Cathy and Bobby Horvath taking Mickey the squirrel.

UPDATE: The Horvaths struck a deal with the town and get to stay. 29,000 people signed the online petition.

Found a scared coyote in Central Park? Does your university’s star hawk have a bad foot? Did you just arrest someone with an inappropriate animal in their bathtub? Or have you just stumbled on a pelican, owl or baby fox that’s going to die if you don’t figure out what to do? Who you gonna call? For New Yorkers the answer for two decades has been Bobby Horvath, a fireman and wildlife rehabilitator. But now the town of Oyster Bay wants to shut down their federally licensed facility, claiming that the animals are “dangerous.”

The word came down Friday and now Bobby and Cathy Horvath have just two weeks to change the town’s mind (there’s no official appeal process) or find new homes for all their current residents. Frederick Ippolito, a the town’s planning and development commissioner, told the Horvaths they had gotten anonymous complaints about their animals. Ippolito himself is the subject of discussion on his restaurant’s failure to pay taxes.

There is no one around who could handle all the difficult cases the Horvaths do. New York City and Nassau County could each be paying a small staff to handle the weird emergencies that the Horvaths handle in their free time at their own expense. New York City now finally, thankfully, has the Wild Bird Fund, which handles an enormous volume of wildlife emergencies (and not just birds). Most of their patients, however, are birds that are manageable enough for a New Yorker to bring in, likely by subway. What makes Bobby Horvath uniquely helpful is not just his expertise, but that he’s willing and able to be a fireman and climb ladders and lean over rooftops to get some scary, frightened birds.

Horvath has permits for handling migratory birds, showing the animals (they give tons of free educational talks), handling potentially rabid animals and falconry. They handle a lot of owls and hawks. They also have a compassionate way of handling all the people who call in distress and confused about what to do for a wild animal they fear will die. I’ve called them on a few occasions and gotten good advice and the offer to take in animals. And just because they handle the glamorous cases in the area, they don’t shun the more pedestrian animals in need like starlings, pigeons, skunks, squirrels and possums.

If you’ve ever dealt with a bird rehabber you have probably not had a great experience. They’re typically curt and overwhelmed with calls, with too many people picking up perfectly fine baby birds, with dying pigeons and squashed sparrows. But the Horvaths are actually pleasant and seem to love both the animals they help and the people they deal with. I remember once seeing a post from Kathy on Facebook about how they’ve gotten so many calls from people saying they have a pelican that turns out to really be a seagull or pigeon that she was shocked when someone showed up and had an actual pelican. Many bird rehabbers are older women who handle the birds if people can manage to deliver them. So Bobby Horvath is especially useful because he’s brave and skilled enough to climb ladders and lean over rooftops to rescue birds.

Back in 2010 Oyster Bay adopted one of those boilerplate city codes, which goes into stunning detail about which animals are considered dangerous and therefore prohibited. Here are just some of the animals Oyster Bay goes out of its way to ban: “order Marsupialia, such as kangaroos and common opossums (Didelphis marsupialia); order Chiroptera (bats); order Edentata, such as sloths, anteaters and armadillos; order Proboscidea (elephants)…”My guess is they were trying to do the right thing after Travis the chimp mauled a CT woman’s face off in 2009. But it’s just silly to act like captive possums are going to be as big a problem as chimps.

It looks to me like the form letter code that Oyster Bay adopted specifically exempts the raptors as being covered by a federal permit. Oddly, if the Horvaths were using the animals to experiment on them or farm them, Oyster Bay would be fine with it. Which would you rather have nextdoor, a rooster and cows or a possum and some owls? The other exemption in the code is for a “recognized educational institution.” I’m pretty sure that their group Wildlife in Need of Rescue and Rehabilitation would qualify since they regularly give educational talks and demonstrations all around the area. And if not the town could add a few words specifically exempting wildlife rehabilitation facilities and do the Horvaths–and all New Yorkers–a favor.

Here’s a petition you can sign to ask Oyster Bay to help the Horvaths.

You can also write to: Frederick P. Ippolito, Commissioner or John Venditto, Supervisor, Town Hall West, 74 Audrey Avenue, Oyster Bay, NY 11771.

Gratuitous adorable picture of my beagles, Moxie and Huck, killing Barney

Our dogs come with us on all possible trips. But sometimes it’s impossible to bring them–thanks, mostly, to antiquated and arduous regulations about dogs in airplane cabins. Recently we had to find a dog-sitter so we could introduce our daughter to one of her grandmothers. A ton of new sites promise to find you a local dog sitter. Here’s what I found.

