petblr

Mystified homeowner was left baffled as to who was tidying his garden shed, he thought it was a ghost, but discovered the culprit was a house-proud mouse.

Fuck SeaWorld. SeaWorld gives false information that they know is incorrect, but they don’t want to tell visitors the truth because it causes problems for them. SeaWorld will tell you that an orca’s natural lifespan in the wild is 13-16 years old, for instance. Thats fucking bullshit. A wild orca’s lifespan is anywhere from 60-100 years, depending on the gender of the animal (females live longer). In captivity, their lifespan is 13-16 years, with some living up to 20-ish, but thats a damn sight shorter than their wild counterparts.

SeaWorld will tell you that dorsal fin collapse happens just as frequently in the wild as it does in captivity. Bullshit. Dorsal collapse happens in 100% of captive male orcas, versus in – are you ready? – less than 1% of wild male orcas. But they’ll tell you that the statistics match.

They’ll justify taking a 3-4 year old baby from its mother and sending it to another park or another enclosure because “that’s when they split up in the wild.” But in the wild, female orcas will stay with their mothers for life, and male orcas will either stay for life as well, or, if they separate, it will be between 16 and 20 years old. Not at 3-4 years old.

This is all shit that SeaWorld knows, but they deliberately spread misinformation anyway, because their animals routinely die at around 13 years old, so if people believe that’s the natural lifespan, then it’s not too bad right? But if folks were to become aware that the lifespan is actually 60-100 years, and they can’t even keep their animals alive for a mere 20 years, well – that looks pretty bad for them, doesn’t it.

Visitors get concerned about the males’ dorsal fin collapse, but hey, if it’s just a “natural thing” that “happens just as often in the wild,” well, clearly it’s not the fault of captivity, that this disfiguration is happening. Only it is captivity’s fault, because it barely happens in the wild but it happens 100% of the time in captivity.

Mothers will routinely go into deep depression when their babies are forcibly separated from them, but SeaWorld brushes it off with “this is when they separate in the wild,” and people accept it, because hey, they’re the authority, right? They know what they’re talking about, right? They wouldn’t deliberately lie to people in order to preserve their “we aren’t actively cruel to animals” facade, right? Wrong.

Zoos when done well are great. Zoos that exist for the purposes of public education and species protection, and that make the animals’ welfare a priority – those are good zoos. But there are a shit tonne of bad zoos, who exist primarily to make a profit, and fuck the standard of care for the animals. So don’t just give all zoos a blanket pass. Some are great! And some do shit like, for instance, inbreed their endangered animals just to have a constant supply of babies to draw a crowd.

And SeaWorld doesn’t count as a zoo. SeaWorld is a fucking circus. They don’t exist for research purposes, they don’t exist to help save endangered species, they don’t serve in an educational capacity to the public (because most of what they pitch to people is pure bullshit). They dont give a shit about their animals’ wellbeing (the trainers do, for the most part, but they’re not the ones making the call on how the animals are treated/the conditions they’re subjected to/etc, and also, the trainers are usually picked up early ad trained on the job, and indoctrinated with the SeaWorld version of “facts,” so often they don’t recognise cruelty for what it is. Separating a baby and mother isn’t cruel if it’s “what happens in the wild.” But it is cruel if that mother/baby pair were supposed to stay together for a minimum of 12 more years).

How To Be A Good Hat!

It’s been a very busy day and I just got done cleaning cages.

I thought we could end the day with a peak at Violet and her three day old babies.

I enjoy this time of day, where I can go say hi to everyone, hand feed a veggie and watch the piggies enjoy their treat.

This sorta shit pisses me off. So sit down everyone and listen to the story of what we call the “Kill Buyer/Feedlot Scam”.

