Just a few years ago, I sat next to a woman on an airplane who was reading some dog fancier’s magazine. I felt like showing off to her and dazzling her with my astonishing knowledge.

SG: Ah, dogs. I know something of them.
Dog Fancier looks up and arches her eyebrows. So I continue.
SG: Let’s see now. If I remember correctly, the boxer Bang Away of Sirrah Crest won Best-in-show at Westminster in 1951. He was followed the next year by Rancho Dobe’s Storm, the doberman pinscher. A fine specimen of a dog he was. He repeated his triumph the following year. I just can’t recall the name of the winner in 1954 but, if memory serves me correctly, even if incompletely, it was a cocker spaniel. Now, in 1955, the bulldog, Kippax Fearnought, took home top honors and in 1956, the winner was the toy poodle, Wilber White Swan. In ’57, the magnificent Afghan hound, Shirkhan of Grandeur was top dog. Fine conformation and a beauty he was. He was succeeded by Puttencove Promise , the standard poodle. For one reason or another, I’m sorry to say I haven’t paid close attention since then but how am I doing?
DF, with a disdainful look on her face: Really, doesn’t everyone know these things? [And she meant it, too!]

She returned to her magazine and I, properly humbled, slid down in my seat and didn’t bother her again.

I am conflicted about zoos. They expose millions of people to wildlife they would otherwise never encounter. So they have serious educational value. They are also havens for many animals that could not survive in the wild. After all, as someone once said, nature is raw in tooth and claw. I am told that Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa is a fine place for animals because it keeps them, as much as possible in their natural habitats. I suppose that is a plus. On the other hand, I know there is only one veterinarian on the premises for 1800 animals and that sure sounds deficient to me. I know, too, that starting zoo keepers earn $7.50 per hour while the CEO romps off with over $200,000/yearly, and I would love to know what that’s all about.

It may be that some breeds of animals really are better off in zoos but I doubt the great apes are. Look into their soulful eyes and they stare back at you, asking “Why are you doing this to me?” It will take more than being told they provide a wonderful educational experience for children to persuade me that it is worth imprisoning them for that.

Animal rights people hate zoos but I have not explored their reasons. It is no good telling them we have worse things to worry about – slaughterhouses, chiefly, but also hunting and trapping. If zoos are bad, they are bad, no matter what else is worse. No one ever defends assault and robbery on the grounds that rape and murder are much worse.

I think I owe it to myself to learn more about the pros and cons of zoos, but I’ve thought this for many years. And here I sit, thanking Bunny Wilson for making me a more literate man.

Three days ago, as a comment to my post on what it is like to be a mouse, that master of transistors and much else, Al, wrote a few memorable lines from the poet Robert Burns, with a small alteration that referred to me. It is an honor to be bundled with a Burnsian mouse and I thought now would be a good time to present the whole of Bobby’s masterpiece along with a gloss that I regret I did not write.

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
[The poet assure the little mouse he will do it no harm.]

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
[Burns apologizes to the mouse for the behaviour of mankind.]

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave ‘S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!
[Burns says he knows the mouse needs to steal the odd ear of corn, and he does not really mind. He’ll get by with the remainder and never miss it.]

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!
[Burns regrets the problems he has brought on the mouse, destroyed her home at a time when it is impossible to rebuild. There is no grass to build a new home and the December winds are cold and sharp.]

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ wast,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.
[Where the mouse had thought that she was prepared for winter in her comfortable little nest in the ground, now she is faced with trying to survive in a most unfriendly climate, with little or no hope in sight.]

[SG: I now skip a stanza I have no use for - Burns feels sorry for himself.]

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
[In the above, we find that most famous of poetic lines concerning schemes that often go astray.]

Lastly comes the ultimate stanza, which like the antepenultimate stanza, I also choose to omit since it is only Burns’ lamentation on his own life.

Tom Nagel went to a urinal to do his thing and he saw a bug clinging to the top of it. Several hours later he returned to find the bug was exactly in the same place. What does this say about the creature? Nagel pondered what it would be like to be that bug. He also tried to imagine what it would be like to be a bat. Finally, he gave up the quest and moved on to develop some thesis about the nature of mind. He concluded something or other, I think, about the impenetrability of alien forms of life. I never tried to understand Nagel’s philosophy, not because it is uninteresting but because it was too technical for my temperament.

