Today the 5th Circuit Court ruled that it’s legal to sacrifice a goat for religious purposes. My first reaction was horror and disgust. “Of course, that’s wrong!”

But, as I thought more about it, my feelings became less clear. On a personal level, killing a sentient creature is wrong. That’s not confusing for me. But on a public level, can I hold the same position?

It would be easy to say that Santeria is evil and shouldn’t be allowed. But if we start attacking religions because we think their practices are immoral, where do we stop? I think that’s a slippery slope best not started down.

So I guess the issue comes back to where it does so often, freedom doesn’t just apply to things you like. Not always an easy lesson but an important one.

What do you think? Good decision or a bad one?

The Pew Research Center has done a survey of both the general public and scientists. The whole thing makes interesting reading but there were a couple of points I wanted to highlight.

The first one concerns using animals for research. I would have thought this one was pretty popular with both groups. You know, the whole “medical research saved my grandmother,” type of thing. While it is very popular with scientists (93%), regular folks were much more skeptical (52%). That’s still a majority but a lot better than I would have guessed.

And the other issue is the effect of regulations on animal research. While I think the regs we currently have are pretty much a joke, that doesn’t stop the other side from trying to get out of them. So do the scientists think the laws are restricting progress? It seems only 27% do.

I’m struck by the fact PETA or HSUS could be commissioning these sorts of polls and it would be very useful information. Much more than a new Holocaust ad or a new happy meat campaign.

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, gang aft agley. — Robert Burns

I’d been working on a new post trying to lay out my new animal activism philosophy, when the Real World(tm) reared it’s ugly head and disrupted everything. Basically I was going to say I was going to concentrate on culinary activism because that’s what I seem to actually be good at and not worry so much about other things.

Oops.

Some of our local community have decided they’d like to begin killing pigeons. Now I can’t exactly say I love pigeons but don’t think they need to die to accomplish the aims here. The problem we’re having is our 1903 courthouse, which is a beautiful building, is being damaged by the pigeon droppings being left on it. Anyone who has a car that’s been pooped upon will be able to relate. Anyone who keeps parrots will definitely be able to (I’m looking at you, Ozzie and BB!)

It seems that several things have been tried to an effort to prevent the birds from perching on the courthouse. We’ve got a nesting pair of peregrine falcons living in one of our taller buildings and they, of course, eat pigeons among other things. Some of our buildings with flatter roofs have spike strips to keep the pigeons from landing. Sound machines have tried to scare them away. And all to no avail.

But I can’t see killing them as the answer. Purely on practical terms, pigeons are nothing if not prolific. Unless we’re to wage some sort of war on pigeons for miles around, new birds are just going to move in.

And I have to ask, how do other cities deal with pigeons? We’re certainly not the only city with both pigeons and old buildings.

So I’m off to gather up some contact information and start writing some letters. I would like to solicit some input from you, my dear readers. Do any of you know of any good humane pigeon removal resources? How other cities are dealing with this issue?

I’ll be putting up a page with the information I come up with and hopefully a solution.

No worries, this isn’t going to be another post about getting Iggy down off the curtain rod again. It’s about efforts to save the kakapo.

The kakapo is a large (about nine pounds) and flightless parrot. It also has lost pretty much semblance of an effective fight or flight mechanism. As you can imagine, once man came on the scene, a large bird that basically just sets there and looks at you would become known as just one thing, lunch. And so most of the kakapos went down European gullets.

Fortunately, New Zealand has begun a program to save the kakopa and there are now more than 100. In fact there are more than 30 chicks currently being raised. And an American zoologist has been providing medical assistance to the program.

Good luck to the kakopa!

No, it’s not a sequel to the Alfred Hitchcock classic. Although I’d pay money to see that, come to think of it …

The Wal-Mart in Mays Landing, New Jersey, has a problem with birds flying in. Now I can understand why that isn’t a desirable situation. Nobody wants bird poop on their stuff before they can even get it home so live trapping the birds and releasing them outside seems like a pretty good solution. But, you do have to check the traps occasionally or they aren’t so much of a live trap anymore. And that seems to be the problem. The local SPCA has accused Wal-Mart of leaving birds to die in their traps. We’ll see.