The Mysteries of the Seal

Chief Inspector Seal

The Random Animal’s long absence has a simple explanation: alien abduction. Usually such abductions occur in compressed inter-galactic time, so that the abductee returns in seconds without any sense of time lost and with only a vague sense of having been used in various sexually-curious experiments. This the abduction felt more like staying in a dark November room with a cold and trying to meet several unexpected work deadlines.

But several mystery novels that featured animals were consumed: False Mermaid by Erin Hart and Bad Intentions by Norwegian writer Karin Fossum. Neither one is specifically focused on animals, so read them for their suspense and ambiance rather than for sustained attention to animal issues. Nonetheless, they both reveal how humans imaginatively and literally use animals to help them negotiate human dilemmas.

Erin Hart’s mysteries feature the anthropological anthropologist, Nora Gavin, who travels back and forth between her Minnesota home and the bogs of Ireland, where she solves the ancient crimes behind bodies unearthed from peat. In False Mermaid, however, the mystery is much closer: that of her beautiful actress sister, Triona, five years earlier. Nora believes she knows the perpetrator, Triona’s slickly handsome husband, but can find no proof. It also seems there was something slippery and constantly changing about her sister’s character and behavior. Like the mermaids who fascinated her, was Triona lovely one moment and dangerous another, tempting others toward destruction?

This murder is set against Nora’s Irish experiences and her interest in songs about mermaids and seals that come ashore to become human wives but then slip away again—“selkies.” In one song the mythical creature who “abandons the love of life,” disappearing to human company, is named as a very specific woman, Mary Heaney, who left behind children, Patrick and Mary. As Nora contemplates the strange history, maybe even crime, behind the ballad, her eleven-year-old niece Elizabeth lives in Seattle with her murder-suspect father, and consoles herself over her mother’s loss with a stolen book called A Selkie’s Child and by going to the bay to commune with a real seal who seems taken with her.

The novel gathers suspense with two love interests for Nora (one American, one Irish), oversexed and jealous lovers, obsessions about past violence, the use of illicit drugs, a child caught between warring relatives, and transnational chases. Seals appear and disappear as a hint that something in the universe, perhaps something benevolent, is watching. While there are intimations of supernatural presences, the problems of human passion remain the focus. The animal is more important as an emblem and possibility. There are no interjections about what happens when seals are exposed to pollution or when people turn against them because they despoil a beach. The woman/seal interchange is beguiling, but a more plausible magic is to believe that seals and Labrador retrievers are the shape changers (not always much difference in their shapes.) Think about it. When I’ve kayaked among seals (not myself turning into one), their big round heads and eyes and curious looks, not to mention the bark, recall Labs who jump in the water and hold up their heads, waiting for some stick action. The Lab-seal. 

I forget, was I a mermaid or a Pinniped?

So the seals in the novel seem soulful and tender—answering the characters’ desires to find empathy and acceptance. The myths of mermaids and selkies belong to the human fascination with metamorphosis, with the wish to take on an animal’s mysterious powers. In the tales Hart includes, the metamorphosis involves loss. The seal who becomes human must leave her old life, perhaps forever, and submit to being a wife. The woman who becomes seal returns to freedom but must abandon what was loved.  To be fully human is a compromise.

The False Mermaid has a driving plot with the allure of myth and romance. If you like forensic detail blended with Celtic romance and Irishmen who play fiddles and flutes, enjoy.

Soon—Fossum and the redemptive cat.

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Tiger Woes and Dolphin Joys

Pondering Extinction

The Random Animal is back on grid and through the media has been exposed recently to two real-life animals stories that follow a familiar plot line.
The first is the now infamous shootings near Zanesville, Ohio.  It started with a 911 call, according to The New York Times, in which a woman claimed a bear and lion were right behind her. Terry Thompson, the owner of a private menagerie, had released 56 animals including large predators and then shot himself. The plot of what came next was unfortunately predictable. Animals considered dangerous are mishandled by human caretaker, and though a human may be at fault for the predicament, the animals are almost inevitably killed. Nearly all the animals that Thompson freed for whatever reason were killed in the name of safety. That includes 17 lions and 18 Bengal tigers. The number of Bengals in the wild is just over 2,000, and their habitat is shrinking. Whether the Ohio killing was the right or wrong call will be much debated, but attention has turned to the keeping of exotic animals, legally and not, by private owners.  Danny Groner collected surveys and opinions for The Huffington Post. Not surprising, a number of editorials and individuals call for an outright ban on from owning wild animals; such a ban exists in 21 states. He also cites a defense of keeping exotic pets USA Today: 

