by Ralph Nader
Add to that personal worries. The Elephant could hardly keep up with the herd; the Dolphin had already left its pod and was swimming alone, worried about the rash of viruses killing dolphins off the Atlantic coast; while the famished Owl was so preoccupied with its TRIAD duties that it hadn’t had a mouse in days.
The decisive factors in giving the hyenas the screen were the demands and demonstrations by other animals and insects who saw their hand strengthened to get on the stage if the hyenas were allowed on.
Under the direction of the largest of the hyenas, who are also the females—who hunt and not just scavenge—the most aggressive leaders of the spotted hyena clans organized this mass assemblage in a large indented savannah that looked like an amphitheater. Each kind of hyena—the larger spotted ones along with the brown hyenas and the striped hyenas—knew their respective rankings and stayed together in a mindful segregation.
The apparently dominant female spotted hyena stood on a small promontory to address the crowd. “I, the spotted hyena, having just brought down a buffalo for my family, am presenting our program. Some say we may offend you humans but it is our belief that you will listen when the message is couched in humor. Our clans believed that by focusing on domesticated dogs in America we can make the case for their wanting liberation or at least more freedom from their present state of slavery and cruel cross-breeding. It is also about the only way for us hyenas to gain attention, so reviled are we by humans. Here is our presentation:
“Oh, the tens of millions of domesticated dogs of America, we, the hyenas of Africa, wish the world to understand your plight, including your present masters, who love your loyalty so long as it is not superseded by loyalty to other dogs. Some in the animal rights movement even want to change the laws to give you dog ‘personhood’ so that you have equal rights with humans, whatever that would mean. Our focus is much more down-to-earth.
“First, you’re getting too fat. Half of all pet dogs in America are obese. Their masters, if they can afford it, take them to special dog weight-reduction centers where they run on treadmills and are taught to savor diets that do not inflate them. Pardon us—hyenas, having lives that are lean and mean, must take a laughter break.”
Thousands of hyenas went wild with laughter for none of them had ever seen an obese hyena.
“Dogs, have you no self-control?” admonished the chief female spotted hyena, whose recent killing of a buffalo induced noticeable awe from other, smaller hyenas. "Do you think that if you turned down that second or third helping of fast food, you would disappoint your master?” she provocatively asked.
“Household dogs of America, I, the chief female hyena, remind you that you are all descended from wolves, the mightiest dogs of them all. Strong as our jaws are, we are no match for the wolf. Now look at what that ‘descent’ has brought you.
“Take the case of Lolita, a four-year-old dachshund, who is so overweight that her owner bought a treadmill and installed a lap pool to get her to exercise, even having her eat carrots while working out.” At this point, thousands of hyenas had another fit of laughter, so much so that a pride of lions twenty miles away pricked up their ears.
“I know that obesity is not a laughing matter for Lolita and the millions of other dogs of America whose extra beef can lead to diabetes, high blood pressure, and arthritis, as well as respiratory and kidney diseases, according to your New York Times. But to go to such lengths as taking your dogs to exercise inns where paid handlers steer dogs through exercises, like jumping over hay bales, and thank them with ‘yogurt vegetable parfaits,’ is absurd.
“All this at a price of one hundred dollars a day,” the hyena continued. “Why, many Kenyans don’t make that much money in a month.
“It gets worse. Abbe, a six-year-old Labrador retriever, twenty pounds overweight, can’t retrieve much of anything; even a ‘short tussle with a toy leaves her panting.’”
A male hyena, with whom the female chief hyena had been having an affair, was called to the promontory.
He was a known wit and took up the thread of the critique: “I, the male hyena, am as amazed as you hyenas are when we are told that ‘and maids,’ and even chauffeurs. They neither hunt for food nor do any work for that food. Also they get too many carbohydrates and too little movement, except for going for a brisk walk with their masters. Better to feed them like their ancestors with a rabbit, squirrel, or ‘raw, meaty bones and organs.’
