Can I Keep It?

Puppy Number: 199287

On the first full day of office, Mayor AC Wharton broke the scandalous behavior at the Memphis Shelter wide open.  A whistle blower had been documenting the atrocities happening at the facility for quite some time.  These pictures are of Puppy Number: 199287.  They are quite graphic.  It will break your  heart. 

Puppy Number: 199287 arrived at the shelter in fine shape.  She was a friendly female pit mix, about twenty-three pounds, white with black spots. 

Three weeks later, she had lost a quarter of her body weight.  Her bone marrow fat mass was around 2.4%.  Average puppies have a fat content of 60%.  She passed away of non-accidental starvation.

According to the autopsy, she had been without food or water for at least seventy-two hours.  The real tragedy is that she is not the only one.  There were several other documented cases of dogs denied sustenance.  Other were put to sleep without an attempt to contact owners.  More horror stories are from owners who called to find their pet at the pound, but by the time they arrived, the animal had been euthanized.  Several weeks ago, a report of abuse was made public concerning a dog who had been picked up by the road crew and presumed dead.  From under a pile of bodies awaiting cremation, he woke and his cries of pain were so loud that they were heard from inside the building, through a heavy gauge steel door and concrete walls.  The technician, standing right next to the bodies, claimed he didn't hear it.  No charges were filed against the worker.  The mortally injured dog was humanely put to sleep. 

This would have been allowed to continue under the last administration.  AC Wharton relieved the current director, Ernest Alexander, of his duties today.  More dismissals are likely to follow.  Possible criminal charges, too.

I continue to hear people mistakenly call this city facility, The Memphis Humane Society.  It absolutely is not.  This little shop of horrors is the Memphis Animal Shelter, 3456 Tchulahoma Road.  The Memphis/Shelby County Humane Society is in no way affiliated with the city run shelter. 

Well, they did take in several of the animals after the sheriffs stormed the building this week.  But that is what a shelter is supposed to do --provide a safe, healthy environment for pets without homes to live in until they can be placed with a family of their very own.

Puppy Number: 199287 deserved better. 

The city of Memphis deserves better. 

Delirious

Wheeeeeee!  Zali and I have FINALLY gotten some new commissions to work on.  Things have been slow as molasses here at the Hudarosa.  Paintings have been as rare as hen's teeth.  My career has hit a dry spell...The puppies!  They are starving!

Not really.  But it is a relief to get some income to replace the outgo for a change.

We're gonna' party like it's 1999!  We're over the moon!  We're ass over appetite!  We're to the moon and beyond!  We're coo coo for cocoa puffs!

Not really.  Sigh.  I'm outta' cliches...  Back to work!

Romper Room

I now know how a vampire feels when the sunlight hits him.  The last two days, the sun has been so brilliant that I feared I might turn to dust under its bright beams.  The children have been beside themselves.  Zali has not stopped giggling since Halloween.  He and his sister, Simone have been playing non-stop.  All I hear are the sounds of thumping bodies as they flip each other across the floor.

The tone on the soundtrack would be, "Grahhhhh, grahhhh, arfoo, glabble!" and then a solid, "thwap"!  At one point, they were racing so fast from the kitchen, around the dining room table and into the foyers and back again, that I feared they might turn into butter.  Simone had broken into full on "crazy run".  Since Zali can't compete at that pace, he stopped, grabbed a toy and decked her with it as she wailed around a corner.  She spun, tail over appetite, jumped up and knocked him on his keester.  Such a delicate frail flower, our Simone...

All the breeders will warn you of the fragile nature of tiny breeds.  I believed them when we adopted Zali and gently lifted him on and off of any high surface.  Well, right up until I heard the big girls wrestling in the hallway and missing Zali, went to investigate.  I arrived just in time to see him fly out of the cartoon ball of rolling dogs and into the living room.  Whhhheeeeerrrrt!  Just like a paper airplane.  He shook off and slammed back into the fray.

Simone was not coddled like Zali.  She can leap to the heights of our bed and onto barstools.  No obstacle is too high for our little athlete.  It's as if she's been given steroids.

Either I have been misinformed or my Papillons are otherworldly super dogs. 

Or maybe on days when the sun is shining and they recently had a snack, a dog's gotta' do what a dog's gotta' do.  And mine can play with the best of them.

Random Acts of Photography

This tasty morsel is brought to you by www.tastespotting.com .

FEED ME.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!  Happy Halloween!

Halloween Happiness

My fabulous Huddie sent me these wonderful punkins carved with the faces of puppies.  It must have taken great patience!  Looks like I better get out the knives and start today if I want to do up my brood.  The aftermath of all that squash waste will resemble a great pumpkin massacre in my kitchen, I'm sure.  Zali and Carmen will assume that all debris are snacks.  Just like any other day...

 

 

 

 

Happy Halloweiners, everybody!

*  The artist's name was not included in the email.