     "'What Thompson did was selfish and insane; we cannot regulate insanity," says Zuzana Kukol at    USA Today. . .'If we have the freedom to choose what car to buy, where to live, or what domestic      animal to have, why shouldn't we have the same freedom to choose what species of wild or exotic     animal to own and to love?' Cutting down on exotic animals because of 'a few deranged individuals' would be like trying to 'ban kids' in hopes of curbing child abuse."

Maybe this comment is meant to wake people up in hopes of seeing a fight. The analogy between outlawing tigers and outlawing children or pet dogs doesn't quite work. First, there's the whole issue of captivity of undomesticated animals. Second, children and pet dogs are part of the normal fabric of "domesticated" American society, if one--kid or dog--is let out of the house, people on the street generally know how to cope. A pat on the head for either often suffices.  A Bengal male can be well over 500 lbs of hungry predator. That's a difference.
The emerging consensus is that the animals shouldn't have been in a big electoral college state to begin with. Now to another state with a large role to play in presidential elections and a particular connection to wildlife, Florida.

I'm in the Navy now.

Swim with Dolphin and Dolphin-Assisted Therapy programs dot the Florida coastline. That coastline at Clearwater is the setting for a true story, which has "inspired" a new 3-D motion picture, Dolphin Tale. The star is the nonfictional Winter, a tail-less dolphin who swims with a prosthetic attached to her peduncle (yes, that's what I said). You can watch Winter in real time through the Clearwater Marine Aquarium webcam.
The "inspired" part of the film, which I just saw, is probably the added story of a lonely boy who connects with life and the world by rescuing Winter. That plot line is typical of child-animal romances: boy/girl rescues dog/orca/seal/dolphin, and in turn the animal "rescues" the child from a miserable ostracism while the surrounding community expands its perspective and sympathies to finally welcome child and redeeming animal. By the way, this plot rarely includes big predators: the exceptions might be the Kevin Costner character and the implausibly friendly wolf in Dances with Wolves and also from several years back the film Two Brothers which features an English boy in India who deserves far better parents and tiger cubs who grow up to be enormous. Plot spoiler: the grown tigers are not kept as pets. 
Dolphin Tale follows this formula in a pleasing enough way, though it segues into a tale about disability, not just an animal's but that of children and adults. This film's statement about disability may be more sentimental than profound, but it does make the point that coping with disability involves financial, scientific, social, and emotional resources in a community setting. Toward the end of the film, humans with physical disabilities make a pilgrimage to see Winter, the little dolphin who could.
That brings up another topic: the rise of Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) and its variant Dolphin Assisted Therapy (DAT). I've yet to hear of Tiger therapy, but you could recommend it to your enemies. U.S. sites for DAT stress that dolphins are not mystical healers, but they provide joy and motivation. (The scientific evidence for DAT is not conclusive at this point.) O.K., there's the enormous issue of keeping any healthy dolphin in captivity. Dolphin researcher Lori Marino (one of the scientists who demonstrated that dolphins have mirror recognition and therefore self-awareness) and philosopher Thomas White are among those who believe that dolphins are too smart and social, and in need of too big an ocean home, to be held captive.
Meanwhile, more and more seek dolphin therapy, which I once observed, and the demand for it grows. For accounts and images of therapy, see Island Dolphin Care.
Back to the movie, Winter may be the rare animal suited for captivity: she could not survive in the wild and apparently has the social skills to thrive in an extended "family" of humans and dolphins. For me, the most touching parts of the movie came at the end, after the fictionalized child/animal plot, with documentary footage of Winter's rescue in 2006. The real rescue showed a dolphin bloody and traumatized by a crab trap and fishing ropes strangling her tail (there's another story here about habitat).  It's reassuring to know that at least one animal was saved from human folly.

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Out to Lunch

The Random Animal has been preoccupied lately, but will return in a few days with new posts.