“Imagine, there are doggy fat camps in America. Would that we hyenas could be airlifted there to make meals of them. Why, a whole business is expanding in your country to do something about dog obesity when all it takes is for dogs to exercise and be given good food like the wolves ate,” added the male hyena.
“To make matter worse, your dogs of America are often insured by companies who cheat the dogs like they cheat their owners: no coverage for ‘pre-existing conditions,’ no annual checkups paid for, the tricky fine print that says each ailment has independent deductibles. Why, there are so many exclusions, you’re paying to get defrauded.
“You’re being spoiled rotten, spoiled into frailty, weakness. We’ve been sent reports that hotels give dogs pet-icures; they have room service menus for dogs, feeding them ‘gluten-free organic meals.’ In one hotel there are new pet pedometers, others offer ‘imminent pooch mini-bars’ or ‘Lacoste polos.’ There are pet psychics and pooper scoopers and pet sitters spreading around your upper-income neighborhoods. All sorts of dog craziness is providing further grist for the profit mills. There is a comedy dog act called ‘Mutts Gone Nuts,’ where dogs jump through hoops, walk on barrels, and balance on a wire five feet high. One company even crash-tests dummy dogs in the search for a safe dog seatbelt in motor vehicles. Then there are your veterinarians, who are discovering every disease known to man to be in dogs: cancer, diabetes, lung infections, chronic constipation, attention deficit disorder, separation anxiety, high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, even depression.”
“Where will it all end?” asked the hyenas in the audience. The female hyena opined that eventually the dogs will be broken- down genetic freaks so pampered that they represent ever more profit for their many commercial caregivers. “Already animal rights groups who want dogs to be given ‘personhood rights’ are demanding full Medicare insurance for dogs,” she said. “Cat lovers are starting to say, ‘What about us?’ And don’t get us started on what goes on at Westminster and other dog show extravaganzas: freaky shows for rich dog show masters.”
Losing patience and getting hungry, the hyenas in the increasingly restless gathering started calling out: “Feed them to us, feed them to us,” and “We’ll eat them all, just as they are.” In hyena language these chants rhyme, which gave them a hypnotic effect. The chants grew louder, and the TRIAD wondered how all this was affecting the human viewers.
Worse, imagine if these hyenas go global, enlisting coyotes and foxes in North America and other kindred animals all over. Even so, the TRIAD appeared nonchalant, having allowed the hyenas’ humorous spectacle to air in the TALKOUT as they had promised. They bookended it with stories of animals eating other animals for sustenance but not to make war or for conquest, passing over instances of those occasional acts of belligerent animals who kill but don’t eat their human prey.
To further expunge any anger at dogs that the hyenas’ program might have aroused, the TRIAD followed that segment with engaging stories about service dogs helping people with disabilities, golf course dogs used to chase away defecating geese, police-trained bloodhounds finding missing people and children. To illustrate the graciousness of domesticated dogs, the TRIAD showed the measured response of a sheep dog who cited from the book of Job, “Ask the animals and they will teach you.”
Regaining Control
Nonetheless, the TRIAD knew they were losing control. Many other animals were forming caucuses and demanding that programming about them preempt other broadcasts. The TRIAD asked the Human Genius how they could resume control. He replied tha
t it may be too late, that real awareness and activities of the provoked or informed members of the animal and insect kingdoms were affecting the virtual reality that made the hundred-hour TALKOUT possible in the first place. The Human Genius advised that the TRIAD move to the sex program ahead of schedule. That would gain human attention big-time and hopefully temporarily distract the animal and insect kingdoms. Don’t forget, the Human Genius said, “mating behavior,” otherwise known as “sex,” is mesmerizing in any form to human animals. He gave a knowing chuckle.
