge of our front yard, behind the Philadelphus (mock orange) and extended halfway across my grandparents’ yard. The neighborhood kids all played under that tree in the summer because no one had AC and Southern California can get pretty hot.
Cervantes
@Tommy:
Maybe the recruiters did.
opiejeanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I take it this is a fairly recent event. In some states the owner of said cat has the right to sue for destruction of property, which might not go anywhere if the cat was out of its own yard (which I assume it was).
I don’t want to read the article but I hope that the Humane Society is pushing the cruelty to animals angle so that the cops and DA will do something about her. People who do terrible things to humans seem to start out by doing terrible things to animals. I think she needs watching.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m sure there will be a hearing by the state board, but it’s hard for me to imagine a circumstance where they let her keep her license to practice. It seems like almost the definition of professional misconduct in one photograph.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
A professional body can’t just summarily revoke a practitioner’s licence, it has to go through a process. Someone files a complaint, the professional body decides if it has merit, the practitioner gets lawyered up (and often the complainant does too), the lawyers do discovery, a hearing is organised, the evidence is heard, and then a verdict is reached and announced. All this is not done in a day.
Omnes Omnibus
@opiejeanne:
I don’t disagree. But I also doubt that she will lose her license. I wouldn’t surprised if she loses her patients though.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@opiejeanne:
The story has actually made international news at this point — it’s a really big story in Germany. But being able to prosecute her depends on the local anti-cruelty laws. If she’s never allowed near animals again, that may have to be enough.
Tommy
@opiejeanne: That is a wonderful story. My memories of trees is climbing in them. Oh I loved to climb.
My family seems to like trees. My grandfather had a little A-frame outside of town. Not long before he passed away he planted a few Cherry Blossoms. After he passed we dug them up, put them on a truck, drove them across the state, and both of them are in my backyard. They are in full bloom as we speak.
The people that live directly around me often comment how much they love them. Heck the lady behind me says when they are in full bloom she often comes outside just to look (and smell) them.
That warms my heart on many, many levels!
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
She’s already been fired by the practice where she was working. If she does get successfully prosecuted for animal cruelty, that may be enough for Texas to pull her license.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Maybe she can be an animal welfare expert on fox news.
opiejeanne
@Cervantes Darkly humorous… or maybe just dark. :
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Some form of sanction could come down, but, if this is a single incident, I doubt that she will have her license revoked.
Germy Shoemangler
In New York we have Buster’s Law:
Buster’s Law, which was passed in 1999, made animal cruelty in New York State a felony. The law was named after a cat that was doused in kerosene and lit on fire in 1997. Now Senator Ball has passed a bill in the Senate to take “Buster’s Law” even further and create an animal abuse registry.
The animal abusers registry will contain the names and addresses of persons convicted of violating Buster’s Law in New York State. By maintaining the registry with current information and providing easy accessibility to the public, those involved in the sale or adoption of animals can refer to the registry before allowing an individual to take ownership of an animal.
“Buster’s Law was a landmark bill for our furry little friends. This animal abuse registry will prevent repeat animal abuse offenders,” said Senator Greg Ball. “Persons who commit crimes against animals represent some of the worst kind of people, and often expand their carnage to their neighbors and the larger community. Most people can agree that the level of respect and kindness shown for animals, creatures who cannot speak for themselves, or protect themselves and are easily abused and taken advantage of, is a fine predictor of how a person will treat their peers. Violent and cruel behavior towards animals, cannot and should not be tolerated.”
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Where did this take place? Never mind, I just saw Texas.
We had something similar in SoCal about 15 years ago and the guy got caught because he bragged.
WereBear
@Renie: And that petition is very popular.
Fact is, no matter who you are, shooting a cat is the wrong thing to do.
But for a veterinarian to do it is just mind-boggling.
And I see stuff on my news feed that is only a little less inflammatory. I do blame the people who whip up anger and indignation against “feral” cats for killing songbirds (when it’s pesticides and habitat destruction that does it) and promote the attitude that they are “fair game.”
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
I wonder if her vet’s licence would still be useful to her. I can imagine Ms Lindsey at an interview for her next job as a vet: the interviewer shows her that photo and asks: “Is this you?”
Germy Shoemangler
@WereBear: Cats have always been a target. For centuries. There are some people that just hate and fear them. And are self-righteous about harming them because “they hurt birds”.
I had an idiot co-worker who was vocal in his hatred of cats. Said they were cruel; that they tortured mice, etc.
It’s even acceptable (in some circles) to joke about killing cats. If you said the same thing about a dog, you’d get punched in the nose.
It’s amazing the amount of love they give us, considering the history of hatred and violence they’ve endured.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: I am sure that her job prospects in her profession are (deservedly) diminished.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: Or if she did get the job… how long before her clients put her name in a search engine?
Cervantes
@bemused:
ATSDR’s “Toxicological Profile for Ammonia” may yet save your marriage.
WereBear
@Germy Shoemangler: So true. I blame the medieval Catholic church for much of it.
In Egypt they were demi-gods.
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: Maybe she can get a job driving a schoolbus until this all blows over in a few years.
I am being snarky. We have an ex-judge, known as the “skirt judge” in Washington state for insisting that female lawyers wear skirts in her courtroom, who was disinvited to continue her work by the voters soon after that incident. She has recently been driving a school bus and slapped an autistic boy, and it’s on video, and it’s pretty bad.