I have an easier time with mice. There is a mouse living in my house. I don’t know what to do about that. A few years ago, another mouse took up residence in my living room. I cornered him and he very clearly trembled with fear. There is not the slightest doubt he wanted to live and saw he me as the giver and taker or life and death. I hovered over him for 5 minutes at a loss as to what to do. He was too petrified to try to escape. Finally, I threw a butterfly net over him and took him to a field about 50 years from my house. Because of this, I slept much better that night.

Dr. Herb Silverman, a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the College of Charleston and founder and President of the Secular Coalition for America (and proud atheist) just published an op-ed column in the Washington Post. In it, he claims to both agree and disagree with Peter Singer. The trouble is that he doesn’t understand Singer’s philosophy.

He writes, “Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, and is credited with having started the animal rights movement with his 1975 book “Animal Liberation.” No such thing, for at least two reasons.

1. A belief in animal liberation is not a belief in animal rights.
2. Singer gives credit to Stanley and Rosalind Godlovitch for introducing him to the views that he made popular. About point 2, I will say no more.

Singer very emphatically denies he believes animals have rights. He just as determinedly denies people have rights (excluding political rights). The indisputable leader of the animal rights movement here in the USA and around the world is Tom Regan of North Carolina State. Regan has been the chief spokesperson for animal rights since 1975 – 35 years ago – about the same time that Singer put forth a very different philosophy. According to Regan, all sentient creatures have an inherent right to life. Moreover, (and this strikes me as very odd) he holds that each of them values his life as much as any human values his own. ( I don’t even thinks each human values his life as much as any other does.)

Singer is what is called a preference utilitarian and thinks that all creatures, insofar as they are capable of having preferences, are entitled to have their preferences get equal consideration to our own. That does not guarantee they will get equal treatment. Singer thinks the notion of rights is metaphysical nonsense – nonsense on stilts, as Jeremy Bentham put it about 2 centuries ago. Singer calls people who refuse to give animals the consideration they give one another SPECIESISTS. The word seems to have been coined by Richard Ryder but Singer commandeered it in his book.

The essence of Regan’s view is that the right to life is almost an absolute, except in exceptional cases, in which it clashes with the rights of others to life. One can devise cases in which there are clashes but, for the greater part, this is just game-playing. Rights, for Regan, trump utilities and should not be sacrificed for them. All of us will admit that in the purely human realm, (when the treatment of animals is not at stake), it is usually wrong to disregard rights. For example, if 10,000 people would take pleasure for some perverse reason in torturing an innocent human being, it would be absurd to tally up the amount of pleasure they have (if tallying were even possible) and weigh it against the suffering of their one victim. Only a moral degenerate would think the joys of the 10,000 are more important than the misery of the one.

According to Singer,. all we need to do to determine what is right or wrong is to calculate net utilities. While in practice, the butchering of cows and chickens is evil, it need not be. If we could find a way to raise them kindly and kill them painlessly and then replace them with animals equal in pain/pleasure capacity, then the business of killing them would raise no ethical obstacles. He has engaged Regan in many discussions both in print and in private over the claim that all animals value their lives as people do. For the most part, he says, animals are only vessels we can fill up with pleasures or pains and, unlike us, they have no long range plans of which death would deprive them.

I have no idea how it happened that in the popular culture, Peter Singer became known as the champion of animal rights. Perhaps it is only because his book, Animal Liberation, was a mega best-seller. In any case, the good Professor Silverman is all-wet. Here is the LINK to his Washington Post article.

No one will deny, I suppose, that ants and cockroaches are much more intelligent than human beings. But I do hear from time to time anecdotes of human intelligence, none well-confirmed, that some people are pretty smart. I guess that Shakespeare, Galileo, da Vinci and about 40-50 more of that level of fame, are four times more brainy than the average Ph.D. in philosophy and even twice as smart as most street drug dealers, but exceptions like these don’t make out much of a case for the rest of the species.

