Of Mice and Mink

Nobody wants my MIL’s fur coat – thank goodness.

It’s fashion season. As we go to press, New York’s fashion week has just wrapped. London takes the ball September 12, Milan September 17, Paris September 23.

Maybe I’ll put on a clean bowling shirt to celebrate.

The good news is that the use of fur in couture seems to be on the decline, although vegan designers still cause me to raise a perfectly-plucked eyebrow when I read about “sustainably-sourced alpaca and cashmere” in the case of Stella McCartney. If you’ve ever secretly coveted a Canada Goose-brand coyote-fur-lined jacket, perhaps because you hate coyotes, now is the time to snap one up. The brand has discontinued the item, has a “few” (?) left in stock, and you can also find them on eBay. Unlike foxes, minks and lynx, coyotes are not bred in captivity for their fur. They are hunted because they slink around and munch our pets and steal chickens and generally make mischief, true to First Nations storytelling.

Is it wrong to wear roadkill? We’re not sure.

Speaking of coyote fur-lined jackets

Closer to home, there’s a Sierra Madre-based conversation going around about an alleged coyote with acute mange that was trapped near a school and a church this past weekend. The juvenile coyote was allegedly left outdoors unsupervised for at least 24 hours, exposed to our extraordinary heat. When approached by local animal advocates, the business location where the trapped coyote was detained were allegedly unwilling to disclose the name or license ID of the trapper.

 And then, just like that, the coyote disappeared, cage and all, without a trace.

You do need to know that there are specific regulations concerning the trapping of coyotes. According to California Fish and Game Code, Chapter 2: Fur-Bearing Mammals, Article 1, Trapping Provisions, Section 4004, “Unlawful Methods of Taking”:

“It is unlawful to:

(c) Set or maintain traps that do not bear a number or other identifying mark registered to the department, or, in the case of a federal, state, county, or city agency, bear the name of that agency, except that traps set pursuant to Section 4152 or 4180 shall bear an identifying mark in a manner specified by the department. No registration fee shall be charged pursuant to this subdivision.  

(d) Fail to visit and remove all animals from traps at least once daily. If trapping is done pursuant to Section 4152 or 4180, the inspection and removal shall be done by the person who sets the trap or the owner of the land where the trap is set or an agent of either.”

Long story short: not just any yahoo with a trap is allowed to legally bag a coyote. Trapping requires a license, as well as humane treatment of the trapped coyote. Plenty of unlicensed vigilante trappers go rogue out there in the name of keeping us safe from nuisance animals, and they are in violation of the law. 

We have reached out to the business location where the coyote was seen in its trap, and we have not received a response as we go to press.

Back to the catwalk

In fairness, fashion icon Stella McCartney, along with Prada, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci among others have shed their skin, so to speak, and now not only banish fur but also beast-based leathers from their collections, McCartney uses a leather-lookalike made from apples, while Emeryville, CA manufacturer Mycoworks produces mycelium (mushroom)-generated faux leathers for numerous fashion houses. Pinatex fabricates theirs from pineapples, DESSERTO uses cacti (Beyoncé rocks a pair of white DESSERTO cowboy boots), ECOALF uses recycled plastic bottles and fishing nets.

Some of these companies promote the fact that they treat their synthetics with an ingredient to make the item smell like leather—that deep, rich barnyard funk that some call a “new car smell,” while every cowboy’s sweetheart equates that prairie perfume to long, sweaty days in the saddle.  I find this to be a curious affectation: we want to spare animals of cruelty by refusing to wear their hides, yet we want to breathe in that slightly grisly aroma of the abattoir?

A large tote crafted of full-grain leather can require the upper-body strength of Travis Kelce to lift and carry, actually causing many women shoulder and back pain, because it is human nature to fill up empty spaces. In go the sneakers, the water-bottle, the gratitude journal, the bag of snacks, the makeup bag, the cellphone, and soon you’re hoisting what feels like a ton in addition to the weight of the leather itself. All sermonizing aside, here’s the great practical advantage of these fakes: unlike their animal-derived counterparts, they are machine washable and lightweight.

When I was 12, I bought a 1940s-era silver fox chubby (as they were called) at a flea market for $10. That was the last piece of fur I’ve ever bought, and unless my transfer to the Vostok Research Station comes through, it will remain that way. That deliriously plush jacket had a great 60+-year run, and I used one of its luxuriously deep-pile sleeves as a hospice bed as our beloved Hogan, a calico from Pasadena Humane, lay dying some years ago.