Care.com = Yuck. Spammy.

Do you want to be spammed by sadly desperate caregivers? Care.com has all people who care dogs, old people, kids, whatever. I put in a request to have somebody walk my mom’s two little dogs over one weekend. In two weeks, I got over 60 emails from Care.com, 48 from and its dog walkers. Many lived a long distance away. One followed up asking why I hadn’t written back? Had she said something wrong? But I couldn’t write back to any of them, because I didn’t sign up for the $35 a month / $140 a year membership, so their contact info was blanked out. (Obviously, I wouldn’t have bothered with the ad if it had told me that would happen at the start. I went through the whole process and got hit up for the fee at the end.) Another operation, sittercity.com, seems to work about the same way, right down to the range of care-giving help, the come-on for placing an ad and similar pricing, $35/month, $70/year.) If I wanted spam like this, I’d sign up for another online “life insurance quote”.

PetSit.com — find pros

Pet Sitters International is the trade group of pet boarders. Obviously, this isn’t the kind robust association that serves as a consumer watchdog or anything. Members get certified through an online course and pay $140 to join. But at least these are people serious enough to do that. And they’re the ones paying, not you, the consumer.

DogVacay.com — find local pet lovers

DogVacay.com is the new entrant to the field is like AirBnB (the houseguest service) for dogs. You can find another pet owner in your area and your dog stays in their home. The advantage is your dog will be in a home with a family, not in a kennel or part of a dog-walker’s pack. The sitters have posted photos of themselves and sometimes their homes. The disadvantage is that they’re just regular people. That’s fine if both you and your dog are easy going and don’t require special attention and neither of you suffers from separation anxiety. I have two beagles who can be difficult (Huck is an extreme flight risk) and I’m not so easy myself. I wish I had a better feeling for how much dog sense some of these people have. I found myself drawn to the professional walkers on their site. In Brooklyn a similar service the Dog Walking Network has been pairing up dog people for years.

Yelp.com — get raw reviews

Yelp.com is where I found my totally wonderful dog-sitter Furry Poppins (Deborah Price), who is sadly moving on from the business. What sets Yelp.com apart from all the other listings are the reviews and the ability of customers to leave pissed off, totally raw diatribes if they are unhappy. Obviously, you avoid the ones with a bunch of terrible comments. Furry Poppins had all rave reviews–and they were from real people, reporting from vastly different dates. You do have to be wary of companies posting their own praises, though Yelp does try to filter those out. Anyway, it was a great tool because it helped me find Deborah, who was both incredibly competent and sweet. And I know the beagles love her because when Huck sees her, he howls in excitement. Yelp is free to both the person looking and the business, so there’s no conflict. And really, I think that makes it better than the specialty dog and cat sitting services.

Where to SEE DOG EVENTS like basset hound waddles, Halloween parades, dock dogs

Tigers shot dead

Both Esquire and GQ came out with big stories this week on the horrible Zanesville zoo incident four months ago. Exotic animal hoarder Terry Thompson killed himself just after unleashing about 50 large predators on exurban Ohio on October 18, 2011. To Esquire, it’s a gory action-adventure movie (they even released a movie trailer). GQ’s Chris Heath actually bothers to try to figure out how it happened, which makes his story a lot more interesting.

The Observer chronicled how both reporters stayed at the same hotel and the magazines jockeyed to make a splash. The most incredible part of the dueling stories is that it’s a silly but standard practice for monthly magazines to kill a feature if they know a rival is covering the same topic. Editors don’t want the public (or, more importantly, their peers) to think they are using ideas from each other (not  possible, given the lead time) or just doing the obvious.

I’m glad GQ still went ahead because their piece is so much more nuanced and haunting.

Not that I wasn’t gripped by Esquire’s story, which treats the incident like a rollicking horror film. Lots of gore and men pissing, swearing and doing what they had no choice to do. You learn minute by minute how the cops shot the tigers, lions and bears, but get no sense of how the animals or their suicidal owner got to this point. Writer Chris Jones employs the dopey animal rights strawman to provide the only conflict. At one point the cops see “several” lions in open cages and bravely risk attack to lock the cages so they don’t have to shoot them. But then one cat slips out a hole and the suddenly realize all the cages have holes. Since no lion survived, it’s clear the cops shot the other (mostly) caged animals, but the details are skipped. That’s the conversation I want to hear.