 Certainly, if ants and roaches were six feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds, they would rule the world. What kind of existence would they allow us, if any at all? Would they examine us to see which of us knew the Nicene Creed? We wouldn’t be able to fool them, and those who turned out to have it memorized would be squashed as feeble-minded parasites on the food supply. Elephants and dolphins don’t know the Creed (I think), so they would be safe. Besides, even a six foot roach would not be comfortable in stormy ocean seas where dolphins could hide out. I don’t know about the elephants but they have never bothered roaches and would be given a reprieve for having only modest stupidity. Of course, when I say, elephants are stupid, I don’t mean human-level stupidity, and earth’s rulers might have compassion on them. Chimpanzees and other apes? A borderline case, for sure. I’m only guessing but I think the ants and roaches would take pity on these creatures, especially those who could sing the song, “I’m Chiquita banana and I come to say…” I, myself, like bananas, if I may be allowed to plead the case for survival.

 What about wild turkeys?   These have proved their mettle many times in the battle for survival. I like their chances when they go up before a review board of ants only. Ants like to feed on their carcasses and if the turkeys were all wiped out in one fell swoop, what would the ants do after that?

Now, the mighty shrew is an interesting case because it is said to have a brain quite large in relation to its mass and there is no doubt it is smarter than a human but does that fact mean the roaches and and ants would show it mercy in the Court of Infinite Justice? I hope not, because I am little envious of the shrew from whom I guess the word “shrewd” derives. I am envious because a shrew can eat as much food in terms of weight, in one day as it weighs. If I am not careful and walk past a Jewish delicatessen or Italian bakery, I gain five ounces. So, off with their heads and damn their brains.

Intelligence assessment is not an easy task, probably because we cannot find outside, impartial  judges.  Human beings, having not much better to do with their time, like to spend time figuring out which animals are smart and which aren’t. Humans always come out on top, and if ever there was a case of a stacked jury, this is it.    But, believe me, they ain’t nuttin’. Now, I am off to eat a banana.

Maybe it will make me smart. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFDOI24RRAE

I never realized it, I never gave them credit, I completely underestimated them, but I am now fully cognizant of the fact that ants have conscious lives.  (To a higher degree than my own.)   Things go bad or well for them, juat as they do for us.

About two weeks ago, I spotted a tiny black thing, perhaps an 1/8th inch long, quite motionless, on my granite countertop that surrounds my sink, that I took to be a dead ant.  I watched it for a minute or two and finally touched it lightly.   It sprung into action.  It raced off for safety and its reaction was so sudden that it frightened me and I did not rush in to deliver the coup de grace.  Today, I am glad for that lapse.   In the weeks since then I have taken to observing ants in my kitchen.  They are not plentiful – perhaps 6 or 7 – but enough for me to formulate a(n) hypothesis.  [Do you aspirate your "h" sounds? I graciously give you a choice.]

I never see them scurrying about as one might find them doing in a garden.   They are always taking a nap.  A couple of them sleep stretched out and a few of them prefer to curl up.  When they are curled up, it is hard to recognize them as ants but a feathery touch gives them away.   When ants are sleepy, they find hard surfaces on which to lay their weary heads down.   In gardens, ants like crowds but in kitchens they are loners.  Only when they are away from the madding crowd can they find the peace and quiet they love.  They are not really the hard workers we think they are.  At least, kitchen ants aren’t.

When ants sleep, they dream.  I am sure of that but I have not figured out what they dream about.  Perhaps to each his own.  Perhaps there is no such thing as the stereotypical ant dream.   Some have nightmares, I suppose.  They imagine red ants coming to devour them.  You can almost hear them wimpering the way dogs do when they dream.   Some probably have sexual fantasies in which the queen ant belongs to them and them alone.  Some wonder about the division of labor for which ants are famous.    My ants seem to be solitary fellows, banished, I think, from the community of ants.  Some live in dread of the spray that has carried off wandering chaps who, by means of too much commotion, have annoyed the giants who claim to be owners of the granite tops.

Apart from a good place to lie down and, once in awhile enjoy a small crumb, ants don’t expect or want much out of life.  They are apolitical creatures, and that is more than a bit annoying.   I may be wrong, of course.   Possibly, they run the broad spectrum of opinions just as we do.  The more I think about it, the more likely it seems to me that ants who hang out in large colonies in gardens are of a different political bent than those who spend their days and nights sleeping on granite.  This is exactly what I should have always known but for some reason I was too dense to figure it out.

