the3rdrock.com

Not a day goes by where I am not con­fron­ted with the hideous antics of my spe­cies towards others…

Tales of bloody dol­phin hunts, loc­ally of school kids throw­ing and kick­ing a chicken to death, of the Japs finning (strip­ping a shark of its fins and then throw­ing it over­board to float to a death by star­va­tion) a repor­ted 70 mil­lion sharks annu­ally (not for­get­ting their dis­respect­ful and anti­quated prac­tice of whal­ing) and now I am hor­ri­fied by the latest story of cruelty — this time from China — that of bear bile collecting.

It is 2011. We are sup­posedly almost all ‘civ­il­ised’. Bollocks!

The Chinese media has repor­ted on an extraordin­ary account of a mother bear sav­ing her cub from a life of tor­ture by strangling it and then killing itself.

The bears were kept in a farm loc­ated in a remote area in the North-West of China. The bears on the farm had their gall blad­ders milked daily for ‘bear bile,’ which is used as a rem­edy in Tra­di­tional Chinese Medi­cine (TCM).

It was repor­ted that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages’, as the bears have no room to man­oeuvre and are lit­er­ally crushed.

The bile is har­ves­ted by mak­ing a per­man­ent hole or fis­tula in the bears’ abdo­men and gall bladder.

As the hole is never closed, the anim­als are sus­pect to vari­ous infec­tions and dis­eases includ­ing tumours, can­cers and death from peritonitis.

The bears are fit­ted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill them­selves by hit­ting their stom­ach as they are unable to bear the pain.

A per­son who was on the farm in place of a friend wit­nessed the pro­ced­ures and told Reminbao.com that they were inhumane.

The wit­ness also claimed that a mother bear broke out its cage when it heard its cub howl in fear before a worker punc­tured its stom­ach to milk the bile.

The work­ers ran away in fear when they saw the mother bear rush­ing to its cub’s side.

Unable to free the cub from its restraints, the mother hugged the cub and even­tu­ally strangled it.

It then dropped the cub and ran head-first into a wall, killing itself.

Many TCM prac­ti­tion­ers have denounced the use of bear bile in their treat­ment as there are cheaper herbs and syn­thet­ics that can be used in its place.

Bear bile is tra­di­tion­ally used to remove ‘heat’ from the body as well as treat high fever, liver ail­ments and sore eyes.

Think you can handle more pho­tos? More info’?

We [humans] are an abso­lute disgrace.

No, this isn’t a post extol­ing the vir­tues of the Cyrus’.

Hell has not frozen over, des­pite any claims to the con­trary here in the south­ern hemisphere.

I don’t recall the num­ber of times, but I’m fairly cer­tain my claims of ‘wierd­est web­site ever’ are some­what frequent.

The Inter­net has truly por­trayed the epic bizar­re­ness of the human psyche.

Geoff Hotch­kiss, owner of www.mileyonagoat.com, is prob­ably due for hon­our­ary mem­ber­ship of the club.

I’m very con­fid­ent that Geoff’s Pho­toshop memorial to Ms. Cyrus (and her gender cohorts) astride a trip of goats is the wierd­est ‘site I have >ever< encountered…

Like most places, we have our trashy tabloide­sque type of publications…

Prob­ably top of the steam­ing pile, is The Daily Son.