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Holy Carp, Wolfman!

"I'm shocked!"

Asian Carp keep showing up in the news because they keep showing up in more rivers and lakes. They are not wanted. They eat, grow into giants, and displace other species. They could disrupt a 7 million dollar plus fishery business in the upper Midwest. But how to keep them out? In Minnesota, a plan to put electric barriers between the Mississippi River and the "wild and scenic" St. Croix has stalled, partly because of territorial issues. Does the other river bank--Wisconsin--have to be involved? What agency oversees a plan, and will the plan be effective?
A Star Tribune story of September 18th narrates how a $5 million dollar initiative to erect "an underwater sound barrier" got washed away. It seems the state's Department of Natural Resources thought the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would take over at some point, because that's what the Corps tends to do. "We were surprised to hear they couldn't work with us on the project," Steve Hirsch, the DNR's director of ecological and water resources, told the Star Tribune. Hirsch added that the Corps claimed "they weren't authorized or funded to work on it."In short, there are turf wars and a lack of communication among politicians who voted for the funding, the DNR, the two states, and the Army Corps. As the carp says, "I'm shocked!"
Complicating the issues is a debate about the effectiveness of barriers against hungry carp.  But here the Army Corps recently offered "new evidence that a series of barriers in the Chicago River waterway system have been 'very effective,'" and increased voltage might improve that further.
For some, there's way too much government entanglement with Big-Mouth Carp, and they want private industry (with grant help from somewhere, and often that somewhere is a gov't) to sell the Carp back to Asia as food. Eat the crappy carp!
"We're in uncharted waters here," according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources spokesman Chris McCloud in Thursday's Chicago Tribune. "Why remove them and put them into a landfill when you can take them and use them for good? If we can get past the name 'carp' and the perception ... we can prove this is going to be a highly nutritious, cheap meal." It tastes, according to promoters, like a cross between scallops and crabmeat, if you can get past the barrier of numerous bones. Carp are low in mercury and high in Omega 3 fatty acids, so let's call carp "silverfin" (Patagonian toothfish was re-imaged as pricey Chilean sea bass) and get it on the menu. A Chicago chef already has a recipe for "Carp-accio."
Well, let them eat carp!
There are those who take offense at the terms of the discussion with "invasive" species pitted against "native." One problem is that such terms don't account for "natural" or adaptive biological changes over the eons and for changes caused by climate and geographical events. Other reasons for concern include a problematic analogy with human migration issues. For example, are illegal immigrants (or any immigrants) from other countries a threat to U.S. "natives"? It has also been pointed out that summarily applying "illegal" to children and infants just doesn't sound right. This is an area where human/animal comparisons fall apart: humans have the advanced cultural skills (we hope) to deal with global interchanges. Also, what does "native" mean when applied to U.S. residents? They're actually Asiatic but crossed an Alaskan land bridge in Prehistory? They were already here when the Mayflower landed? They came on the Mayflower? They fled a potato famine? They fled the Nazis and arrived with advanced degrees in physics? Complicate that with the travels of European or American "natives" in the era of colonialism and currently with globalization.? Is Coca-Cola a dangerous invasive species?
The Random Animal will leave these questions for presidential debates. There's also the point that being a species native to the North American Continent insures acceptance and protection. Take the case of the wolf, again. As noted in the blog of August 24th, Montana and Idaho will have hunting seasons for the re-introduced wolf. Apparently, withdrawing the wolf from the endangered species list was part of a federal budget deal--the wheeling and dealing that happens to pass legislation or tuck in a special interest item. All this is explained on a recent PBS Newshour report. Many ranchers still hate wolves, though wolves were in the area first. Since their reintroduction in 1995 to Yellowstone National Park, wolves have spread outside those boundaries and have killed about 4500 cattle and sheep. (It is difficult to find out if specific herds are particularly beset or how many livestock roamed the areas.) One rancher interviewed couldn't see the point of anyone wanting such a successful predator around. Another ranch family addresses the risk of wolf attach by keeping cattle grouped within movable fencing, mimicking the protective circle buffalo create. It takes more time and money, but they have not had wolf problems. And problem wolves have been shot regularly, under gov't oversight, and they are not part of the hunt count. The scientist involved with the wolves' return is not against hunting them. It's the numbers that are upsetting. As the Newshour reports, Montana has about 600 wolves and will permit the taking of 220. The Idaho plan is to reduce the state's 1000 wolves to 150. That's pretty close to the definition of "decimation." The argument for wolves? They are a "cash cow" for the Park, drawing in observers, photographers, amateur naturalists. They have reduced elk herds in the region, so plant growth has revived, preserving more plant species, keeping the rivers healthier, and supporting more small wildlife including songbirds.
Maybe "native" and "alien" are misleading terms for carp and wolves. It's a matter of viable bio-diversity. Add too many carp, and that's damaged. Take away too many wolves, and that's damaged.
If only the wolf's main food source was carp.