Of course, from Franz Kafka we all learned that cockroaches are really people, so why did we not expect as much from ants?  Has it something to do with size?   Probably not, because giraffes are very big and they are not people.   Naturally, giraffes are plenty smart but that doesn’t mean they are people.   Jelly fish can be very large but everyone knows they are not people.  Aphids have sworn enemies – little parasites that suck the life out of them and no doubt these vile brutes  are geniuses but you don’t have to be human to be a genius.  Consider Torquemada.

Now that I know ants have genuine lives – that is, they lead lives and are not merely alive like a cherry tree – I want to know how I should modify my own behavior so as to accommodate them.  Should I prepare breakfasts for them?  If so, what would they most like?  Can I knit tiny pillows for them?  I better not take on that task because an ant pillow would have to be so small it would defy mortal craftsmanship.   I have so much to learn, so much to discover, that my head is throbbing as if I am having a cluster headache.  And, good grief, what about about that cherry tree?   Is it possible that….?   Oh, no!  I must not let myself think about that.   For it was William Shakespeare, the great Notre Dame halfback whose stunning game-winning touchdown pass in the 1935 game against Ohio State  gave him immortality, who warned us that there are more things in heaven and earth than we can beer, bare, or bear.    Today, Bill is throwing rhymed couplets and touchdown passes in the sky but I owe to him my never-ending curiosity about the nature of things.

**************************

P.S. Bill died January 17, 1974 and in 1983 was posthumously named to the College Football Hall of Fame.  Later, he was inducted into the Hall of Entomology for, although he was never a practitioner, he inspired tens of thousands like me to Deep Thought.   In 1996, a statue of him was erected at Stratford-at-Avon.   Believe me when I say there is a striking lack of similarity between the Shakespeare of Notre Dame lore and the ridiculous statue.   The Shakespeare I adored knew something of entomolgy and the freak being honored at Stratford must be an imposter.

I walked over to my kitchen sink and there, on my nice Corian countertop, was a housefly so large that it made me sad that I was about to send it to its immediate demise.  It looked more human to me than Gregor Samsa.    Still, I snatched it and threw it down the drain and ground it up in the disposal machine.   Awful.   Then I reminisced.

It was only 48 years ago, so I remember it well. I was visiting an old chum who had relocated from Brownsville, Brooklyn to Guatemala, (he lives there still), and we were in a boat crossing the spectacularly beautiful Lake Atitlan, accompanied by an old priest who had been in the region forever.  We called him Padre.

Guatemala is no stranger to some of the world’s largest insects but the one that alighted on our boat, near a hook through which an oar passes,  must have been the Daddy of them all.  He was so gigantic that he almost tipped the boat over.

Padre made a speech.  He said insects were among God’s creatures and that he respected them all, great or small.  He could tell that this visitor to our boat only seemed a monster to our frightened selves but that his size gave him away as a champion among beasts, a thing of nearly unparalleled nobility.   Padre’s impassioned declamation must have gone on for almost 30 seconds when finally he said, “May God have mercy on your soul, and surely you have one.”   The creature’s eyes seemed to swell with tears and I thought I could hear it howl, “Me, Father?  Is it my time to die?”

With his final words, Padre tapped the great beast lightly on what looked to be its noggin, and the King of Insects staggered onto its side, too feeble to fly away and certainly aware he was no match for Padre.   Then, with a swing of his arm that Babe Ruth never could have matched, Padre sent the once mighty Lord overboard.  Although, I did not see him descend to his watery grave, (and perhaps he simply floated away and his ghost cruises over the lake to this day), it was clear to me that it was finis for the brute.

If there is an insect heaven, surely this winged Magnificence has his place near the side of his Lord.

We rowed on.

So you think aphids and cockroaches are among the scourges of the earth?   They’ve got their own reasons for despair – maybe a thousand times more than we pampered humans.