Do I need to add that she is a RW loon? She’s currently a city councilperson, and she has decided not to run again, and is considering stepping down.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: 12 years ago I was at a Super Bowl party. I see next door kids throwing these kittens into a kiddy pool. Laughing as they fought to live. Those two cats came home with me. One passed away I am sad to say, the other is a few feet away.
So when I hear something like this it becomes somewhat personal. I just don’t know how you do something like this to an animal. It took me months and months of work to where I could even touch them. More months for them to trust me.
They eventually did. Now my “little girl” is about the best cat anybody could hope for. When my parents come to visit I often think they are more interested in see her than me. I can live with that :)!
Germy Shoemangler
@WereBear: So true. I blame the medieval Catholic church for much of it. In Egypt they were demi-gods.
I believe there is a connection there. Cats were associated with witches and demons because of their hated Egyptian connection.
@Tommy: And there is the double standard. Those boys wouldn’t do that to puppies. But kittens? Sure! “Boys will be boys”
I look at my cat languidly sunning herself and I tell her “You don’t know how damn lucky you are!” We rescued her from a kill shelter. Previous person dumped her.
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, for small animals, yes, one would hope. But, TX/rural (at least of one the supporters interviewed pulled that line), and there’s still probably opportunities for large animal work, especially the end of the occupation that is organized around keeping those animals destined for slaughter propped up and plump.
opiejeanne
@WereBear: In reference to your last sentence, they have not forgotten this.
Amir Khalid
@opiejeanne:
I take it her career in public transportation has suffered the same fate as her judicial career.
Germy Shoemangler
@WereBear: In Egypt they were demi-gods.
If I live to old age and make it to hospice, when they come around and ask me about religion or last rites, I’ll tell them all my faith is in Ceiling Cat above.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: Yeah there is that. My parents were NEVER cat lovers. Then, as I just said in another comment, I got two cats. They fell in love with them almost overnight.
I think they had this stereotype that cats were reclusive. Loners. Not friendly.
My cat is the exact opposite. She craves attention. Even if she is asleep it is rare she is any more than a few feet from me. When my parents come over it takes her a few hours to warm up. But when she does they often mention she is a handful.
Following them around. Often head butting them, which I explain to my parents means she wants to be picked up and petted.
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: Yes. Forgot to mention that she was fired.
The kid wasn’t one of her regular riders but the bus service was short-staffed that day so they stuck two or three Special Needs students on the bus just to get them home. This kid was having a hard time coping with the change, started shouting, and the monitor on the bus told the driver to stop and come help her calm him down. Slapping him had the opposite effect, as you can guess. He curled up in a fetal position under one of the benches. The cops brought the kid home. I think he’s 12. His mother is furious that the school didn’t call her to come pick him up, furious about the slap, and it was a really hard slap in his face, and there is worry that some ground has been lost in his treatment/education. .
WereBear
@opiejeanne: And I would not either :)
opiejeanne
@Tommy: Head-butting is also a claim on the person on the receiving end. Marking them.
My husband doesn’t like cats. Hahahaha! Biggest lie he’s ever told in his life, but really he just didn’t know that he liked cats until he had one. All of our cats have adored him and it was mutual.
Tommy
@opiejeanne: That is just messed up.
But makes me think, the new TV show this year I am hooked on is actually called “The Slap.” Hard show to watch at times.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Yes it’s a problem that she keeps living outside the lines of “polite” society but the underlying problem is that she will probably always find someone else to blame for her actions. Those women lawyers were out of control, wearing pants, the horror. That child just needed a little discipline, which he was obviously not getting at home………
That’s a real conservative problem, always wanting everyone else to conform to some level of human behavior that they themselves can not and do not do.
Amir Khalid
@opiejeanne:
I just thought of something. Why was the ex-judge driving a schoolbus? If she’s a lawyer herself, couldn’t she have joined a firm or gone into private practice?
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: and there are people saying the slap is no big deal and they’d vote for her again. It’s a red area of this blue state.
Most areas along the West Coast are red if they are East of the I-5.
bemused
@Cervantes:
He’s positive ammonia and water cleans the windows better. I have disagreed and told him that ammonia is really nasty stuff but there are rare times when this most reasonable guy thinks I’m goofy. He did listen when I came into a room and found him cleaning a puppy pee spot on an area rug with ammonia and I gasped. Other than the toxicity, that’s the last thing you want to clean up pet urine with if you want to keep pets from peeing in the same area again. His parents used all kinds of scary stuff to clean with that horrified me too.
WereBear
@bemused: My mother was treated with home remedies that make me shudder now. Crazed stuff.
But vinegar is the ticket for pet cleanup!
Ammonia is like bleach. It’s a big gun and it’s only for big jobs. And I like organic and “homemade” solutions for cleaning myself.
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: That question is being discussed, but she’s in Des Moines, WA. Just under 30,000 people so not a lot of firms there. She’d have to move into Seattle to find work as a lawyer, and she was a Superior Court judge back in 1999.
And I was wrong about the kid’s age: he was only 6. I’ve seen adults hit with less force in a fight.
Tommy
@opiejeanne: As a kid I was padded a lot. My brother, nine years younger, never. My parents came to me later in my life when I was an adult and begged me to forgive them for what they did. Said they were just doing what their parents did and their parents before them.
