Thursday, January 15, 2009

SAVE THE SEA KITTENS

In Other News!

The other day I heard my dog who is roughly as smart as a deck chair crunching busily on something. When I arrived at the scene, he spat out what looked like a partly-hollowed-out black claw. I checked all his feet, yet every claw was present and accounted for.

This is a medical mystery. I am stumped. I think he ate another dog, but his lawyer denies all allegations.

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It's one month from Valentine's Day, my friends! (Unless you're like me and the most prominent male figure in your life is your dumb dog, in which case it's almost Singles Awareness Day, booo.) I want to take the opportunity to remind everyone that giving puppies as gifts is a BAD idea. No. Bad. Don't do it. If you're a guy, just tell her you respect her ability to make decisions independently of you enough that you want her to pick out her own dog, if she even wants one. That's like two gifts at once. Then tell her to get back in the kitchen.

I also want to say that if any males out there would like to give me a Panda Dog for V-Day, that would be okay.

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PETA's new campaign is to change the name of fish to "sea kittens". I can't make this stuff up! Go to the website secure in the knowledge that this will never ever happen and I can guarantee you'll be giggling for days. They want to make fish sound cute enough that we won't want to eat them, but they are overlooking one fact that seems very vital to their campaign. Fish are not cute, ever.

Have you seen a fish lately PETA??


I can see another flaw in that I, personally, would delight in the opportunity to tell people that I eat kittens.

They have a bunch of facts ready that are supposed to endear sea kittens to us, like, "A University of Edinburgh study found that sea kittens can retain information that they learned up to 11 months earlier, which makes them cuter and smarter than the president of the United States!" Oh no you di'n't PETA! "Like their surface-dwelling cousins, the land kittens, sea kittens enjoy being petted. Their lack of arms makes it difficult for them to pet back, but they often gently rub against each other as a sign of affection." And I know they are lying about this one because when I was six and tried to pet my goldfish it shat itself and hid in its castle. You are not selling me on sea kittens, PETA.

The sea kitten stories need no commentary, they speak pretty loudly for themselves.

PETA I love you. You brighten my chilly winter days. But seriously, look at a fish. I think even you will agree that ocean sunfish need to die. And then? we need to perform a Latin ritual to ensure that they never come back.

Ever.

9 comments:

GoLightly said...

MeThinks they watched "Finding Nemo" tooo many times.
And they wonder why they are considered nut-jobs!
Sea Kittens. Yeah, right!

A ban on fishing? Well, we are over-fishing the oceans to the point of no return, anyway.
SeaKittens are endangered.

PeTA, you are weird...

an American in Copenhagen said...

It really is like it’s a joke. You can really hear the crazy in those bedtime stories. I am still laughing.

Funny story—In college I spent 50dollars to have surgery on my Beta fish. It had this weird white lump on it's top fin and I could not bring myself to kill it with a rock. So I brought it to the Washing State University Vet School (I lived in a dorm on campus at the time) who I knew did fish surgeries. This sort of thing is usually reserved for thousand dollar Kio and the like but I figured I'd rather spend 50 bucks to have him euthanized or fixed than hear the sound of his guts gishing out when I smashed him. They anesthetized him (!) and I had to sign a waiver that said I did not want them to resuscitate him (!) if things went horribly wrong. He lived through the dorsal-fin-ectomy and went on to live for another year or so.

muttpuppiesontrial said...

Sea Kittens Are Endangered - I would buy that on a t-shirt.

Wow, AC - that is devotion to a pet. I'm not a fan of fish and wouldn't be even if they were called sea kittens, but I wouldn't fancy dropping a rock on one either... Mind you, since we're on the subject, here's something a friend of mine told me about euthing fish humanely:

Clove oil is what vets often use as anaesthetic during fish surgery: it's mild, painless, and sends Fishie to sleep. If you've got a sick and suffering fish, you can pick up clove oil from most any pharmacy. Fishie goes into a container filled with dechlorinated tank water big enough for him to swim around in, and you add 12 drops of clove oil for every gallon of water. Eventually the fish will slow down and go limp, then float on its side, but it's important to keep watching for gill movements to ensure that he's gone. You can keep upping the dose until you're certain. Voila, your fish has passed on peacefully in his sleep.