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Melville's Moby Dick and Jon Stewart's Daily Show

credit to LukeSurl.com

No, this is not a set-up for a bad joke. I've been slowly re-reading Moby-Dick (don't remember the first reading) and should be finished in time for the 2016 elections. It takes a long time to reach actual discussion of The Whale; and the blubber-thick book of wind-driven ships, Quakers, and harpooners seems wildly distant from current crises of international debt defaults, climate change, and twittering politicians. The novel resides in that unreachable ocean, The Past.
Then again, in the opening chapter,  narrator Ishmael imagines the front page of a newspaper announcing his whaling voyage sandwiched between these headlines: "Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States" and "Bloody Battle in Afghanistan." Herman Melville and a writer of the next generation, Mark Twain, might have been shocked and dismayed by Bernie Madoff  Ponzi schemes, but they would not have been surprised. Confidence men--the Con--have prominent places in their fictions and apparently in the American fabric. Both writers recognized the ability of people to con others and that most frequent trick, to con themselves. A nation of self-conners.
And while those with a recollection of American Lit. think of Moby-Dick's tale (sorry) as tragic, involving Death and Ahab, Ishmael offers a wry running commentary on the strangeness of human beings and their business. There's snark. He could be Jon Stewart or John Oliver, an extremely well-read and less crude version, bemused by pretension and folly in all he sees. A landlady, concerned about the doings or the having done of a boarder locked in his room, exclaims "He's killed himself ... It's unfort'nate Stiggs done over again--there goes another counterpane." To save bed covering counterpanes she dispatches a servant: "Go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign, with--'no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor.'"
O.K., Ishmael's (or rather Melville's) sentences are extremely layered, and as with Hawthorne and Thoreau a plethora of deep meanings are implied but not necessarily revealed and validated. There's an undeniable quest for meanings that, in the end, remain inscrutable or absent. After reflecting on how there's "all the difference in the world between paying and being paid," a point brought home by the current recession, Ishmael speculates on an "invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way." (This 160 years before phone tapping and Rupert Murdoch--an Ahab after a story). Phrases, allusions,  vocab, and foreshadowing throughout the book (Fate, Providence, Monster, superior natural force, ponderous heart, reality or a dream) send undergrads scrambling for the Code Book offered by internet versions of Cliff Notes.
Despite the aggregation of footnotes--blubber valuable or not--attending the text, the book is deemed by certain sources as appropriate for grades 5 (a precocious grade 5) and up. There are no sex scenes or bad words (depending about how you consider "sperm" as in "sperm whale), while the violence, mostly against animals, is quite acceptable. Certainly in the last decades of the 20th century, Ishmael's lack of obscenity and sexual encounters, along with his apparent acquiescence to authority, seem very innocent. That's until you get to the Gay Marriage part. Or the bonding with non-Christians.
It's not really same-sex marriage, but early on Ishmael shares a bed with the purply heathen Queequeg, who sounds like a cross between a giant Aborigine and a Smurf.