But it was wrong, wrong, wrong.
That nobody, especially a parent, should place their hands on a child.
I don’t know what that lady did, but if she slapped my niece there might be a few males in my family going to her house to have a conversation. I am not saying any violence. Not how we roll. But a very, very strongly worded conversation.
Mike J
@opiejeanne:
That’s 20 minutes from Seattle, or double that during rush. That’s not a horrible commute.
WereBear
@Germy Shoemangler: LOL! And you will be treated so well after transition :)
bemused
@WereBear:
Agree on using ammonia rarely and should have windows open when you do. He didn’t realize that urine is ammonia too and vinegar does the opposite. Not surprising considering the weird concoctions his parents used. That’s what he grew up with.
Long ago our two dogs at the time stayed with his parents once in awhile when we had to go out of town. One dog had a licking issue with a spot on her foreleg which had been checked out by our vet and treatment but she would periodically go at it again. She may have been a little anxious not being home. My in-laws also had all kinds of homemade health remedies and my fil decided to put pine tar on her licking spot. It may not have done any harm but I told him never, ever do that again.
opiejeanne
@Mike J: Yeah, I had to look it up and noticed that. I thought it was farther away and to the east of where it is.
Being known as the “skirt judge” might be the reason she isn’t working for a big firm.
Tommy
@bemused: I am somewhat OCD and also a clean freak. I used to use all these terrible chemicals in my house. I’ve found something funny, hot water and a little elbow grease, maybe some soap as you mentioned, is all that is needed. I’ve found for harder jobs, a mixture of water and vinegar works well. And a whole lot cheaper than the commercial cleaners.
Tenar Darell
@Betty Cracker
Each time I look at your SIL’s woodpecker photo, I go “Wow. That is an amazing picture.”
bemused
@Tommy:
Microfiber cleaning cloths are great for rubbing out any spot or streak left on windows and mirrors. Love them.
opiejeanne
@bemused: I thought I saw where this story was headed but pine tar is not what I was expecting. I’m relieved that it wasn’t something far worse.
opiejeanne
@bemused: We bought a large package of them a couple of years ago and use them for all sorts of things.
Tommy
@opiejeanne: I could care less how she is as a lawyer. She shot a cat in the head with a bow. Isn’t it thought that abuse of animals is often a prerequisite to harming humans.
Then you have her hitting a child ….
If alarm bells are not going off that this lady is a ticking time bomb I don’t know. I hate we often hear when somebody goes out and starts killing people we didn’t see it coming.
Seems to me we should have seen this one coming from a few miles away!
Calouste
And of course totally unsurprisingly, the cat-murdering vet professes her love of God on her personal blog, according to the Daily Mail.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
How many Seattle lawyers might she have had in her courtroom? I wonder if many of them just wouldn’t want her working in their firms. That could cut back her available options as a lawyer quite a bit. It may be a biggish town but I’d bet the law profession isn’t that large a group that her name might have gotten around.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: The ex-judge/busdriver slapped the kid. The vet shot the cat.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
Ahem … You seem a bit confused. The vet in Texas who shot an arrow though a cat’s head and the ex-judge in Washington state whom opiejeanne is talking about are two different women.
cosima
My husband whines about the woodpecker that seems to start up at about 6am every morning. I love it.
Since it’s an open thread I’ll share this weirdness — last night I had a dream that I found some strays in a field and brought them to John Cole. He came to the door in his robe, but was quite happy to take them. I’m not sure how I accomplished that, given that we’re thousands of miles away in the UK, but there you go, dreams are strange.
Maybe we’ve been watching too much Simpsons around here (youngest has just discovered its charms), but John Cole had a remarkable resemblance to Homer Simpson. In a white bathrobe.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy:
Two different people.
Tommy
@bemused: Oh I am with you. Use them both on my windows but also my monitors, phone, and tablet.
I just bought a ton of cleaning pads a few weeks ago. Bought like 4-5 kinds to see what worked the best. My experience is the bamboo one is by far the best. I had no clue they even made stuff like this, but in Menards they had an entire section of them.
Mike J
@opiejeanne:
The job of lawyers at big law firms is bringing in clients. Practicing law is down the list a bit. People who are universally hated make bad sales people.
JPL
@Calouste: Well let me tell, that cat is giving god quite an earful, about the vet.
bemused
@opiejeanne:
Yes, it could have been something much, much worse knowing his parents, lol! They grew in in the Depression era and everyone then made do with what they had on hand and repaired everything in all types of inventive and unusual ways. We could write on book on his dad’s fixit jobs. He was still using an old axe when he died at 93 that he had rigged up with a wood handle he had fashioned to replace handle that broke. His rigged handle didn’t look very safe either but they threw nothing away.
Tommy
@opiejeanne: @Omnes Omnibus: @Amir Khalid:
Whoops my bad. What I get from kind of lurking in each story because, well I didn’t want to think about it that much.
bemused
@Tommy:
Good to know about the bamboo cloths.
WereBear
@bemused: Hey, back then it was both necessary and possible to do.
Now they make coffee makers that last six months, don’t have parts you can obtain, and can’t be opened to be repaired anyway. Unless you are a Tesla of Tinkerers, it has no conceivable use any more.