Chris Heath not only covered the minutia of the animal slaughter, but also at least tried to figure out why it happened. Heath looked at the absurd lack of laws about owning dangerous predators, the economics of exotic ownership (cubs can be purchased for a few hundred bucks, but nobody wants to buy an adult, which are dangerous and expensive to keep). And he goes a lot further into figuring out Thompson, whom friends say changed after fighting in Vietnam and had received an anonymous letter the day before saying his wife had been cheating on him. Even thought it’s a whopper of a story, I could have read more from Heath, like how did Thompson and his wife get the money to buy and feed all these animals in the first place. (His wife claimed she spent $30,000 on the macaques and Heath calculates the animals would have needed 600 pounds of meat a day).

Heath also explores one of the odder mysteries of the case: how and why did Thompson cut open all the cages and not get attacked till after he shot himself. The exotic animal owners point to conspiracies involving animal rights activists. But, it may raise doubts about whether the quick carnage was totally necessary. Were the cats, which Health discovered were declawed, going to rush out to eat people? These animals could never have been released to the wild precisely because they wouldn’t have known how to hunt.

Jones lets the cops describe the typical animal lover’s critique as everybody just thinks they were a bunch of rednecks. I’m an animal person and I don’t think so. They did what they thought was right when they were faced with a group of unpredictable animals that should never have been in suburban Ohio. The cops made decisions under extreme pressure and you can always look back and wonder if something could have been done better. Since the incident, has anybody come up with a plan for the next exotic animal collection gone wild? Could they lure the hungry predators to a pile of drugged meat? The assumption is that this will never happen again. Yet we’ve got a country full of backyard exotic predators,  owned by people who feel embattled and under financial stress. We didn’t think Columbine was going to keep happening, but it does. The scariest part of the story is that it could happen again.

SEE ANIMALS IN THE MIDWEST (IL, IA, IN, OH, MI, MN, WI)

Where to see BEAR or BIG CATS not in somebody’s yard

Bobcat preening at Holtsville Ecology Center Long Island, NY, by Stuart Fawlty128

New York now has 5,000-some bobcats and hopes to double the number currently killed by hunters and trappers. The Department of Environmental Conservation’s new five-year plan plan calls for expanding the hunting season and region–right down into what it calls the the “New York City Transition Wildlife Management Unit.”

That’s Cold Spring or Woodbury Commons outlet mall to you and me.  Bobcat trapping and hunting will happen in NY’s region 3P and 3N, Dutchess, Putnam, Orange and Rockland counties. Only a handful of bobcats have been seen there in since 2006. Actually Westchester County–where nobody can shoot bobcats–has seen more. There’s no hunt on Long Island, where they don’t think bobcats live anymore.

The population of bobcats (Lynx rufus) is growing across the east and sightings of New York bobcats are up in the last decade–though nobody knows for sure how much or why. From 1977-1994  hunters took about 100-150 of the small, spotted cats a year. Then numbers starting climbing. By 2004, they hit 400 and have stayed in the 400 to 500 range since. One biologist estimated in 1990 that 20% was the upper limit of what the state could safely eliminate through hunting each year. And that’s where the DEC would like to take it.

The DEC acknowledges lots of people would love to get a chance to see these elusive, sneaky cats. But in their new five-year plan, they don’t take into account how to please wildlife watchers, as the blog Coyote, Wolves and Cougars points out. Instead they worry about whether the price of bobcat pelts on the international market will dip too low to push more guys into the woods to trap. Yeah, some guy might make $50 to $200 selling a bobcat coat to the Chinese. But imagine how much money would be made if a tracker could bring people to try  to see a bobcat on a tour you could reach by a Metro North train from Grand Central.

Where to SEE BIG CATS: Cougar, Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Tiger

 

SEE ANIMALS IN THE NORTHEAST (NY, NJ, MD, MA, ME, NH, VT, CT, RI, PA)

Endangered tigers shot dead / Zanesville TimesRecorder

Terry W. Thompson, the owner of a private zoo, apparently a wanted to send a big big screw-you gesture to his critics, so he opened predators’ cages before he killed himself yesterday.  The local sheriff shot most of them. Columbus Zoo’s Jack Hanna is helping calm nerves and track down a mountain lion.

But the incident should come as no surprise, especially here. Central Ohio is the Wall Street of the country’s exotic animal marketplace. The biggest auction for exotic animals just 65 miles away. The case demonstrates why private zoos are terrible for both people and animals. Ohio is now hurrying to tighten some of the most indulgent rules for keeping and selling novelty animals.