Here, ver­batim (source), is an art­icle that appeared in today’s edition…

END OF THE EVIL CHICKEN!
MAGGIE Zibi (45) woke up to find a strange chicken out­side her house… Bits of muthi were tied to it and it appar­ently spoke a strange lan­guage! Mag­gie KNEW it was evil. SO SHE CALLED A FOREIN SANGOMA … WHO FINISHED THE CHICKEN OFF AFTER A MIGHTY MUTHI BATTLE! Mag­gie — from Acca­cia Park near Phil­ippi in Cape Town – said FIVE bottles were tied to the brown chicken and it even had a horn around its neck. The single mother of a 10-yearold boy prayed… and screamed for her sis­ter Nok­un­zola – who advised her not to touch the scary fowl.
San­goma Gogo Bila from Mozam­bigue arrived at the same time as a Sun­Team. The chicken was “talk­ing in a strange lan­guage no one could under­stand.”
San­goma Bila grabbed the bird and fed it his own muthi to make it weak. Hun­dreds of res­id­ents gathered to watch the battle.
They shouted at the chicken: “We know who you are. Just change and reveal yourself…we know you are human!”
Mag­gie said: “I trust my God. He knew me before birth and He will never fail me.
“Who­ever is out to get me or kill me must for­get it because my life is in the hands of Jesus.”
The san­goma said: “The chicken is very dan­ger­ous…
The per­son who sent it here wants Mag­gie dead.
The per­son is doing everything in her power to des­troy this house­hold but she (Mag­gie) is too strong.”
After feed­ing the chicken muthi the young san­goma dug a hole in front of Maggie’s house and burned the muthi bird with par­affin.
Then he cut it open with a sharp knife and poured more muthi inside.
The remains of the strange fowl were bur­ied out­side Maggie’s house.

The list of cringe­worthy points here is rather lengthy, ran­ging from the unpal­ate­able depic­tion of impov­er­ished lin­gual and journ­al­ism intel­lect to the cada­ver­ous dis­em­bark­a­tion from real­ity when it comes to spir­ital beliefs in 2011, and finally, that all of the car­rion involved in the pro­duc­tion and present­a­tion of this tragedy are eli­gible to vote.

We’re in deep, deep shit.

Septem­ber 10th, 1945 finds a strap­ping (but tender) five and a half month old Wyan­dotte rooster peck­ing through the dust of Fruita, Col­or­ado. The unsus­pect­ing bird had never looked so deli­cious as he did that, now fam­ous, day. Clara Olsen was plan­ning on fea­tur­ing the plump chicken in the even­ing meal. Hus­band Lloyd Olsen was sent out, on a very routine mis­sion, to pre­pare the des­ig­nated fryer for the pan. Noth­ing about this task turned out to be routine. Lloyd knew his Mother in Law would be din­ing with them and would savor the neck. He posi­tioned his ax pre­cisely, estim­at­ing just the right tol­er­ances, to leave a gen­er­ous neck bone. “It was as import­ant to Suck-Up to your Mother in Law in the 40’s as it is today.” A skill­ful blow was executed and the chicken staggered around like most freshly ter­min­ated poultry.

Then the determ­ined bird shook off the trau­matic event and never looked back. Mike (it is unclear when the fam­ous rooster took on the name) returned to his job of being a chicken. He pecked for food and preened his feath­ers just like the rest of his barn­yard buddies.

When Olsen found Mike the next morn­ing, sleep­ing with his “head” under his wing, he decided that if Mike had that much will to live, he would fig­ure out a way to feed and water him. With an eye­d­rop­per Mike was given grain and water. It was becom­ing obvi­ous that Mike was spe­cial. A week into Mike’s new life Olsen packed him up and took him 250 miles to the Uni­ver­sity of Utah in Salt Lake City . The skep­tical sci­ent­ists were eager to answer all the ques­tions regard­ing Mike’s amaz­ing abil­ity to sur­vive with no head. It was determ­ined that ax blade had missed the jug­u­lar vein and a clot had pre­ven­ted Mike from bleed­ing to death. Although most of his head was in a jar, most of his brain stem and one ear was left on his body. Since most of a chicken’s reflex actions are con­trolled by the brain stem Mike was able to remain quite healthy.