What happens when you combine an Amish-dominated auction house and mostly likely an ex-convict who can’t get a real job? Killbuyers! These are guys who purchase large amounts of horses for under $400 at auctions, or they pick up horses listed as cheap or free on Craigslist. From there, the horses can either go one of two ways - to slaughters, or to private buyers. Well-trained horses can end up at another auction, or traded with another horse trader. Fat, healthy horses that may be unhandled end up in feedlots where they ship to Mexico or Canada to be slaughtered. They will never show up on Facebook. But sad, old, miniature, and very young horses end up on Facebook pages like this, purchased for no more than $100 and then sold days later for a 300% price increase. Who would want to buy old lame horses? Well, no one– at an auction. But on Facebook you can find all kinds of bleeding-heart animal lovers who will open their checkbooks if you claim that this horse you have is “shipping to slaughter” the next week if no one buys it. Even if the horse will not be accepted at the border, like a foal under six months of age. Or if you make absolutely no profit, like a miniature horse. Who cares! Let’s claim to ship them all to slaughter! People with too much money and too little sense love the idea of “saving” a horse!

Sometimes these guys are pretty good at selling decent horses for acceptable, if not high, prices. I follow the Bowie Auction House in Texas, because they at least don’t use a thousand knife emojis threatening slaughter in every post. But this guy, Brian Moore, goes to New Holland Auction, where very sad Amish horses can be picked up for cheap, and advertises them for extremely marked up rates. Not only does he do that, but he doesn’t even try to be legit. These horses are not rideable (but he rides them anyway). They are suffering from arthritis or injuries, and terrible conformation (as is the case of the Arabian mare, which he says has been bred way too many times, because that back deserves to live on in her progeny!) They either need to be picked up by a legitimate rescue or euthanized. Not hopped on and trotted around a concrete driveway with a moron on its back so that this dude can scam a couple hundred bucks out of people who think a swayback like that isn’t “too bad” (she is not even old and has a back as long as a bus. It is very bad). That’s the worst part– many of these horses are going to people with big hearts but not a lot of horse knowledge. They don’t understand the expense and time a healthy horse takes, let alone one who will drive up your vet bills into the thousands in less than six months.

I watch a page that networks horses from the New Holland auction, and several posts have been from people who “saved” horses from New Holland but either can’t afford them or can’t handle them. So back to the auction they go. No one inexperienced should ever buy a horse at an auction. And yet with these Facebook pages, they seem to draw in the most inexperienced horse owners who should be adopting horses from legitimate rescues, not scam artists who lie through their teeth about minis shipping to slaughter.

The Appy is listed as $425. The Arabian is at $613. Here are many healthy, young horses I personally purchased at an auction for at or less than $600.

Chip: $300 (no health problems outside of worms and a cough)

Jackie: $600 (no health problems)

Echo: $450 (no health problems; some behavioral issues though)

Socrates: $400 (no health problems)

Belle: $400 (no health problems; she had foundered at some point, but was healthy and sound when I got her)

Roxie: $500 (no health problems outside of being very fat)

It was a bad time to be an outdoor cat.

The cat doesn’t understand why its human is sad, just that they are, and their legs don’t work.

The cat doesn’t understand that its pelvis has been crushed like a coke can and that recovery would require multiple thousands of dollars for surgical repair and would more than likely result in chronic, lifelong pain from an intra-articular fracture (through the joint surface).

The cat doesn’t understand the repeated insistence that “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over again, nor does it understand that its only had one year of life, when it could have had fifteen.

But the human, the human understands that the cat’s life is about to be tragically cut short, thanks to the massive trauma sustained from the car when the cat just didn’t come home one night.

“Who did this to you?” the human asks, over and over between their apologies and tears.

And the vet knows they’re lucky their cat came home at all to say goodbye. And the vet knows in her heart which human it is that’s responsible for this outcome, and it wasn’t the one driving the car.

The next consult is so understanding about the wait. They know what it’s like to loose a cat. Theirs didn’t come home one day, at only four years old. And other cats that used to visit their backyard disappeared around the same time.

They always suspected someone had poisoned them, put paracetamol into saucers of milk and left it out to get rid of the cats.

The new cat, this one will be indoor only. Maybe on a harness if it shows interest in the outside world.

The world that should only be visited under supervision. Because the world is not kind to cats.