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: Superior Court judge for King County, probably quite a few of them during her term. There were other complaints about her and a fairly large number of attorneys opted out of her courtroom according to the article below,
Not a lot of info online about her before 1999, she was a state legislator in the 80s, but there’s some more recent stuff here:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2002-08-28/news/judging-jeanette/
bemused
@opiejeanne:
I just gently told my husband about those cloths I have and how great they are on the glass shower doors and mirrors, really rub out any minor streaks or residue from cleaning solution.
Mike J
@WereBear: A tweet I read: “Son, I want you to have this watch. The firmware is outdated, the OS is slow and it only runs Yelp, but it’s been in our family for 3 years.”
SWMBO
@Tommy: There was the cleaning ladies on tv (saw it at my daughter’s house years ago) that used lemons on just about everything. Including grease.
I posted on the gardening thread about your seeds and books.
gogol's wife
I wish I’d never heard of this vet.
Germy Shoemangler
@bemused: A friend from the UK told me they use vinegar and old newspapers for cleaning glass mirrors and windows.
I tried it and was pleased with the results.
Aleta
@opiejeanne:
Would be nice if convicted animal abusers could be subject to a restraining-type order that prevented them from all jobs involving animals (at the least). That would take care of the vet license on its own. Personally I would like to prevent them from hunting licenses and buying weapons as well. And a way to prevent adoption. And … a hotline to report anonymously if someone observes a stalker or abuser in their neighborhood.
Germy Shoemangler
PBS is showing “The Secret Life Of Elephants” right now. Our cat is watching the tv intently.
srv
Real Americans with Real Ideas.
Germy Shoemangler
@Aleta: I posted above about Buster’s Law:
Buster’s Law, which was passed in 1999, made animal cruelty in New York State a felony. The law was named after a cat that was doused in kerosene and lit on fire in 1997. Now Senator Ball has passed a bill in the Senate to take “Buster’s Law” even further and create an animal abuse registry.
The animal abusers registry will contain the names and addresses of persons convicted of violating Buster’s Law in New York State. By maintaining the registry with current information and providing easy accessibility to the public, those involved in the sale or adoption of animals can refer to the registry before allowing an individual to take ownership of an animal.
“Buster’s Law was a landmark bill for our furry little friends. This animal abuse registry will prevent repeat animal abuse offenders,” said Senator Greg Ball. “Persons who commit crimes against animals represent some of the worst kind of people, and often expand their carnage to their neighbors and the larger community. Most people can agree that the level of respect and kindness shown for animals, creatures who cannot speak for themselves, or protect themselves and are easily abused and taken advantage of, is a fine predictor of how a person will treat their peers. Violent and cruel behavior towards animals, cannot and should not be tolerated.”
Tommy
@WereBear: I feel like I am getting old and I might someday soon yell to kids “get off my lawn.” I have things in my house my parents gave me, sometimes things their parents bought.
Clearly things are not made the way they used to be in most cases. My grandfather worked 40+ years at Snap-on. I have some of their tools. They will last my lifetime and then some. I buy newer tools and they can’t seem to last a decade.
I am nothing close to a conspiracy theory guy, but in the IT world there is a thinking products are designed and made to fail on purpose, so you have to buy more. Thinking that might be happening a lot more than we realize.
Germy Shoemangler
@Tommy: You’re not paranoid. Planned obsolescence is a real thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
srv
Americans know logic when they see it.
Howard Beale IV
Speaking of odd animal stories-today I grabbed lunch at the local Popeyes. There was a lone duck, waddling around all by his lonsesome first up against the building and then as I left in the middle of the parking lot.
Aleta
@Germy Shoemangler: Sorry I didn’t see your comment before. Hope that bill goes into effect soon. Thanks, it’s good to know about this.
WereBear
@Aleta: We are at the very beginning of recognizing that future serial killers almost invariably start with animals. We obviously have much further to go.
I’m not “diagnosing” this vet, mind you, or saying this incident qualifies. But it shows a disturbing lack of self awareness. She could even be a competent vet, in the way that a good mechanic doesn’t have to “love” cars to fix them.
But it shows a very problematic shortage of good judgement to use such a mechanical approach to a profession that requires some empathy.
I once took my dog to the only board certified surgeon on Long Island for a tricky condition. But when he made my dog yelp, something that two other vets had examined him without doing, I canceled the surgery and took my dog to an animal hospital in Manhattan, where he was treated with care.
Some of them, I’m saying, are just mechanics.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
She sure seems to be a stand out. She runs for many different things, then spends relatively little time in those jobs and distinguishes herself not at all positively in any of them.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: Wish I had PBS. Elephants next to cats of all kinds are my favorite animal. I assume you’d seen this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzEUayHqrRc
Shirley and Jenny were two elephants that had been separated for more than 20 years. They were reunited at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.
This two part series on PBS Nature about what happened is something that will make you cry and also stand up and clap. These elephants clearly knew each other, could recall their past, and what happens when they are reunited is about the coolest thing you’ll see.
WereBear
@Tommy: Ah, that video always makes me cry.
bemused
@WereBear:
Yup, those Depression era folks had to be pretty self-sufficient. If only our small and large appliances would last as long these days, lucky to get 5 yrs on the small and 10 yrs on the large.
