A few of our readers reached out to me personally after reading last week’s column to share some rare, refreshing news about wolf-dog hybrids like those in our story.
Although we are still officially in the season of sanctioned doom and gloom in these last pre-Halloween days, the good news is that 10 wolf-hybrids which were seized as part of a still-pending animal cruelty investigation in Aguanga, Riverside County. The canines were among a hoarder’s horde of neglected exotics discovered and rescued during August’s Nixon Fire.
The happy ending for the wolf-dogs demonstrates the power of rescue networking. Riverside County Animal Services collaborated with longtime Coachella Valley resident and wildlife conservationist Kele Younger, who called upon her network of contacts to place the undernourished hybrids in a sanctuary called Keepers of the Wild in Valentine, Arizona.
For 20 years, Younger has operated Wild California at the Magic Jungle Wildlife Preserve near Yucca Valley. She works closely with the California Department of Fish & Wildlife to rehab big wildlife (mountain lions, bobcats, wolves, coyotes).
Her placement of the six female and four male hybrids is remarkable, since an estimated 90 percent of wolf-dog hybrids are euthanized. This is because they’re inter canem et lupum, too dog-like to be of interest to zoos, and too wolf-like to be suitable as pets. As a result, most wolf sanctuaries are filled to capacity.
The rescued canines were vaccinated, spayed or neutered, and made the drive in about five hours aboard two air-conditioned county transport vans.
We’re thankful for all of the above. And what are you thankful for this year?
As the season of ghouls and goblins gives way to “Gratitude,” we’re counting our blessings and want to hear all about yours. These expressions of thanks may be pet, nature, and animal-related, or not. Submit your “Gratitude” post as a Letter to the Editor at https://localnewspasadena.com/contact, and put “Gratitude” as the Topic. Please keep it brief (100-125 words), send it along with a photo before November 15, and we’ll publish as many as we can before we all bust out the cranberry sauce.
During this past weekend, the regal company of Falcons’ Court enraptured crowds at The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens as part of the two-day “Strange Science: Out of Time” event. “Enraptured” as in seized and carried away in the claws of a raptor.
The Falcons’ Court crew are regulars at Ren Faires and the like, decked out in Tudor-inspired finery. They currently share the limelight with a Barn Owl, two Great Horned Owls, two Harris Hawks, one burrowing owl, one Western screech owl, and one Gyrfalcon, the largest bird of its genus that hurtles through the skies at speeds seeming to rival Ben Joyce’s fastball.
The company occasionally purchases birds, but more often they come to the organization as rescues needing rehab. Because of injuries or socialization, the birds are not eligible for release into the wild.
The birds appeared remarkably calm on Saturday evening as a curious parade of decapitated brides, Medusas with writhing, LED-illuminated snake-tresses, black-winged angels in SMBD leathers, plague doctors, and even a string-tied, white-suited semblance of Colonel Sanders, complete with KFC bucket for trick-or-treating– you know, the usual assortment of night-travelers in our town– gathered to gawk at the birds and their steampunked keepers.
With a nod to the Colonel’s extra-crispy, perhaps everyone had just been fed their usual fare of baby chicks. We’re referring to the raptors, not their human tenders.
Cosplay lures onlookers to step closer. But the real purpose of Falcons’ Court is education, explains volunteer Shelena Johnson. “People love owls for their association with wisdom, and they love hawks and falcons for their speed, power and grace. The birds always get attention, and that’s when we start to tell people about how we need to protect these birds by changing our behavior.
We educate them about why rat poison is deadly not only for rodents, but for predators that eat the rodents. Same for the buckshot some hunters use. When a bird of prey eats a small prey animal that’s been killed with buckshot, the bird will often get lead poisoning. We want people to start thinking about what they have in their backyard, and how they relate to their environment, because our decisions have a ripple effect.”
Falcons’ Court offers field trips for schools around our state, including the program called “Workshop in the Woods” designed to give students essential knowledge concerning conservation and species preservation.
Newly-published “The Art of Medieval Falconry” by Yannis Hadjinicolaou (University of Chicago Press, Medieval Lives Series) describes the fierce birds as a natural match for the monarchs who prized them as status symbols employed in ritual sport, long after they were used for actual hunting.
The author states “High-ranking nobles were trained in the art from childhood, as they were trained in dancing and horse-riding…knowing how to handle hawks was seen as an analogy for being able to rule the state.”
Although falcons were revered in ancient Egypt, they were never captured or trained for hunting there. Two millennia later and several hundred miles to the east, by 800 BCE the Assyrian dynasties of Mesopotamia arose as the center of falconry. And the region of the Iranian Plateau and classical Iraq being a vibrant crossroads for cultural ideas as well as luxury goods, traders from North Africa, the Arab world, Asia and Europe became, well, carried away with the spectacle of raptors perched on the forearms of their charismatic, horse-mounted hunting-companions.