The TRIAD realized that such a broadcast would not be entirely frivolous. There are distinct lessons to be learned by humans watching animal mating behavior. Seeing this as a solution, the Owl let out a hoot and the Elephant trumpeted, while the Dolphin shot through the ocean surface straight up into the air. They graphically envisioned what the Human Genius was saying. They looked forward to spectacular ratings again.
But they wanted to proceed cautiously so as to achieve that tender balance between the avoidance of pornography and voyeurism, on the one hand, and turgid biological science on the other hand. A rabbit had already been assembling material, but the Owl suggested that they appoint a committee to prepare the program, which received a time allotment of 120 minutes.
The TRIAD selected a sturgeon, who at fifty-two years of age had seen a lot in that time, along with a cheetah, a virile male chimpanzee, and a twenty-seven-year-old cane toad, whose highly toxic venom can dispatch crocodiles, humans, dingoes, snakes, and dogs within fifteen minutes. They represented a wide range of mating habits, though nowhere near the variety they would portray, via cinema verité if possible, for the animal and insect kingdoms.
The point was to get this ready in the next day, and play up anticipation of it in the meantime.
Remembering the Goals
The Elephant, using her own position in leadership to put forward the most interesting stories from her point of view, now broadcast a report fitting with goal four, an encouragement of more research into animal abilities.
The journal Current Biology contained a field study on wild elephants in Kenya, and the Elephant broadcast the findings on the air. The research concluded that elephants understand “human pointing,” which is a rare ability among animals. Even the primates, who are humans’ close relatives, don’t get the point of pointing by humans, unlike dogs. The main author, biologist Richard W. Byrne, said the study raises the fascinating possibility that elephants may have a deep social intelligence that in some ways rivals that of humans.
All these findings boosted the morale of the Elephant who was considering asking the Human Genius for a cup of uppers to finish getting through the one hundred hours of programs and everything in between.
What’s the Emergency?
It might be remembered that one of the TALKOUT’s original features, a deeply “humanitarian” one, if that word might be used for animals, was that if any animal group faced an emergency threatening its existence, it had the right to immediately come on screen. The current head of the emergency screeners, a mongoose—various animals had been directors as long as they could stand the sadness of having to turn many away—was on his last legs, and was now suffering advanced burnout. Suddenly, she started approving all kinds of stories, ones that wouldn’t have seemed so threatening when she was fresh.
First, she allowed through a plea of a mink who was scared because he was alone in the woods! Here’s the story, which was partially told in the New York Times.
Animal liberation groups struck mink farms in the middle of the night and released thousands of mink, whose pelts are each worth one hundred dollars, from their cages into the wilds. One particularly hard-hit mink farm is in New Holstein, Wisconsin, owned by the Bonlander family. The family awoke in the early morning to see two thousand mink scampering here and there from their surreptitiously opened cages.
This nighttime raid is part of a resurgence of animal liberation activism focusing on mink farms, whose expansion is attributed to a growing demand for mink coats by wealthy Chinese. “Mink liberation” is a federal crime under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, monitored and enforced by the Department of Homeland Security. The animal liberationists, from their side, call mink farmers terrorists for raising mink only to kill them for fur coats. But the law and its police are not on their side. Most of the released mink were rounded up by helpful neighbors, but over a hundred escaped into the nearby woods.
One of the escapees was the one who labeled this an emergency. He talked to the interviewing mongoose, who asked:
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know how to live in the woods, don’t know how to hunt. We were always fed in our cages.”
“Why did you want to escape such security when the cage door was sprung?”
“I don’t really know, except that other minks were running out in droves, and it just seemed to be the thing to do. We mink like our freedom to roam even though we’ve been bred. It’s probably genetic.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“Even if I knew how to, I wouldn’t, because we’re the next batch to be slaughtered; my closest older friends have already been taken away. So I’ll take my chances. Maybe I’ll meet a mink of the opposite sex to teach me how to survive and we can have a family together. Or maybe some coyote will get me. Can someone help me? This is an emergency for those of us hiding in the woods.”