There was a very funny but true opinion piece in the Mpls Star Trib last week, The Years of Living Dangerously, about all the risks and dangers baby boomers lived with growing up that now have safety standards for, lawn darts, chemistry sets, Uranium Energy Lab with 4 pieces of radioactive uranium, no seat belts, no baby car seats, no baby proofing homes, barely any parental oversight, etc. Bill Bryson has written on his childhood experiences on the no safety standard era.
Jeff Strickler, the author, said by today’s safety standards, every baby boomer should have been dead by age 12.
Germy Shoemangler
@Tommy: Elephants (and cats) never forget.
@Aleta: Buster’s Law is in NY state. Hope to see it go nationwide (especially that bow-hunting lady vet’s home state).
opiejeanne
@WereBear: We had a vet who was really a dog person. She loved dogs, cats were just some of her patients. There was always the feeling that she was merely paying for her kid’s gymnastics classes by treating my older cat.
We stayed with her for a few years because she was the upgrade after a disturbing incident at another vet’s office, until we found a wonderful vet.
WereBear
@Mike J: LOL!
I try to hang onto our Macs, but there’s always an upgrade I can’t live without. Fortunately, I can trade them in at PowerMax (ask for Michelle!) and that’s a workable solution to keep us current without a lot of outlay.
Germy Shoemangler
@opiejeanne: We stayed with her for a few years because she was the upgrade after a disturbing incident at another vet’s office.
What happened?
Ruckus
@Germy Shoemangler:
There is also the other side. Yes things can be designed to last longer or to be repairable much easier but that usually costs a lot more. And then you have to add in the cost to the entire supply chain of spare parts. When things were made locally and the supply chain is short that’s not so bad but when the supply chain is long and convoluted that cost is/can be a real burden. And it depends on what the object is, are there people to repair it, even if the parts were available?
All that said in a previous career I designed tools used to make things. Some tools were designed to make millions of parts, and some to make only one or two thousand. It depends on the market you are selling in, is there money for parts that last forever? A company can not survive making things that last forever if they cost too much to be competitive. It’s capitalism that’s the issue not engineering.
J R in WV
@opiejeanne:
That sounds like a criminal act of abuse to me, with video evidence I don’t understand why she isn’t indicted and facing trial already.
If it were my child, she would already have been sued for far more money than she will ever possess.
opiejeanne
@bemused: Lawn darts affected the children of Boomers. My in-laws gave my son a set when he was 7. I took one look at them and got rid of them in the next trash pickup.
I can still remember sticking a bobby pin into a wall outlet.That list missed lead paint. Kids got polio when I was a kid, before the vaccine.
WereBear
@opiejeanne: It can be very tough finding the right vet, especially when there aren’t many to choose from. And I swear, you ask around, someone had a terrible experience with anyone.
It helps that I’m assertive and willing to do my own research.
Tenar Darell
@Tommy: Ooh, there’s a PBS iPad and an Android app you can download. Plus, browse to here, and you may be able to find the elephant program via PBS video. It doesn’t have the fun of running across something you weren’t expecting changing channels, but it’s good at playing catch up.
Keith G
@opiejeanne:
As a cat lover and dad to rescue cats, I abhor what this vet did and her level of mirth is stupid. That said, I knew many rural folks who hated feral (and other loose cats who hunted in the country side) with a burning passion. Some felt if was a good thing to exterminate wild cats before the cats exterminated desired natural wild life.
I disagreed with them. I argued with them.
These were not evil or sick folks. They were not soon to be harmful to humans – usually quite the opposite. They were strong in their conviction that strayed or abandoned species of domestic animals did not have a constructive role to play in the countryside’s ecosystem.
WereBear
@Ruckus: I see 3D printing as a gamechanger there.
Tommy
@WereBear: I have a Mac SE I got back in 1988. It still runs. I have other computers that can’t seem to run for more than 3-5 years.
I like “nice” things. I will wait for ages to save to buy the best of the best. When I buy a knife, clothes, you name it I buy it thinking if I take care of it will last me a lifetime, and maybe the lifetime of another person. I find that is getting harder and harder to do.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
I read somewhere that the makers of Crocs got into financial trouble because their product was too durable; no one ever had to come back to buy new Crocs, so they had no repeat business.
Ruckus
@bemused:
Many of them were or at least maimed. Hard to realistically compare, say the 1950s to today. There are many more of us, cars are faster, we drive farther and that affects more than just cars. Kids used to play in the street, do they dare now? Used to ride my bike all over, that is now putting your life in the hand of a texting driver.
bemused
@opiejeanne:
That era definitely had a long, long list of dangers that make me shudder now to remember. A friend and I were just talking about some of childhood memories. We both remember kids in school playing with mercury balls in science lab!
Germy Shoemangler
@bemused: When Frank Zappa was a boy, a doctor treated his sinus problem by sticking some radioactive stuff up his nose.
Radium treatments were a cure-all!
opiejeanne
@bemused: A neighbor boy let out a neighbor’s bull. This was in Los Angeles county in the late 50s. He was about 12, his parents made him go and apologize to the owner, and the owner made him go get the bull and bring it back. Just the thought of that still scares me. It was a BIG bull.
A local kid figured out how to start a bulldozer in the field behind my house, when it was being turned into a housing tract. He was about 14. Once he got it started he realized he didn’t know how to stop or steer it, panicked and jumped off of it. It went into a ditch and got stuck, ran out of gas. He was lucky not to get badly hurt jumping off like that.