A growing, global interest in falconry now raises questions and controversy in some locales. For example, Kazakh eagle-hunting in rural Bayan Ulgii, Western Mongolia, is a performance art and display of skill that draws estimated 2,000 visitors to the region annually. Similar festivals are organized and hosted by competing American tour operators in Sagsai, and truly motivated falconry fans may even arrange private visits with eco-hunting families and join a hunter on horseback into the countryside for a personal hunting session.
With all due respect, one hesitates to call the annual Golden Eagle Festival and competition held just outside Ulgii “ecotourism,” even though the two-day event is recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. We’ve not attended, but reports from the field maintain that after the event, accumulated trash and human waste from hundreds of vendors and visitors are simply left behind in the increasingly fragile ecosystem.
But the grand finale both defines animal cruelty and defies UNESCO’s expressed mission, when a live wolf pup is used to bait two hungry eagles.
In the spring, local people typically enter the Altai Tavan Bogd National Park and follow a wolf-mother to her den. This willingness to break the law speaks to desperate poverty in the region, which has become increasingly dependent upon tourism.
Her new pup is captured and confined for a couple of months until festival-time. At the climax of the two-day festival, the pup’s paws and muzzle are bound with rope and it’s pulled out into view of the crowd as two eagles wait. Surrounded by the stoked crowd, the rope restraints are cut and the birds descend from about 100 meters away, making for a thrilling and altogether unnatural spectacle —unnatural because in the wild, highly territorial Golden Eagles compete for prey, and do not hunt in pairs, unlike the Harris Hawks of Falcons’ Court.
The onlookers witness instant bloodshed, long enough for a titillating photo opp. Then the hunters use scraps of raw meat to distract the birds as they disengage the injured pup, which is then led away to an undisclosed fate. This, too, is unnatural, since in the wild, raptors rarely disengage from wounded prey. Their powerful strike is typically successful, meaning that their prey is quickly, efficiently dispatched.
While visitors may tingle at the ancestral thought of experiencing a primal, ancient hunt, festival eagle-hunting is show-biz, folks. This is in the same league as swimming with dolphins (fun for the humans, bad for the cetaceans), or the “authentic” ethnic dancers and shamans who entertain foreigners in hotel lobbies from Honolulu to Ketchikan to Santa Fe. These activities are based upon central falsehoods about indigenous life. For instance, the eagle-hunting festivals take place in summer, serving the preferences of tourism, although traditional eagle-hunting was most often employed in winter, when prey animals rock their thickest fur harvested to make lush hats.
In addition to the Neronian brutality of this display, animal activists object to the fact that in Mongolia, in spite of the prestigious UNESCO endorsement, animal welfare is not defined as it is in the West. In Europe and North America, falconry is rigorously governed by the International Convention for the Protection of Birds, the International Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna. Other complementary legal instruments, anti-cruelty statutes and other measures further ensure proper veterinary care, and carry penalties for inflicting needless pain or deprivation upon animals, as well as for habitat damage.
Mongolia lacks the needed infrastructure to enforce whatever minimal animal welfare restrictions do exist there. Thus, the welfare of animals, including the commoditized eagles themselves, rests entirely in the hands of the small, isolated communities where, other than tourism, few other forms of livelihood are available.
By contrast, check out The California Hawking Club, ironically also endorsed by UNESCO. This nonprofit’s Web site states in all caps “The purpose of this organization shall be to preserve birds of prey and to advance the art and practice of falconry.” The site’s section on Falconry Regulations for California alone (Federal are separate) requires epic scrolling. If you love birds of prey and are ready to protect and provide for them beyond being a source of entertainment, the Club offers an eight-step falconry apprenticeship program.
And now the witching hour is upon us with no turning back. Animal authorities seem to think that in actuality, black cats are not in any particular danger at this time of year, at least no more so than usual. Of course keep your pets indoors on Halloween night, and every night.
But talk of shape-shifting felines stirs the story of General Matthew Hopkins (no relation to our Associate Publisher…we think…) who set the fire, so to speak, under the witch-hunts of the 17th century CE. Hopkins, the son of a Suffolk Puritan minister, claimed to hold the office of “Witchfinder General,” a job title which sounds made up because it is.
For a handsome fee, Hopkins traveled the English countryside accompanied by righteous Christian women who did the “pricking,” a theatrical technique of tapping the arm of the accused woman with a retractable faux-needle which did not break skin or produce bleeding, thus proving that the woman was indeed in league with Satan.
Hopkins and his posse also examined women and the occasional dude for the telltale “devil’s mark,” which, if not immediately visible to the naked eye, Hopkins maintained could be revealed by pricking. The belief, circa 1647 when Hopkins published his book “The Discovery of Witches,” was that this mark, often a misdiagnosed mole, was used by the witch to nurse her familiars, or animal-spirits, often a cat. Hopkins’ techniques crossed the Atlantic to Salem, and his work resulted in dozens of hangings, a pressing (death by crushing) or two, and at least 150 imprisonments on charges of witchcraft.
Childless cat-ladies, beware the witch-hunters.
This week’s pets in need of homes:
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