Trick or Treat

Vickie sent me this from Gatlinburg.  Some early tricks are a real treat...

This is the true story of a Garage Owner

in Southwest New Mexico

He was sick and tired of thugs breaking into his garage shop to steal tools, etc.

So he came up with this idea.

He put the word out that he had a new Mexican Lion

that would attack anyone that would break in or climb his fence.  

Would-be thieves saw the "Lion" from a distance and fled the scene.

 

Now all he needs is a witch and a wardrobe.

All's Well...

...That ends well.  This is an update on the adopted baby orangutan I posted from www.zooborns.typepad.com .  She just gets cuter by the minute.  Warning:  If you are diabetic, viewing these images may cause coma.

Two weeks ago we brought you pictures of baby Kali at the Kansas City Zoo. The little female orangutan had been abandoned by her mother but found a happy life with new surrogate mom "Jill." Today we check back in on baby Kali who is reportedly doing great.

 

I think I'm feeling faint...

Random Acts of Photography

Shhhh.  We haven't told Zoe yet that the Big Blue Buddy Dog is not real...

She talks to it for hours.  Pretty, pretty Zoe.

Mistaken Identity

People of the Internets:  It has come to my attention that many of you are falsely identifying "prairie dogs" as "chipmunks".  The video of the Dramatic Chipmunk?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw   It's a prairie dog.

This picture of a chipmunk fighting for his snack with some birds?  It's a prairie dog, too.

Tad Arensmeier / Zuma Press

Food fight

A chipmunk defends his lunch against a gang of starlings in the St. Louis Zoo in St. Louis, Mo

You'd think some one would know the difference over at the St. Louis Zoo.

Chipmunks are decorated with stripes and spots.  They weigh only a few ounces and are common city dwellers.

Prairie dogs live in the southwest in large underground communities.  They are quite social, have no racing stripes and weigh up to four pounds.

I felt I must clear up this injustice in honor of my dear sweet ZuZu Petals.  A prairie dog makes an excellent pet.  She was loving, kind, clean and a lot of fun.  She adored company.  Upon entering a room, ZuZu would throw her head back and bark a loud, "Uh huh!"  Sometimes she would even fall over backwards in her exuberance.  I can still see her stretched out on her tummy with her legs flat behind her, propped up on her elbows munching a piece of sweet potato on my stomach.

I miss her gentle, funny soul.

Fish Story

My grandfather, dad and brother thought it was big fun to go out to one of E.W.'s lakes in Mississippi to spend the day fishing.

Me?  Not so much.

Inevitably, I would be dragged out of bed, drenched from head to toe with toxic mosquito spray, forced to wear some nasty ill-fitting clothing, driven out to the edges of the universe and dumped into a bass boat on a dark, muddy lake to cast worms into their fate.  In Mississippi.  In the Summer.  Good times. Good Times.

One this particular day, the gar were swarming the shallow boat, flipping on their backs to display razor sharp rows of shiny teeth.  The intimidation worked.  I proceeded to whine about returning to civilization.  E.W. cleverly proffered a solution to assuage my constant mewing.  He suggested a contest between Michael and me.  The first of us to catch a ten pound bass, would get twenty dollars.

Now, my grandfather stocked that lake himself every Spring.  He knew that the waters were so thick with gar that no Bass, Crappy or Spot could ever dream of achieving such a wondrous girth.  We, however, were fooled.  It was game on!

Michael hit first, reeling in the largest snapping turtle I have ever seen.  As my father realized what it was, he grabbed a paddle and shoved it from the boat.  The giant jaws clamped down and left a bite mark as large as my head.  He shot it with his pistol.  The beast sank to the murky bottom.  The gar disappeared for the unexpected feast.  The fish started jumping.

I left my first worm dangling from a tree.  The second cast landed by some snags.  The hit was quick.  It was so powerful that instead of reeling the fish to the boat, we were headed towards it.  Suspecting that we had nailed the second Snapping Turtle of the day, E.W. moved to the front and assisted.  The closer it got to the boat, the more excited my cries.  It wasn't a turtle, gar or snake, but a TEN POUND BASS.

My father was so proud, he took me straight to the newspaper in the center of West Point.  My other grandfather worked as a pressman there.  The photographer took my picture.  My giant Bass and I appeared the following day.  E.W. reluctantly handed over a ten.  The fish was slightly under ten pounds, he said, so I didn't make the bet.

It's amazing what a fish will bite if it gets hungry enough.  For example:

These photos appeared in the Wichita Newspaper in 2004.  A fisherman saw a ball bobbing erratically in the water.  As he approached, he realized that it had a catfish attached to it.  He stabbed the basketball with a fishing knife to free the poor creature.

Like E.W. that day, it seems that he had bitten off more than he could chew.

* I checked this story with www.snopes.com .  These are not photoshopped. It is real.

Thanks, Vickie, for sharing these with me!*