The survival of a two-week old lamb from Cedar, B.C. is “a miracle,” according to an animal protection officer. Apparently in the post-speciesism era we live in the survival of livestock constitutes an act of intervention from God.

The lamb, who of course has since been named “Murphy”, is alive following an attack on its mother and eight other sheep by a cougar. (In its defence, the cougar is well-known for its inclination to prey on young things). The incident occurred on a rural property in the south of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.

A cougar attacking and eating sheep isn’t newsworthy, nor is a two-week-old sheep who has been anthropomorphically dubbed Murphy, but apparently what is newsworthy is the fact that the landowner did nothing to stop this heinous animal-on-animal crime:

Hitchcock, who has worked as a special provincial constable for the BCSPCA in Nanaimo for four years, said what she found most disturbing is that the owner of the property and the sheep was aware of the attack, but didn’t assist the animals in any way or even report the incident to authorities.

She said she was called to the scene by city bylaw officers who were contacted by neighbours days after the attack.

Hitchcock said charges are pending against the property owner, who she still has not made contact with despite numerous phone calls and letters, and they may include charges under the criminal code as well as under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

It’s bad enough that the state now has the power to ensure your parenting meets with the appropriate guidelines set out by various ministries of government. But the country has truly jumped the shark when livestock property suddenly become a moral responsibility worthy of criminal charges. Let me say that again: criminal charges for not doing something to protect livestock.

“Murphy was found alone and hyperthermic in the rain so we rushed him to a veterinarian and, fortunately, he survived.”

First of all, there’s no such thing as Murphy. That’s ridiculous. It’s a lamb, and is usually served best with lemon and rosemary and a side of apple sauce. I’m sure the cougar would agree, if it had the intelligence to articulate that opinion. Fortunately, like the lamb, it doesn’t. That’s probably because it’s an animal.

In a post-agrarian nation I can understand the domestication of certain animals as companion pets. Dogs and cats have certainly edged their way into the status of protected animals, if only because of common social conventions. Enough people have either one or the other in their home, and though some people anthropomorphize them in baby high chairs and woollen jackets, they have earned their place.

Lambs, on the other hand, are good for one of two things. Food for humans or food for other animals. Any attempt to make them more than that is the kind of folly that your grandfather would have given you a stern look and questioned your sanity.

But sane is not how one might describe the modern world.

“Murphy is a pet and we intend to conduct home visits to anyone interested in adopting him.”

State visits to your house to ensure you’re not cooking lamb. Yeah, that sounds like the kind of world I want to live in.

By the way, we still have plenty of red squirrels in our neck of the (close to downtown) Ottawa woods. Vicious little beasts they are, and noisy; as far as I can see they consistently intimidate the bigger greys and blacks:

First, catch your squirrel…
As a Staffordshire man is fined more than £1,500 for drowning a grey squirrel in his garden, Harry de Quetteville discovers that the best way to get rid of the furry vermin is to eat it
…
Red squirrels, of course, have long been the object of affection in Britain…No wonder that the Prince of Wales, patron of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust, has backed a programme to reintroduce the “irresistible and charming” creatures to the Lizard peninsular in Cornwall, where they can be protected from the “ceaseless, pernicious attack” of the greys…

Squirrel: how do you eat yours?

A recipe for braised squirrel…

As for soup…

This post’s for Darcey, more:

Update: If I had read the last link above closely I would have noticed Darcey is not well.  My best thoughts to him.

Mark
Ottawa

It ain’t about race, it’s about class and one colour (plus some geography):

The Roots of White Anxiety
…
Last year, two Princeton sociologists, Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, published a book-length study of admissions and affirmative action at eight highly selective colleges and universities. Unsurprisingly, they found that the admissions process seemed to favor black and Hispanic applicants, while whites and Asians needed higher grades and SAT scores to get in. But what was striking, as Russell K. Nieli pointed out last week on the conservative Web site Minding the Campus, was which whites were most disadvantaged by the process: the downscale, the rural and the working-class.