 But here’s an irony: as I sit and type, my office chair is draped in frankly ridiculous Czarina fashion with a full-length mink that belonged to my mother-in-law. Her initials –KAT— are embroidered in script inside the coat on its caramel-colored satin lining.

My sisters-in-law and nieces didn’t want the coat, although we’re all meat-eaters and I am by far the most alt/indie of the group. I wouldn’t dare wear the coat in public: it’s gauche, politically incorrect, and I don’t want to get splashed with red paint by PeTA spies. 

Mice and rats are regarded as nuisances pretty much everywhere except Rajastan’s Karni Mata Temple. Minks are not rodents, but consider this: although they have been bred for their fur, they are not considered heroic animals by conservationists. Minks are carnivores, and, like their cousins the weasels and ferrets, are agile, strong for their size, fast on their feet, and can deliver a nasty bite. They love bird’s eggs for breakfast, and in Europe are linked with the decline of native European waterfowl and the water vole. Is it not ironic that in much of Europe, minks are now hunted as vermin, yet are also considered the global gold standard for status-seeking outerwear?

We talked about donating it to a shelter for unhoused people, but isn’t that cruel? How would such an item be disbursed? “Here, lady, you get a pair of tube socks, and you with the braids, you get a protein bar, and you over there, in the pink shorts, you get the full-length mink?” How does that work?  

We also considered taking the like-new coat to a place that makes old mink coats into teddy bears. This strikes me as truly ghoulish. From there, few of the luxury resellers we contacted wanted the coat at all, and those that would take it offered 10 cents on the dollar (I have the original receipt).  

I have researched, witnessed, photographed and reported on fur-farming. I know what it entrails, oops, I mean entails. Somehow selling the coat at cut-rate seemed disrespectful to the loss of life this garment embodies, yet another affront to the silky, foul-tempered Mustelidae which were not only harvested but literally tortured to make this mid-century garment. IYKYK. If you don’t, don’t ask.

Or, better yet, ask PeTA and tell them I sentcha.

PeTA, incidentally, has made a public ceremony of interring fur coats in graves, as is detailed in the new book by cat-loving thanatologist Paul Koudounaris, discussed further in this article. I did something similar with pieces of pre-ban ivory that I inherited: I burned the creamy bangles, ground the ashes, and now use the remains in my paintings. This is the origin of what is known to artists as “Ivory Black.”

Mink finally seems to have lost its mystique, except perhaps in certain parts of New Jersey. And so the coat hangs behind me without remorse or apology. It reminds me of the pure mother-love of a deeply good woman named Kathleen. And, without judgement, reminds me to look forward, not back, when making my wardrobe choices and other decisions.

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Does Butting-In Ever Work?

We’re not talking about coyotes in the churchyard here. This just in: the NGO Mouse-Free Marion project will drop 600 tons of baited rodenticide on Marion Island via chopper for the tidy sum of $29 million USD.

Marion Island is a large island, uninhabited (by humans, other than a few researchers), and is a South African territory. 

It’s one of the Prince Edward Islands, declared Special Nature Reserves under the South African Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act, No. 57 of 2003. The islands were also declared a marine protected area in 2013. We suppose the real trouble began in 1799, when French seal hunters arrived on the island, leading to a fur-hunting frenzy that wiped out the seals by around 1810.

If you think of Mother Africa as green, lush and steamy, check the coordinates:  46°38′39″S 37°56′36″E lands you far from the mighty jungle and peaceful village, winter temperatures drop well below freezing, and penguins splash in the subantarctic costal surf, dodging stately and deadly Orca. Southern Right and Humpback whales also cruise by occasionally, although experts lament that their numbers have declined sharply in the past century. Big surprise. Soviet and Japanese whalers are believed to have continued aggressive, and illegal, whaling well into the 1990s.

It’s cold and cloudy on these remote islands, and the sparse plant life is limited to grasses, moss and kelp, except for the obnoxious pearlwort (Sagina procumbens), an invasive perennial herb probably introduced from the UK by hitchhiking seeds stuck to the shoes and clothing of globe-trotting ecotourists. On the Prince Edward Islands, this plant spreads 100 – 300 miles a year and is now considered, with typical Afrikaans understatement, “beyond control.”

The history of Marion Island, which is about 1,250 miles southeast of Capetown, and is five times the size of Manhattan, seems the definition of a shlimazel, one who simply cannot catch a break. 

As with all islands, things get a little weird out there as the result of isolation. The islands have been designated as an “IBA” (Important Bird Area) by BirdLife International, and are believed to support 29 avian species, 5 million breeding seabirds and 8 million seabirds, total. Five species of albatross, all threatened or endangered, breed here.