Oh, and the same kid who let the bull out got his leg broken by trying to play a trick on his mom. He hid on top of the garage door when it was in the ‘up” position, intending to surprise her. She closed the garage door on him. He broke his arm when he was a little older, helping his dad put a new roof on their house. He forgot he was on the second floor roof and took a step toward the porch roof that was on the first story. He was a nice kid. I wonder if he made it to adulthood. His dad was missing an eye from a friend shooting a bb gun at him when he was 12, his mom got thrown from a horse in her driveway because she insisted on riding it right after it was unloaded from a tralier (she had just bought the horse), and broke her tailbone. I think his older sister was the only one without injuries.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
3D printing is pretty amazing and has come a long ways in the last 20-25 yrs. I did work for an early company, the computing power required was almost not available then. Now your desktop has far more. A 3D printer was just sent to the International Space Station to make parts and tools instead of having to carry and store them.
But I’d bet it will be a while before parts can be made out of tool steel and hardened in a desktop printer. But a part made as a temp piece, yes that might just be a game changer.
WereBear
@Tommy: Yes, my Macs are still running but become less useful as OS evolves. I had a clamshell iBook I loved but it wouldn’t run OS X, and a new piece of writing software came out that I really wanted that would only run on OS X.
@Amir Khalid: Well, there’s also the fact that they were butt-ugly. I believe that catches up to one eventually.
Germy Shoemangler
@Ruckus: I am most excited by 3D printing in the medical field.
bemused
@Germy Shoemangler:
Not surprised. My friend didn’t know about the x-ray machines in shoe stores so customers could see their foot bones. We lived in rural and small town MN so thankfully we didn’t see those in our local shoe stores then.
J R in WV
@WereBear:
We once had a very sweet rescue dog we named Muffin, who was smallish, had a very curly soft coat, and a damaged right rear leg. One day at the usual Vet clinic a new doctor proceeded to attempt to give her a booster shot in her already sore and painful hip!
We tried to stop him, but he was quick enough that it was already done. We told him he would never again have an opportunity to touch any of our furry children again, and told the owner/head Vet of the clinic how unhappy we were with his style of “care”.
He was gone the next time we visited the clinic, and we learned that the now-missing Vet was a truly fine surgeon, which was why he was hired, but seemed short on the compassion side, which was why he was fired.
Did he do all that work to get admitted to Vet school, study all those years to become licensed, just to make money?? Did he really care for animals with an y love or compassion? We’ll never know. He obviously knew how to make the proper noises about caring for animals health and best interests, and just as obviously didn’t understand how to go about doing that as a Vet.
And the Vet bitch from hell in Texas, that is so much like Texas all over! Vet school is hard to get into, harder than Medical school – how did she hide her sociopathy from all those admissions committees and medical professionals?
Actually I have had so much bad happen to me in Texas I haven’t been there in a long time. I’m willing to drive hundreds of extra miles to go around TX in traveling between West Virginia and Arizona.
opiejeanne
@Germy Shoemangler: The vet we liked in that earlier office moved away, and the new vet there told us to give our cat some aspirin for pain. The cat was getting a little arthritic, but I had been told repeatedly that aspirin is not a good thing to give to cats.
When I questioned her on it she became very rude. The dog person vet just saw the cat as a science experiment, as far as I could tell. This was an old kitty who had overcome the odds of being abandoned where there was nothing to eat but spiders and blackberries, having feline distemper at 6months, being so starved that she looked like a 3 month old; she lived to 15 and survived 5 years longer than she should have.
That last vet was just a wonderful person all around. much like the vet we had left behind in Riverside when we moved to the SF area.
bemused
@opiejeanne:
My husband and brothers remember dangling a neighbor kid or cousin out a second story window by his ankles. They were shooting arrows with the neighborhood boys one day. One kid shot an arrow into the air and his brother stood looking up and arrow came down through his lip. They have a lot of those stories about just missed great physical harm with their antics.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
They do wear out, it’s just the cycle time is very long. Like the Grand Canyon. Just a little water flowing downstream. Hundreds of thousands of years worth.
Once worked on a mold for a garbage disposal cover. About 25-30 yrs later the company looked my company up to get it repaired. It had made several million parts but finally needed some minor repairs. That was 20 yrs ago, I bet it’s still working.
WereBear
Well, as Keith G describes above, she’s in Texas. It’s a harsh state. The only that had Jim Crow for Mexicans, too.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: The lawsuit is in the works. She may have to leave the area to avoid the notoriety after this.
Mike in NC
@srv: Such weasel words have endeared young Rubio to Kathleen Parker.
He dreams of leading Bay of Pigs v2.0
Ruckus
@bemused:
Forgot about those. What about the people who worked in the stores? A customer was a one time exposure but an employee?
Germy Shoemangler
@opiejeanne: Aspirin for a cat?? Holy Ceiling Cat.
I had a bad experience with a dog vet treating my older male cat. I love dogs, but I think a vet treating cats should love cats. The vets office was full of large, aggressive, barking dogs… which scared the crap out of my old cat. When we got into the exam room and waited, the door flung open and a large dog ran in, unsupervised. My cat started panting in anxiety. The dog lady vet came in, saw him panting and said he needed an injection. Before I could ask what he injection was, she jabbed him. I asked about side effects, and she said “well, if he has diabetic tendencies, this will definitely give him diabetes.”
