Animals 24-7

News on dogs, cats, horses, wildlife, zoonoses, & nature

Animal losses low after Hurricane Laura––but worst may be ahead

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Little animal agriculture where storm made landfall CAMERON PARISH, Louisiana––From the animal safety perspective,  Hurricane Laura could scarcely have hit in a less vulnerable location.             Reportedly the most powerful hurricane to hit coastal Louisiana since the Last Island hurricane of 1856,  Hurricane Laura whirled into the coastal bayous of sparsely populated Cameron Parish in […]

Chickens were the most numerous casualties of the Beirut explosion

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Animals Lebanon & Beirut for the Ethical Treatment of Animals scramble to aid animal survivors             BEIRUT,  Lebanon––How many chickens lived and died to blow up Beirut? Probably millions,  but that toll––like all others pertaining to animals––eludes estimation from the available data about the August 4,  2020 ammonium nitrate explosion that killed at least 158 […]

Kathi Travers, 69, vehemently non-“animal rights” animal advocate

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Legendary for deeds with ASPCA & WSPA,  but worked nearly twice as long for the British Columbia SPCA in St. George             PRINCE GEORGE,  British Columbia,  Canada––If Kathi Travers,  69,  could still shout aloud,  she might be shouting yet,  more than six months later,  about the first sentence of her Prince George Citizen obituary. Belatedly […]

Three Dog Night: homeless pet owners suffer silently

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by Jon Geller, DVM National Director & founder, The Street Dog Coalition As panic and anxiety bubble over for many of us dealing with both the medical and non-health-related hardships resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic,  those pet owners living on the streets find a hard life made harder. Many community meal services have been […]

COVID-19 hot tip for coffee growers:  don’t go [email protected]#$% nuts!

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COVID-19 shows “Eat @#$% & die!” is a warning,  not a metaphor KUNMING,  China;  LONDON, U.K.;  SEATTLE––One might imagine that the midst of a global pandemic of COVID-19,  a disease apparently originating in bats, would not be the best time for selling bat-processed coffee. At this writing,  COVID-19 has infected nearly 175,000 people,  worldwide,  killing […]

Sex, COVID-19,  & the Thai monkey apocalypse

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“Monkey menace” emerged first & will likely be around a lot longer             BANGKOK,  Thailand––Nightmares that a flying monkey army might ransack Thailand leaped across the Indian Ocean during the second week of March 2020,  out of Hindu mythology and the daily fears of Buddhist temple keepers,  and into the imagination of social media video-watchers […]

COVID-19 & “The Next Big One”:  Spillover revisited

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Science writer David Quammen saw COVID-19 coming COVID-19,  though renamed twice just in the first few months of 2020,  “is not as novel as you might think,”  explained veteran science writer David Quammen in the January 28,  2020 edition of The New York Times. Quammen,  72,  was uniquely positioned to comment,  not only because he […]

Why COVID-19 is NOT the zoonotic illness most likely to kill you

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Panicked stress may be killing more people than the disease itself             SEATTLE,  ATLANTA,  HONG KONG––Amid escalating global panic over the worldwide rapid spread of the recently identified coronavirus COVID-19,  a person not familiar with ProMED–mail might expect the most panic-stricken person of all to be ProMED–mail deputy editor Marjorie P. Pollack,  M.D. ProMED-mail is […]

“No injuries” says Michael Foods of fire that killed 400,000 hens

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Cage-free complex has been much praised by animal advocates             BLOOMFIELD, Nebraska––If anyone imagined that going cage-free would substantively change the egg industry,  the headlines alone reporting a February 27,  2020 barn fire at a Michael Foods cage-free complex in Knox County,  Nebraska should explode that illusion. The Michael Foods fire killed as many as […]

Poisoning Australia in the name of wildlife recovery after bushfire losses

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And kangaroos shot,  koala trees bulldozed             MELBOURNE,  CANBERRA, SYDNEY,  BRISBANE––Six months of bushfires ravaging Australian coastal forests and grasslands stretching into parts of the Outback are reportedly almost at an end. The last two dozen fires in New South Wales and a comparable number left in Victoria state are smoldering on at the lowest […]