So do mice, and cats. And as Robert Burns wrote in November 1785 in his poem, “To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough,” “The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley.”

The mice first showed up with the whalers and sealers in the 1800s, stowing away to nibble on a seafaring fare of grain stock, hard tack, salty old socks, and perhaps a surplus of  government cheese. In 1949, the South African government – glacially slow to respond— finally took action and introduced five (5, as in the number between 4 and 6) DSH housecats to resolve the problem. 

The cats merrily multiplied too, and by 1977, felines numbered around 3,400—a goodly sum. Just one problem: cats aren’t dummies, and preferred to snag burrowing petrels (large, clumsy-on-land seabirds) from their snug subterranean nests instead of chasing down a skimpy, nouvelle cuisine-size rodent amuse-bouche. It is estimated that the cats munched 455,000 petrels a year. Some petrel species were entirely wiped out in the process, so it was decided that the cats had to go. 

Chemical warfare in the form of feline panleukopenia virus, the dreaded FPLV cat-fanciers fear, ensued. While the introduced virus did its duty, night-time hunters hastened the culling process. In 1991, only eight cats were trapped during a 12-month period, mission accomplished! It is now believed that zero cats remain on Marion Island.

Just one thing. With the cats gone, mice got extra-busy with no predators in sight. The official government estimate is that the mouse population has increased by 500 percent during the last three decades. And in 2003, because the rodents vastly outnumbered their usual food sources, invertebrates including the indigenous weevil and flightless moth, ornithologists observed torrents of hungry mice descending upon albatross chicks and eating them alive in their nests. Recent photos from Marion Island also show adult birds with raw, bleeding wounds where mice have sharpened their teeth. 

This story is hardly the first of its kind. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. For instance, current findings suggest that Easter Island became a wasteland thanks in no small part to the arrival of Polynesian rats, perhaps around 1400 CE. How did they get there? Surfboard?

However they got there, the rats ate the seeds of the once-prolific Easter Island Palm, decimating the once-abundant trees, and as a result the islanders cold not build their sea-going canoes. Landlocked, marooned, without a ride, the people quite understandably ate everything in sight, from clams to bird’s eggs. Today, only one of the island’s original 22 species of seabird still nests on Easter Island.

Humans needing firewood further deforested Easter Island, and as pollinators and seed-dispersers disappeared, the island grew hotter, drier and barren. Because the locals could no longer make rope, they abandoned their iconic stone statues. Gang wars broke out. The arrival of Dutch traders in 1722 CE did not make things any better (typhus, influenza, smallpox — Dankie!). This seems to be the doomed and circular nature of so many human-nonhuman interactions.

Without the mice, and the cats, perhaps life on Marion Island will return to its former austere, windswept serenity. Springbok authorities have stated that although some of the endangered birds may snap up the poisoned mice and die as a result, their numbers will not be jeopardized by doing so.

Stay tuned.

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Local Koi in Trouble

Closer to home, on a much less dramatic scale, and that’s a pun, we’ve received reports of trouble in our beloved Arboretum. As it is inclined to do, the pond there has gotten shallow and warm prior to being dredged out. Birders and other friends have spotted dying and dead koi stranded in the mud. As we go to press, our query to the team at the Arboretum has not been answered.

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Gift season is approaching

The new book by Dr. Paul Koudounaris, “Faithful unto Death: Pet Cemeteries, Animal Graves & Eternal Devotion,” Thames & Hudson, available October 1, deserves to be on every pet-lover’s gift list. The research is exacting, the prose is pristine, poignant and witty, and the photos are, well, haunting.

Koudounaris is a radically astonishing scholar, author and photographer with a PhD in Art History from UCLA, and his several books about ossuaries and charnel houses qualify as the volumes I’m most likely to steal from the library. 

He will next be speaking about the book on Thursday, October 3, from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM, at the Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Angeles. Tickets at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/faithful-unto-deathpet-cemeteries-animal-burials-w-dr-paul-koudounaris-tickets-1003142083977

Koudonaris is anything but a stuffy academic, and often reports from the field in the form of photos he stages in abandoned mine shafts, as well as photos of road-kill cats and dogs and sometimes other beasts that he honors with flowers, then buries. While he lived in Los Angeles, he often fed stray and feral cats downtown, and wherever they appeared. 

His next presentation will take place on Saturday. October 26 at The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, details to come.

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Here are this week’s cats and dogs in need of homes and help

All photos courtesy of the group or person in contact info unless otherwise specified.

Click on photos to see larger images and captions.