Long story short. He died not long after of diabetes. Of course I never went back.
opiejeanne
@bemused: My little sister had a bad habit of biting and breaking the glass thermometers in the 50s, up until she was about 6. Mom had to take the mercury away from her because it was shiny and pretty and was fun to watch roll around on the bed sheet. She told us about a woman she worked with who had played with the mercury from a thermometer after breaking it, and it damaged her wedding ring.
Ruckus
@bemused:
One thing or rather 3 things that turned me away from guns was almost being killed three times in about a years time. Once missed getting my head blown off at close range by a friend who was trying to scare the other two of us. He was not intending to shoot at me but ended up doing just that. Missed me with a 357 hollow point, shooting from 5-6 feet away by what he said was maybe an inch. Second was from a 12 gauge fired from behind me just as I turned in that direction. Missed me by less than a foot. That would have taken out large chunks of necessary stuff.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: I get what you’re saying in a sense; I live in a small town with a big feral cat problem, and I know non-evil (IMO) people who want the authorities to trap and kill every damn one of them and who threaten to take pot shots at ferals on their property.
But the way this vet bragged about it and posted a picture of herself on FB with the skewered dead cat was pretty fucking sick. And as a small animal practitioner, how could she not have understood how people would react? It smacks of depravity to me. And I’ve got goddamn feral cats pissing on my bike at least weekly.
WereBear
That is so upsetting. I’m sorry. What an awful person.
opiejeanne
@Germy Shoemangler: That’s one of the worst stories I’ve heard about vets in a long time.
Yeah, the second vet in that town, the dog lover, she just gave us all kinds of grief, trying to cure an elderly cat of old age. We wanted to make the cat comfortable which is what our last vet in that town did for us. The cat had thyroid disease, for which she was given a pill each morning and evening for the last two years of her life. She needed her teeth cleaned but the vet was so aggressive during an exam that the cat freaked, all teeth and claws, hissing and yowling. We had to talk her down. We took her home and discussed what we were going to do. About then our youngest got a kitten from a rescue group, and the kitten came with her shots and a future vet checkup at the last vet. We took the kitten in and the atmosphere was so different it was night and day, including the rest of the staff. So we took our elderly cat there from then on.
Aleta
@Keith G: I remember boys where I grew up, and especially farm boys (and girls), being mocked and pressured by their fathers if they were sentimental about killing animals. I remember one boy hiding his tears when the prize steer he raised for 4-H was sold, and how his father made a point of ‘toughening him up’ about it. He was pressured via ridicule to hunt, too. I suppose in traditional rural farming and hunting families, it was part of raising kids to break their sentiment about the pre-meat. Even the town, most boys practiced their aim with stones then got BB guns. They practiced on squirrels and birds; and some on cats or stray dogs if their fathers didn’t care. They mocked other kids who felt sorry for the animals, and I guess they were passing down the cultural ‘training’ they got from their fathers. Kids who shot at livestock (or cars), or even threw apples, was punished, since a line was drawn between animals that were property and animals that were just hanging around in nature for the taking. Considered God’s will that humans rule over the beasts, birds and fish in excange for being ruled over by G..
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: The clinic fired her. They interviewed the owner of the clinic, also a vet, and he was heartbroken anyone could do that let alone someone who worked for him, especially a vet.
She comes across to me like someone who has had a psychological break. It’s not normal behavior at all. I hope she’s punished for what she did, but if she also has had a psychological break I hope she gets the help she needs. Doing that to an animal and posting it on Facebook boasting about it and saying she wouldn’t get fired because she was “so awesome” is just not normal behavior.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: The next-door neighbor feeds ferals that she trapped and had altered, and they hunt in our yard. The coyotes haven’t gotten them which is a miracle here, but they’ve managed to escape for years now.
I don’t mind her cats coming over here, in fact I wish they’d do something about the gophers in our front yard so I don’t have to. Or moles. We’re not sure if they are moles or gophers, and people around here don’t know the difference. If I was sure they were gophers I’d take on the project myself. Moles, though, they are beneficial even though they make a mess of the lawn and flowerbeds. Oh, Right. These aren’t eating the plants, so they must be moles.
opiejeanne
@Violet: I doubt that this was a break, since her mother was willing to take the photo.
Cervantes
@opiejeanne:
In the Peruvian Andes, mercury is sometimes used in the extraction of gold — for example, at Yanacocha, one of the largest gold mines in the world, owned by Colorado-based Newmont and funded by the World Bank. About fifteen years ago there was a large mercury spill. I don’t need to tell you what happened next, especially because someone made a movie about it. (The whole movie appears to be available on line, I’m not sure how; but I think it’s kosher.)
Aleta
@bemused:
That what what we did with our friends for downtown entertainment in the Midwest–go into the show store and x-ray our feet. Not long after, the machine disappeared.
Aleta
@Violet: yeah
ixnay
@Mnemosyne (tablet): IT’S TEXAS! Need one say more?
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Betty,
It doesn’t “smack of depravity” it IS depraved, totally immoral and monstrous.
A friend of ours lives in a more urban location, and volunteers on a feral cat project. They use live traps, take captured feral cats to a cooperating vet clinic, where they are vaccinated, treated, neutered, and released where they were caught after they recover from treatments.