Thanks to Rockwell Kent and Pop Culture

 

It was not uncommon for boarders in an inn, particularly the poor ones, to share beds, and the landlord thinks it quite amusing to pair the vulnerable young Ishmael with a tattooed "cannibal" who's been out trying to sell a shrunken head. After some initial awkwardness involving a tomahawk, the two settle down to sleep, and Ishmael awakens the next morning with "Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife." There's certainly no talk of sexual attraction, and during following days the men focus on getting an assignment on a whaling ship. But their camaraderie deepens. In the chapter "A Bosom Friend," Ishmael concludes, "there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till near morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg--a cosy, loving pair."
How this passage would fare on FOX network discussions I don't want to know. The 5th grade teacher who dares to impose such dense prose on young students could well focus on the emotional intimacy, which lacks eroticism. Melville himself was married in a traditional way, and in a traditional way it went badly. Let's guess that Melville was difficult and moody. Then his sea-tale popularity, dragging his income along, started to make a frightening dive, rather like that of an incumbent president's during a recession. That might drive any wife to nagging or retreat.
Back to the bonding of Ishmael and Queequeg--probably shocking in 1851 was the intimacy between a very white Christian and a dark tattooed Pacific islander who worships a black wooden totem. Many of the early encounters between the two and other whalers revolve around Ishmael defending Queequeg's character--"see how elastic our stiff prejudices become when love comes to bend them." (And we are being set up for end events, which are far from cozy liaisons.) The plot moves forward when Ishmael convinces the managers of the Pequod, self-righteous and cheap Captain Bildad and blustery Captain Peleg, to sign up himself and Queequeg. "Queequeg here is a born member of the First Congregational Church," Ishmael protests, and when the pious Bildad pushes for explanation, Ishmael expounds that "every mother's son and soul of us belong" to the "great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world." Bildad hesitates at that ecumenical inclusion, but Peleg accepts Queequeg's faith upon seeing his "wild sort of" accuracy with a harpoon: "Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship's papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, we'll give you the ninetieth lay [a portion of profits far larger than Ishmael's], and that's more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket."
And that brings us to the Corporate Business of Whaling in the 19th and the 21st century--more on that to come.

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Last Heron of Summer

The nights are cool, the afternoons hot. The monarchs are moving south, but some migratory species still find time to bask in ultra-marine skies. This great blue heron found his pedestal,

Then he spoke,

And then fanned his wings to the sun.

The Random Animal will be traveling for a few days and will return with some book reviews.

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Wanted: Beavers, not Horses

Photo by Mary Beth Atwood from krqe.com

Texas is on fire. About 120,000 acres are burned or burning, about 700 homes have been lost thus far. According to the Texas Forest Service website, fire fighters spent the labor day holiday responding to 22 new fires.
Like the "megafires" described in a recent Audubon Magazine article (and discussed in an earlier blog here), these conflagrations degrade ecosystems and cause human suffering. When people suffer, animals suffer. That includes species often privileged or idealized, like horses. The two-year drought in Texas has turned grass and hay into kindling. Animals do not have enough to eat; farmers and ranchers have nothing to harvest and store. Hay is imported from states like Iowa, but that's not the same as having adequate grass growing where the animals live. More and more bone-thin horses are left with rescue groups, as  reported by ABC news earlier this summer. The same circumstances that lead to horse abandonment or surrender also inhibit adoption or horses restored to health. Some rescue groups, like Brighter Days near San Antonio, fear that they cannot take in any more animals.
While Texas and the nation struggle with immediate responses to fire and drought, other long-term solutions are up for consideration.
Some ranchers in rain-starved regions would like to see beaver return. This may seem like an odd longing, especially since beaver are often seen as pests whose constructions block trout streams, boating channels, or drainage lines.

"I know you want me."

As reported by a recent Wall Street Journal article, "in many states, it's legal to shoot a beaver on private land." However, the same article explains that beavers are excellent restorers of wetlands. As one conservancy director explains, "We can spend $200,000 putting wood into a stream, cabling down logs. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Put in a colony of beavers and it always works." So ranchers in places like Wyoming and Washington want to bring beavers back to places where they had been banished. What beaver dams retain can mitigate the impact of a dry season and provide drinking water for cattle and wildlife, and the subsurface water table fluctuates less. So now beavers are live-trapped elsewhere to be transferred to ranch lands that have some water source. Other species, from cougar and moose in the North and songbirds about anywhere, seem to rebound where beavers have created wetlands.
Texas is not currently in a situation where beavers can save the day. But the re-evaluation of beavers suggests that holistic approaches to ecosystems are not just for the dreams of abstract nature-lovers but for those who make a living from the land.

Dam, it's gone!

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