Just this month Erik German wrote in The Daily about the Mt. Hope auction, known as the Mid Ohio Alternative Animal and Bird Sale. The auction house, which doesn’t allow pictures, has three sales a year of everything from kangaroos to zebras. “The Elephant in the Living Room” took secret video there. So, Ohio has been dumping crazy animal problems on the country for years.

“It’s like Noah’s ark, like, wrecking right here in Zanesville, Ohio,” Hanna told the press. Hanna is defending the sheriff and governor, but then using the platform of TV interviews to push for shutting down exotic animal farms and auctions.

Ohio has one of the worst exotic animal policies. In January the lame duck governor signed a temporary law banning new ownership of many exotics. Exotic animal traders and owners feel embattled by big government. Henry Hampton, owner of Farm at Walnut Creek and Rolling Ridge Ranch complained in the Amish-Heartland last year that that restrictions were unfair: “We’re concerned about the whole animal business. It’s under attack. Some people have some ammunition and they can use it to justify restricting ownership of exotic animals from everyone.”

Terry W. Thompson was convicted in 2005 of abusing and rendering cows on his property, according to pet-abuse.com. He did six months on home monitoring. Recently he got out of jail on a weapons charge.

SEE ANIMALS IN THE MIDWEST (IL, IA, IN, OH, MI, MN, WI)

Huckleberry Looks to Heaven

Four workers who worked at the NC lab busted by PETA were just indicted on felony animal cruelty charges. Since two of the 200-some animals they abused are now in my family, I’m grateful prosecutors are taking the abuse seriously. The beagles are much more relaxed and affectionate now, but I can still see signs of their trauma.

As much of a hero Gates County District Attorney Frank Parrish is, the DA probably couldn’t have investigated if Peta hadn’t provided video evidence of workers at who worked at Professional Laboratory Research Services (PLRS),  slamming doors on animals, spray cleaning cages with the animals inside, plotting to rip off a cat’s nails and other despicable behavior.

I read the news to Huckleberry and Moxie, the two beagles we adopted who came from the lab last year. Huck barely lifted his head from my lap and belly; since I’m pregnant that’s where he likes to put himself. Moxie wondered if I was talking about treats.

Physically they’re  great. They no longer have infected paws and dirty ears. You can’t see Moxie’s ribs.  They’re housetrained–more or less. They know their names, a few commands, some favorite words (Huck’s is “bed!” because that’s where he likes to hang out.)

They are visibly happy to see us and their human and dog friends. They love wresting and cuddling.  Both smile in the sunshine. Their recovery has let us see their individuality. Moxie loves chasing big dogs, finding treasure under furniture, rolling in worms and making sure my husband slows down when he walks ahead of me. Huck loves snuggling and easily charms women. He likes carrying found bottles and balls and loves visiting friends.

And yet…their experiences at the lab hurt them in a way that I don’t know if they’ll ever recover. Huck, who left the lab at age 3, seems to remember more bad experiences there. If there’s a loud metal noise, he runs away. He is terrified to walk in tight spaces–a result, I fear, of the cage door slamming you see in the video.

Both dogs are afraid of spraying water–like you see being inflicted o them in the video. Moxie often hides behind me when she meets new people. She seems to prefer men (all four workers charged were women).

So it only seems fair that if Moxie and Huckleberry are haunted by what these women did at the lab, that the lab workers themselves should have to  be haunted by it. Being a felon is a good start. The Washington Post says they could get up to 14 months in jail.

What was most freaky about the video for me was that these were young women just abusing animals because they could. There wasn’t any motive to profit from it or even do important research. A supervisor was among the indicted. Kathy Guillermo, who runs PETA’s lab investigations, says she’d like to see the lab owners–a researcher and  his wife–also get in trouble.

This is the first case of a lab worker being prosecuted for animal cruelty, Guillermo notes.

Read about Moxie and Huck and how they’ve been doing in their new life

Where to SEE DOG EVENTS like basset hound waddles, Halloween parades, dock dogs

Curt Fonger has been photographing Arizona wildlife for 40 years and he’s never seen anything quite like this: a bobcat perched on top of a massive suguaro cactus. In early April Fonger and his wife got a call from a friend who saw the bobcat, chased by a mountain lion, claw her way up a 45-foot prickly cactus.

“Bobcats aren’t rare out here,” Curt says. “But seeing one atop a ‘prickly perch,’ such as this Saguaro, is.”

The mountain lion left fairly quickly, but just to be sure, the bobcat stayed perched way up on the cactus for about six hours, Curt says.