Many animal viewers were scratching their heads, wondering if this was a real emergency, at least as compared to the plight of the moose, which flashed on the screen next.
It was a story reported in the New York Times, one a tick had already referred to when he had his time on screen. He had talked of how, with global climate warming helping ticks proliferate, now there might be “one hundred fifty thousand ticks per moose.”
That had been a tick talking but now a bedraggled moose came on. He said some clusters of moose, such as the population in Minnesota, had lost over 95 percent of their numbers.
The mongoose asked, “You look like you are on your last legs. Do you have any final words to the human animals whose activities have allowed the ticks to proliferate as your deadly hitchhikers?”
The emaciated moose replied: “Send my boxed remains, before the wolves or coyotes get to it, to the climate change deniers.”
Thousands of elk and deer immediately took notice. One doe said to her buck: “See, we are grooming animals, unlike the moose, who wait too long while the ticks get entrenched. Then the moose start scratching and tearing their hair out to relieve themselves. Regular grooming is our only salvation to keep the ticks’ number down. Say, you, buck, don’t delay your grooming. I can’t do it for you.”
Then the doe provided a teaching moment for her species around the world and systematically groomed her fur.
All the animals watching agreed that the mongoose had been correct in labeling this a genuine emergency. Then another dire event was broadcast, but, oddly enough, at first this seemed more an emergency affecting humans than impacting animals.
It seems a power outage caused by a squirrel cut electricity off for thousands of people in Wichita, Kansas. The blackouts included a medical center and university. Earlier, another squirrel electrocuted itself in Tampa, blacking out thousands of homes and a Trader Joe’s. Squirrels have shut down the NASDAQ stock market twice. They’re not looking for incineration. Should the electrocuted squirrel drop to the ground, the flow of electricity comes back. But if the carcass melts in place—the remains of the squirrel—the outage continues.
The mongoose asked the squirrel about these incidents: “Hey, squirrel, is it only your kind that plunges humans into darkness or makes them go without safe water?”
“Of course not. It’s also caused by wild cats, birds, and raccoons, even owls dropping snakes onto utility poles. We get most of the rap, however,” chuckled the squirrel nervously.
In a story in the Sunday New York Times “Review,” John L. Koprowski, a squirrel bio
logist, explained. Squirrels like to gnaw into transformers for the same reasons they go into rotting places in old trees, they are trying to get at seeds and insects sucked into that machinery by the cooling fans.
The squirrel said, “Maybe it’ll help you to understand if I mention our incisors grow up to ten inches each year and we must be chewing on them to wear them down.
“Besides,” said the squirrel, “don’t get too panicked. The electric companies are finding ways to spray utility poles with fox urine and other ways to discourage our climbing there. Pretty soon, they’ll find the best ways and we won’t get fried so often.”
A number of animals were grumbling about the status of that as an emergency since it affected humans more than an occasional errant squirrel, but the next item—it was just one emergency after another today—definitely qualified.
The topic was the devastation wrought by the collision of migratory birds with aircraft; both humans and birds were affected by this disaster. Two Canadian geese spoke of the fact that humans have found that one plane a day has to land prematurely in the U.S. due to bird strikes.
Female Goose: “Just in the U.S. the airline industry says it loses seven hundred million dollars a year from bird strikes.”
Male Goose: “And the migrating bird swarms have brought down far more of Israel’s U.S.-built fighter planes than did the country’s weak adversaries. You humans aren’t finding the solutions, other than to make noises and put up scarecrows. Listen to your scientists, who are improving avian radar, which gives air traffic controllers warnings about approaching bird flocks in time to delay takeoffs or redirect planes.”
So far this talk from the geese was a straightforward presentation, but suddenly it shifted to touchy-feely. “I, the female goose, want to talk from my heart. Humans may be viewing this and thinking, I guess it’s rough on you geese if you miss a few of your ground-up feathered friends when they are sucked into the jet engines. But you can always find a replacement.