This was particularly pronounced among the private colleges in the study. For minority applicants, the lower a family’s socioeconomic position, the more likely the student was to be admitted. For whites, though, it was the reverse. An upper-middle-class white applicant was three times more likely to be admitted than a lower-class white with similar qualifications.

This may be a money-saving tactic. In a footnote, Espenshade and Radford suggest that these institutions, conscious of their mandate to be multiethnic, may reserve their financial aid dollars “for students who will help them look good on their numbers of minority students,” leaving little room to admit financially strapped whites…

But cultural biases seem to be at work as well. Nieli highlights one of the study’s more remarkable findings: while most extracurricular activities increase your odds of admission to an elite school, holding a leadership role or winning awards in organizations like high school R.O.T.C., 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America actually works against your chances. Consciously or unconsciously, the gatekeepers of elite education seem to incline against candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or “Red America.”

This provides statistical confirmation for what alumni of highly selective universities already know. The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions. Inevitably, the same underrepresentation persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts…

Among the highly educated and liberal…the lack of contact with rural, working-class America generates all sorts of wild anxieties about what’s being plotted in the heartland. In the Bush years, liberals fretted about a looming evangelical theocracy. In the age of the Tea Parties, they see crypto-Klansmen and budding Timothy McVeighs everywhere they look.

This cultural divide has been widening for years, and bridging it is beyond any institution’s power…

A, er, bright, shining exemplar of these attitudes in Canada is the Globe and Mail’s inimibitable Mr Ibbitson. Earlier at Daimnation!:

John Ibbitson’s supercilious and wrong-headed view of Canada

Immigration: The more the merrier–and what the effects will be

Plus my investigative reporting:

One way to confirm you’re in Alberta

And some fun from Kate McMillan:

…
I can’t believe I’m stuck here covering the stinking Redneck Olympics

…

Update: Meanwhile that certain stinkin’ agenda hits the Globe’s sports section–with Mother Corpse as the redneck surrogate!

Calgary Stampede an uneasy rider on CBC
‘The Stampede is truly a Canadian institution,’ exec says, though animal-rights advocates aren’t so happy

Cry me an Elbow river.

Mark
Ottawa

Switzerland to vote on legal rights for animals:

Is fishing as cruel as bullfighting? Antoine Goetschel thinks so. The Swiss lawyer carries the distinction of being the first man in the world to stand up in court on behalf of a dead (and eaten) 22lb pike.

The crucial issue, according to the sole animal advocate in Europe, was the 10-minute battle between angler and giant fish before the pike was finally hauled out of Lake Zurich and landed on the bank. Mr Goetschel insisted that the fisherman should have cut the line after the first minute of the battle to save the pike from unnecessary suffering. “Angling is as barbaric as bullfighting,” he told a Zurich court as a public gallery of curious and bemused fishermen listened on.

When I was 18, I took my wife to the family cottage, and proceeded to shock her when I pulled a small-mouthed bass into the boat and clubbed it to death with the oar. Not the most romantic thing to do in front of your significant other.

That reminds me of a story. Years ago when I was around 12, I went with my father on a fishing trip in Timmins, Ontario. It was the height of summer, so the water was warm, but in those dark northern lakes, only the top three feet ever gets really warmed up. We were fishing for pickerel, but we mainly caught pike. Big 24-36 inch pike with sharp teeth that would snap endlessly at the lines.

We were fishing in canoes so that we could portage them to virgin lakes filled with fish. All of our gear was borrowed from my uncle, who lived in Timmins at the time.

We were were paddling along one day, when my father pointed out a hawk soaring majestically in the sky. I turned to look at it and the whole canoe went over.

Poles, lures, and everything else heavy sank to the bottom of the lake. We spent the next hour trying to dive to the bottom to find the fishing poles, but not only does the water get frigid after six feet of descent, but the opaqueness of the surrounding water is terrifyingly claustrophobic. It’s like trying to dive while your eyes are closed and each foot of descent brings a new wave of shocking cold.

So remember, kids. When looking up in a canoe, lean back, not to the side.