Sadie's adoption day - sadiesadoptionDSCN1248
Image by marymactavish
After eight weeks with us, today Sadie graduated from foster-dog to official permanent family member. We celebrated afterward with butter pecan ice cream for all of us.
THE GREAT PIG CAPTURE
Image by rikkis_refuge
Chief Animal Control Officer Patricia Dahl is a familiar sight around Rikki's Refuge. One thinks of the ACO as the dog catcher. But out here in the country it gets a lot more exciting. Trish chases down emus, cows, goats and pigs. Sunday she was the only one on call to respond to the citizen who had two pigs rooting up his yard. Trish called Rikki's for back up support. Lena Stocks, Darryl Adams, Drew Cox, Cameron Sayer, Joe Callahan and I took a few hours off to assist. Laurie and Andrew came along to help Trish.
The two relatively young farm pigs weighing only 300 pounds or so each were dining on a flower garden in an unfenced yard. Our job was to simply catch them and put them in the animal control vehicle and then get them out and into a dog run at the shelter to hold as strays. Hopefully the owner would claim them or we'd be having to figure out how to expand Piggy Paradise to house farms. Right now we only house pots. Pot Belly Pigs - you know miniature pigs - those advertised to reach only 40 pounds but topping the scales at 300 by the time they're two years old. They are miniature compared to farms who have reached this size in 3 or 4 months.
We began to attempt to heard the pigs toward the livestock trailer Trish had brought along. No such luck - they headed for the woods. When a pig charges a line of humans, no matter how close you're standing or how hard you push back with your hands - the pig just glides right thru. They are wedge shaped and very ... well ... pigheaded.
Pigs were made to dash thru dense forests rooting up truffles as they go and knocking everything out of their way. humans were made to walk slowly on nice sandy beaches with no obstacles.
Back and forth we chased the pigs. One male and one female. The male was in the lead and we figured if we got him the female might, please might, follow. Twice he was lassoed and twice he drug his captors thru the woods giving them good rope burns and whacking their heads on trees. Back and forth we chased the pig. We were all very upset when he found a small hole in the fence into the next yard and burrowed under. Now what? The order came - jump the fence and get him before he tears up someone else's yard.
After another hour of chasing up and down hills, back and forth over the fence, around trees and tripping over vines Drew and Darryl had him down. Grunting, kicking, screaming, rolling over and tossing them about. We waited for Trish to bring the vehicle in. We kept commenting about the cow pies littering the ground and hoping there wasn't a bull lose in the are we were in. An angry bull is not an animal you want to contend with. Meanwhile Laurie and Andrew were in hot pursuit of the female pig and well out of sight from the rest of us.
Trish walked and walked and walked until she found the gate to this property and it was locked. Finally she roused the owner and asked permission to come in and pick up the apprehended pig. The owner was less than happy when he discovered people on his property. One group of the trespassers were holding down his male pig and the other group were cornered, along with the female pig, by the angry bull.
We couldn't believe our ears when Trish walked back and hollered, "untie him and let him go." What? The pig was already home and now the owner had a fence job to look forward for the rest of the day.
This photo was snapped on a cell phone just before we let him go and watched him saunter off, digging up truffles (or bugs or something) and swishing his tail, seemingly no worse for the wear. The weary group of humans got up and trudged back to our truck only to head home picking off ticks and scrubbing off poison ivy.
Whale Tongue
Image by Thoth, God of Knowledge
A LARGE PORTION OF TONGUE. Three-thousand-pound edible tongue of a Pacific gray whale.