The cat finally crawled “down from the top about 5 feet or so–then the cat launched itself out into space ( about 3.5 stories up), came down on all fours, and vanished back into the wash, going back up into the Superstition Mountains,” he says. “It wasn’t hurt in any way.”

His wife Marta Saint-James says the chance encounter was “a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“Mountain lions can–no doubt–climb saguaros themselves,” he says. “However, it seems that this time she was satisfied with showing ‘Gold Canyon Bob’–our now famous Bobcat–who was in charge.”

A bobcat (Lynx rufus) looking serene on a suguaro cactus / Curt Fonger, Visions of the Southwest

Check out Fonger’s other work

Read about a mountain lion who climbed a telephone pole

Where to SEE BIG CATS: Cougar, Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Tiger

SEE ANIMALS IN THE WEST (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, OR, UT, WA, WY)

Mountain lion on a pole, courtesy of Dorothy Legan of Teton, Idaho

Big cats out west have been having a fun time in the last week: they climb tall objects; pose for pictures; then stun their audiences by leaping safely to the ground. I’ve seen circulating pictures of two of these cat athletes, a mountain lion who climbed a telephone pole in Idaho and a bobcat who climbed her way up a 45-foot suguaro cactus in Arizona.

Where to SEE BIG CATS: Cougar, Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Tiger

SEE ANIMALS IN THE WEST (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, OR, UT, WA, WY)

Read about an Arizona bobcat who climbed a suguaro cactus

Crab Shack's Cat Shack

What I really wanted out of Tybee Island’s Crab Shack were some decent crab cakes that I could eat with my husband and dogs. What we got was a friendly place that also serves as a shelter for about a dozen cats and 10 rescued birds.

The shack restaurant is fine and had a great variation on crab cakes in the shell. It’s it’s kitschy with a Jimmy Buffett boozy atmosphere. The big draw was that they were quite happy to have two barely behaved beagles on their patio. We got to sit next to a friendly local couple with a basset named Beauregard. They also mentioned that pelicans are often out on the lagoon. We were too hungry to look. You throw your garbage out through a pit in the center of each table.

Outside the restaurant, they’ve got three animal operations. There’s the alligator lagoon, which stocks baby alligators that you can feed (a sign warns you not to try it with wild ones). The staff says they come from a Florida breeder, then get shipped back there when they are grown. Not sure what that means about their fate.

The restaurant does go way out of its way to help other animals. They’ve got a “Cat Shack” by their store, which has living quarters for the 12 cats that the restaurant neuters, vaccinates and supports. They urge people not to feed them table food, but there is a jar if you want to contribute to the cat fund. Lisa who works in the shop explains how it came about: “We’re a seafood restaurant that’s been here for thirty years. The cats are just drawn to us.”

Off the gift shop is another sanctuary for exotic birds. These are former pets whose owners died or couldn’t take care of them. Now they live together in huge cages with a water view.

Lisa said she doesn’t know how much it costs to take care of the menagerie: “It’s expensive, but they’re worth it.”

Where to SEE BIG CATS: Cougar, Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Tiger

Where to SEE HORSESHOE CRABS

SEE ANIMALS IN THE SOUTH (AL, AR, GA, KY, MS, LA, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV)

Vladmir Putin watches a captured snow leopard

“What a beautiful little cat,” Putin purred to the 10-year-old cat named Mongol, who was behind a wire pen. Western media always love a good tale and framed it as “local scientists who rescued it after a harrowing ordeal at the hands of poachers.” Actually, the official Russian account is less dramatic and implausible. It says that the leopard was captured in the Sayan-Shushenskoye reserve as part of a planned study. Once captured, they found he had a gash on his neck from a poacher’s snare and other wounds from fights with other cats over mating.

How coincidental was the meeting? The World Wildlife Fund didn’t like the show, saying the cat should have been released just after it was captured March 14, instead of being flown by helicopter to Khakasia to meet Putin, who made a special stop in the area north of western Mongolia on his way to the far east. A video from Russia Today shows the visit and the tiger’s release. Putin is going to track it on his own website.

The Moscow Times said “preservationists had captured [the leopard] to study as part of a project funded by the Russian Geographic Society. Putin is chairman of the society’s board of trustees.”

There is something a little too coincidental about the whole string of events, but not necessarily in a bad way. Putin loves having these incredible encounters with endangered species. But then he goes on to support Amur tigers, beluga whales and polar bears in much more boring, scientific ways. I’d love to have more world leaders have that kind of boyish enthusiasm for wildlife.

Where to SEE BIG CATS: Cougar, Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion,

SEE ANIMALS IN ASIA