That’s how it is properly done. Not with a fucking crossbow! I wouldn’t let this person dig ditches for a septic system, not qualified.
bemused
@Ruckus:
Good question. There must be a lot of history on that. Some of the dangers like that weren’t known, at least not by the public.
bemused
@opiejeanne:
Yikes!
opiejeanne
@Cervantes: Yikes!
I can’t remember if mercury poisoning was well-known in the 50s or not. I mean, by the general population. Mom surely didn’t know but she only had a HS education. I think the big worry then was lead paint. I remember my dad telling me he thought kids ate paint chips because they tasted slightly sweet. I thought it was boredom.
bemused
@Ruckus:
That was really stupid. How old were you and friends at the time? Hope the friend learned from that.
Betty Cracker
@opiejeanne: The people who feed ferals here aren’t that responsible. They don’t neuter or vaccinate the cats, so the population is growing, and it’s a threat to actual pet cats that go outdoors. And it’s a gigantic pain in the ass to the rest of us, who have to put up with the vile stink and yowling at all hours. I blame the people, not the cats.
bemused
@opiejeanne:
I recently read about the lead paint. Europe had banned lead in paint something like decades before the US. You can probably guess the paint manufacturers & other companies using lead in their products, had something to do with the long overdue delay in regulations.
opiejeanne
@Aleta: Mom and Dad wouldn’t let the shoe salesmen use those X-ray machines on our feet. I remember them at Red Goose Shoes and asked about them. Dad had a strong idea that it wasn’t safe.
A camp counselor gave me a trinket that he called a “spintheroscope”. It was a large clear marble glued onto a glass base, and the inside of the base had been painted with some sort of paint. If you took it into a dark closet and waited for your eyes to adjust you could see little stars flying around. I still wonder what kind of paint does that and I have a suspicion it’s the same stuff that was used on watch dials that caused nice Japanese ladies to lose their lower jaws from licking their paint brushes to a point.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: And rightly so. They are doing the cats no favors either; without vet care or vaccinations, in a humid climate, the disease rate must be appalling.
opiejeanne
@bemused: Of course after he told me about lead paint I went and licked a windowsill in my bedroom. It tasted dusty. Dad had not used lead paint on them. I was probably about 6 or 7 at the time, which would have been 56 or 57, and it was all over the news at the time.
Amir Khalid
@ixnay:
Yes,one does need to say more: that a great many Texans were horrified by her senseless killing of an animal, including her employers who promptly sacked her, and the local police who have launched an investigation.
opiejeanne
@WereBear: Our darling Tommy cat tested positive for FIV, but several years later tested negative for it. When he tested positive we had a good idea where it came from, a terrible tomcat in his natural state who fought with every other cat in the area as well as half the people. That cat withered away and died even though he was young.
Why people don’t get their cats fixed, especially their toms, is beyond me. Lots of low-cost and even free clinics every place we’ve lived.
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: Oh, the cops are involved now. That’s good.
WereBear
@opiejeanne: Because they aren’t thinking of cats as a long term deal. They are getting a kitten as a toy, and ignore them when they mature and the novelty and cuteness has worn off.
They won’t spend a little bit of money because they aren’t spending the time, either.
I get heartbreaking letters from young people who have cats, and their parents won’t let them take care of them.
opiejeanne
@WereBear: Yeah, I know about these people but I don’t understand them at all.
Cervantes
@opiejeanne:
People have known about harms resulting from contact with, or ingestion of, or respiration of, mercury for centuries — and in the popular imagination since at least the 1950s — and yet the element is thought to be useful enough (industrially) that people are still harmed by it all over the world.
Lead paint was known to be toxic by the early 1900s, at the latest. Even paint manufacturers had to acknowledge the danger by then.
Steeplejack
@bemused:
My brothers and I sometimes discuss that. Our funniest memory is when in the summer a truck would come through our neighborhood spraying some (no doubt toxic) anti-mosquito fog—and all of us kids would jump on our bikes and follow close behind it. Good times.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Mad as a hatter.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
Admitting it is half the battle.
Which reminds me:
Courtesy of William Rose Benét, circa 1917.
Ruckus
@bemused:
Have no idea if he did. Haven’t seen him in over 40 yrs. The other fella and I are still friends, we got together for the first time in about 30 yrs, last yr.
Most of these incidents are like that, someone is not trying to shoot someone, they just do stupid stuff even though they know that guns kill. The first incident happened because I went out of the house we were in looking for him. I found him. He was quite shaken by the whole thing at the time but did he learn anything? I don’t know.
Aleta
@opiejeanne:
Mercurochrome (made from mercury) used to be put on kids’ skinned knees and other open wounds. I think it was supposed to be preferable to iodine, which stung. I think it was easy to buy until sometime in the 80s.
Cervantes
@Aleta:
Tincture of merbromin, i. e., mercurochrome, was alcohol-based and would therefore have stung. Aqueous mercurochrome did not sting. Both forms, available through the late ’90s, contained mercury as a disodium salt, which was relatively safe and is still used, though not as a household product.
And yes, iodine could sting all by itself, no alcohol needed.
OmerosPeanut
Traumatic Bird Injury. I think the NIH and NFL are starting to research this. TBI, right?