In the 18 MONTHS that Mike lived as “The Head­less Won­der Chicken” he grew from a mere 2 1/2 lbs. to nearly 8 lbs. In a Gayle Meyer inter­view Olsen said Mike was a “robust chicken — a fine spe­ci­men of a chicken except for not hav­ing a head.” Some long­time Fruita res­id­ents, gathered at the Monu­ment Cafe for cof­fee, also remem­ber Mike — “he was a big fat chicken who didn’t know he didn’t have a head” — “he seemed as happy as any other chicken.” Mike’s excel­lent state of health made it dif­fi­cult for animal-rights act­iv­ists to garner much of a fol­low­ing. Even now the town of Fruita cel­eb­rates Mike’s impress­ive will to live, not the nature of his han­di­cap. Mir­acle Mike took on a man­ager, and with the Olsens in tow, set out on a national tour. Curi­ous sideshow pat­rons in New York , Atlantic City , Los Angeles , and San Diego lined up to pay 25 cents to see Mike. The “Won­der Chicken” was val­ued at $10,000.00 and insured for the same. His fame and for­tune would earn him recog­ni­tion in Life and Time Magazines. It goes without say­ing there was a Guin­ness World Record in all this. While return­ing from one of these road trips the Olsens stopped at a motel in the Ari­zona desert. In the middle of the night Mike began to choke. Unable to find the eye­d­rop­per used to clear Mike’s open eso­phagus Mir­acle Mike passed on.

Now, Mike’s spirit is cel­eb­rated the third week­end in May.

www.miketheheadlesschicken.org

‘We love you, but we will kill you.’

One could write many posts on the dis­gust­ing examples of animal abuse to be found just about every­where, but I’m going to con­cen­trate, here and now, on a new trend in South Africa of threat­en­ing the gen­eral pop­u­lous with animal abuse.

For a few years now there has been an increase in the num­ber of advert­ise­ments and emails doing the rounds threat­en­ing ‘whomever’ with the ‘put­ting down’ of the ori­ginal sender’s animal/s if a new home is not found for them.

This was the basic version.

Now though, we are shown pho­tos of [pre­sum­ably] the anim­als (usu­ally dogs) in ‘cutesy’ poses.

We are spun stor­ies of own­ers mov­ing into smal­ler homes, com­plexes that dis­al­low anim­als or emmigration.

Hell, just yes­ter­day I came across a story of a Bearded Dragon (a type of liz­ard) being offered for sale because the lady’s son had “lost interest”. The Bearded Dragon was free, but she wanted R700 (about USD $100) for the cage.

An animal is not an orna­ment. It’s not a ‘trend’, or a ‘fash­ion item’. It’s a liv­ing creature.

Thought­less­ness and tact­less­ness all in one. What nice own­ers that liz­ard has. I hope he finds a new home soon.

Exclud­ing the truly sick people of this planet, how many cases of chil­dren on offer for the above reas­ons have you heard of?

“Oh, we’re mov­ing to a lovely apart­ment on the East Side. It’s rather quaint though, so instead of ditch­ing the TV we’ve decided to give the kid away.”

NOT LIKELY.

I’m writ­ing this with an email adja­cent to me por­tray­ing some domestic scenes filled with the antics of Huskies.

On offer is a male and female adult, and their litte rof 8-week old pups.

If the pups are only 8-weeks old, it is surely fair to assume that any major changes hap­pen­ing in the live­li­hoods or life­styles of the own­ers would be mature knowledge.

If the owner/s were say, sud­denly retrenched or maimed in a car acci­dent, this know­ledge should be made known. As it isn’t, and I’m assum­ing every other such ad’ doesn’t included retrenched and/or maimed own­ers, it is pathetic on their parts to allow the breed­ing of their anim­als with no for­ward plan­ning for the expec­ted pups.

Own­ing an animal doesn’t mean just feed­ing, water­ing and giv­ing the animal a place to sleep. If you can­not reas­on­ably care for an animal in terms of neutering/spaying, inn­ocu­la­tions, unex­pec­ted med­ical expenses, relo­cat­ing if neces­sary, provid­ing a secure envir­on­ment and the like, then wtF are you doing own­ing one?

Think of an animal as a child in another form. That is the amount of care you need to bestow upon it. Not one iota less.

Just as people require a license to oper­ate a vehicle, so should there be one for the own­er­ship of an animal.

To the abus­ive (yes, you are) care­takers of the anim­als thus advert­ised: You can­not hon­estly argue the point that threat­en­ing the destruc­tion of your animal/s proves your eli­gib­il­ity to ‘own’ and care for said animals.

Think care­fully about whether you want an animal. They’re not creatures of c0nvenience; they’re to be con­sidered long-term fam­ily members.

Prac­tice makes perfect.