However, she only recommended this for fish suffering from bladder problems/bloating (swollen belly, can't keep itself righted in the water) and "dropsy" (when the scales "pinecone" and stick out from the body instead of lying smooth), since most other ailments are treatable and 80% of the time she says it's the tank water.

So that's my tip of the day to any fish owners out there! May your sea kittens stay upright while swimming.

(I must admit I'm wondering how that fish resuscitation would have gone.)

GoLightly said...

I wonder at that, too. Do You BLow through their gills? Um, is Clove Oil the "final" anasthetic for a seakitten?

I know so little about fish, other than I don't much want to eat them.
American in Copenhagen, kudos to saving your seakitten.

Can you see the little sign??
Gone SeaKittening?
weird!

an American in Copenhagen said...

I had never heard the clove oil trick. If I ever have a fish again and need to put it down that's what I'll do. I had heard of putting them in a small glass or something but then I read that they tend to start freezing before they pass out so it's actually cruel. I figured a rock was the quickest way to a guaranteed end but couldn't bring myself to do it if there was an easy alternative. Which there was.

As for fish resuscitation, (obviously I had questions too) they just keep dropping oxygenated water on the gills and shock the heart via two needles placed under the scales in just the right positions. Not so different from resuscitation in mammals.

muttpuppiesontrial said...

Gone sea kittening - THAT's my t-shirt!

I don't plan on owning a fish, but the clove oil thing just seemed like something to keep in mind. It's a nice, painless, DIY method, and it's way better than flushing or freezing your fish if you're too cheap to have it euthed professionally.

water_bearer said...

Gone Sea Kittening! Hahahahahaha! That's hilarious. Man it pisses me off when I think of all the money, resources and power wasted on PETA when there are better more sensible organizations and campaigns. Not to mention the bad rap they give animal welfare advocates when burger eating, leather wearing, rodeo attending Joe Shmo lumps anyone who is crazy enough to neuter their dog in with "them PETA crazies" and thinks we're all nuts.
BTW, I too had a Betta not that long ago. Two actually. Well, it was a joint custody thing with my cube mate at my last job. He sat on the wall between us. She fed him, I cleaned the bowl. We used to joke that since we were both women, and had both adopted rescue dogs that as far as Mr. Shmo was concerned that already meant we were tree-hugging, granola-eating, Birkenstocks-with-socks-wearing ELF members and probably... gasp... vegetarians (aka lesbians), so we might as well adopt a fish child together since we couldn't biologically make one of our own. Oh sorry. See kitten child.

Anyway... Messrs Betta I & II (both with first names "The"), would occasionally get constipated. That's right. Backed up sea ktten. Mr. The Betta's anus was in his chin by the way. So when he'd get double poop chin, he'd have to be fed a cooked pea. I would diligently microwave one stinking pea in a coffee mug with about a half inch of water for a minute on high in the company lunch room. Then peel said pea, divide it into 8 pieces and feed The a chunk or two via smooshing one onto the end of a leftover takeout chopstick and holding at the surface of the water. He loved it and since they're agressive fish and anything hanging out at the surface must be food, it didn't take him (I or II) long to learn the trick. Works like a charm!!! Within 20 minutes it's a veritable green poop fest. So... next time your fish is listing to one side and you think he may have a tumor, try the pea trick. If that doesn't work, I would do what I said I'd do if The's time ever came - chop his head off on the cutting board. Not easy I know, but it seemed the quickest and kindest way to go. Fortunately I never had to do that with either of them. They both died of natural causes. Or... too much roughage.

GoLightly said...

WB:)
You're trés brave with seakittens. Kudos for keeping your seakittens entrails moving.

Do they grow up to be seacats?

Poor little um, Osteichthyes.
Yeah, seakittens sounds way better.

Wish they tasted better. LOL, when we moved to Vancouver, my mom discovered none of her kids liked the taste of fish. Salmon jumping out of the river, and we'd turn our noses up, and eat our candies later.
Bad kids we were..
Terrible cook she was.
To My Mom.

Hyena Overlord said...

Are the PETA zombies driniking horse rescuer kool aid?

I wanna see the PETA zombies try to pet and cuddle the Great White Sea Kitten. That I would pay money for.