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article:
THE EDIBLE FLESH OF ONE WHALE EQUALS IN BULK STEERS OR 500 SHEEP, AND IT "TASTES REMARKABLY LIKE BEEF"
WHALE-STEAKS
AMERICANS ARE LEARNING to like whale meat. Other nations have always liked it, but we are slow to adopt what we consider foreign foods, altho there is nothing particularly foreign about the whale. The Food Administration is responsible for our early attempts at eating whale, but, according to a writer in The Scientific American (Now York, November 16), our liking bids fair to grow and spread after the emergency that gave rise to it has passed. During the war the production of whale meat has enabled us to keep the usual supply of domestic animals nearly normal and has released ample meats of other types for the maintenance of our military and naval forces. Plants for preparing whale meat, storage-houses for keeping it, and vessels for its distribution, are now scattered along the North Pacific coast. Seven stations have thus disposed of about one thousand whales this season —all of which we have eaten. Readers who have never knowingly consumed whale are invited to reflect on the fact that it tastes remarkably like beef. The original owner of that luscious steak you ate last night may possibly have swum the North Pacific instead of galloping about on the grassy plains of Texas. We read:
"The meat of the whale extends in great masses from the base of the skull to the tail fin and downward to the middle line, or completely over the rib section. This meat, all of it of the same quality, amounts to ten tons for each fifty feet of length and each fifty tons gross weight of the whale. Above these dimensions there may be fifteen tons of solid whale flesh of best eating quality. In other words, one-fifth of a whale is meat, without computing the other parts, such as the heart, etc., that are edible. The steer, being also a mammal, with nearly identical skeletonic structure, represents almost precisely the same proportions. That is to say, a steer weighing 1,000 pounds has 200 pounds of beef, but only a proportion of its meat of the first class such as characterizes nearly the whole whale flesh. A 50-foot, 50-ton whale, then, represents in bulk a herd of 100 steers of one-half ton weight each. He represents as much meat also as the herd. He is also equal to 500 sheep of 200 pounds each or to 300 hogs of 350 pounds each.
"Of course, steers range up to a ton of weight, with a corresponding increase of weight of flesh. But a whale also weighs up to 75 tons, representing a herd of 150 steers of a half-ton weight each. Any way you look at it, the whale has advantages over beef cattle. He requires no herdsmen or cowboys to care for him. He and his wife rear, feed, and guard their own young without any assistance from laborers. There is no cost to any one to feed him or his family; no food, clothes, or fuel to buy, with corresponding labor to produce them. When wanted, the whale is in his given haunts, ready to be taken. No butchering is required for him, the harpoon gun lands the fatal stroke. All you have to do is to haul him out and cut him up. The cost of whatever processes are required to put a whale on the market is so small in comparison with that of breeding and rearing a stow that Americans, like the Japanese, will soon have meat as good as the best parts of beef at probably not over fifteen cents per pound and in as large quantities as any family needs.......
"A whale is a mammal, not a fish. It produces its young alive and suckles them the same as a cow. Its flesh looks like that of beef, altho admittedly a little coarser in texture, and it has a slight flavor of venison. Whale steaks and roast whale have been served in several of the leading New York restaurants for some time past, having had a preliminary test at Delmonico's restaurant. New York chefs have developed the best methods of cooking and serving, and have found that it yields to as many forms of preparation as beef. There is little to distinguish it from beef, when served on the table, either in appearance, aroma, or taste. Many would be deceived into thinking it beef if not told what had been served. It is only in America that whale meat is a novelty. In Asia and elsewhere whale meat is the staple food.
"Whale meat has every advantage over beef—mutton— pork. In the first place, the whale is a diseaseless mammal, and its salt-water habitats contribute to its freshness, cleanness, digestibility, and healthfulness as food. On the contrary, cattle are subject to tuberculosis and foot-and-mouth and other diseases more or less communicable to humans. As an example, according to the statistics issued by the University of California, a billion pounds of pork are annually lost to America from hog-cholera. Sheep are subject to foot-and-mouth and other diseases. Disease also is destructive to immense numbers of the poultry and domestic food-bird families. In brief, we have diseased meats of all descriptions, if bred on land, and no diseases to worry about if bred in salt water. The meat of the back of the whale further differs from that of all other edible mammals, in that it is uniform, that is, all roasts and steaks, and also boneless. Its sirloin section, of some ten tons, is entirely kicking in those tough, cheap, and nearly inedible parts characteristic of beef, which some of us have to consume or go without meat because of the cost."
In conclusion, the writer quotes Dr. Roy C. Andrew's book on "Whale Hunting with the Camera" to the effect that few people realize the great part whale meat plays in the life of the poorer Japanese, who cannot afford to buy beef. For shipping purposes, it is cooked in great kettles, canned, and sent to all parts of the Empire.