Consider the aphid that preys on our leaves. We think of it as the ultimate parasite but woe to you if in your next life you come back as one. It is about 1/4″ inch long and it is hounded day and night throughout its life cycle by aphidius matricariae. This sweetheart is half the size of the aphid. It lays its eggs inside the monster aphid and these little things proceed to consume the Big Guy from the inside out. The aphids don’t have a chance and they go down at a rate that makes a Haitian earthquake look benign.

While all this is happening, the cockroaches are running for cover. Inside their guts are single celled ciliates who are bent on showing us that the old saying that cockroaches will inherit the earth is just so much baloney. Ciliates are just stupid, brainless things but anybody who has ever lived in Brooklyn can testify to the genius of cockroaches. They know all kinds of tricks – how to hide, how to play dead, how to make good meals out of thrown-away ham and eggs. Cockroaches have courting rituals and the males battle to the death for the dubious privilege of winning the fair genitalia of a hot-looking female. Despite their Gould-given talent for survival, the ciliates get them all the time.

So next time Sid Gendin complains to you about his aches and pains just tell him he don’t know nuttin about misery and you have more important beings on which to shed compassion.
*********************************************
The first of two responses is a clever take-off from the 17th century poem “Song to Celia” by Ben Jonson. It is by an anonymous author whose name I cannot retrieve.

……………To Cilia

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a gene but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a code divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
*********************************
This second response is by a reader to whom I will give the pseudonym, Alphonso Goldberg.   It can be decoded if you have nothing better to do for the next four months.  [I also considered the name Alain Kimosabe, but feared that would add on two months ridiculous tracking down time or, contrarily, reduce the trackdown to 20 seconds.  ]   This destroyer of the Titanic will remain anonymous unless or until I am given permission to release his (or her) name.   For the sake of space and to spare the reader some insider observations, this response has been edited.  I call it, without permission:

Aphids and all that syncopation

I do hate aphids for their wanton destruction of my tomato plants, which I grow on my terrace. I once took a magnifying glass to one of them. He had a shaven head and was wearing a monocle. His face rang a bell. He was a dead ringer for Erich von Stroheim. I’ve tried everything to eradicate the suckers, including soapy water and ladybugs, their natural predators. No success. They even go into latency in the winter and, in the spring, they rise up like the undead, but with even more of a Prussian, authoritarian attitude. One of them said in a stage whisper, “Today the tomato plants, tomorrow the lettuce.” Once, as I left the terrace, I heard one of them mutter, “Kike!”

I picture aphidius matricariae as muscular, and wearing a teeny-weeny blue body suit with a red cape. But now I’m worried about the food chain going wild and the harmless little aphid-eating ladybugs getting slaughtered by the tiny killers they’ve inadvertently ingested……

As for cockroaches, I believe they were trained in Afghanistan and Yemen. The ciliates (CIA code) are Special Forces. Break out the magnifying glass and you’ll see that they’re wearing tiny black berets…..Here, on the liberal Upper West Side, cockroaches are not stepped on; they are read their Miranda Rights and held for trial because they’re American citizens. The German cockroaches, however, are considered enemy combatants and are sent to Gitmo, unless they are naturalized citizens or can produce a Honolulu birth certificate.

Once again, my anti-capital punishment feelings are severely tested.

Casper, a 12-year-old black and white cat, lived in Plymouth, England, and used to wait with commuters at a bus stop outside his home and then hop on to the number 3 bus to find a seat to curl up on.   The cat was so well-known on the service that drivers knew at which stop to let him off.

Casper’s death was announced on a notice put up at his bus stop by his owner, the BBC and local newspapers reported.

“Many local people knew Casper, who loved everyone — he also enjoyed the bus journeys,” it said.

“Sadly a motorist hit him and did not stop. Casper died from his injuries. He will be greatly missed…he was a much loved pet who had so much character. Thank you to all those who befriended him.”

The bus service, First Devon and Cornwall, said it was “devastated” by the cat’s death.

“Casper touched many people’s lives and clearly had a very exciting life traveling around Plymouth and who knows where else,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.   A picture of the cat will continue to be used on one of the company’s buses, it said.     Casper’s owner, 55-year-old Susan Finden, who re-homed him from a rescue center in 2002, said he had always been a free spirit and was named after the cartoon character Casper the Friendly Ghost, because of his habit of wandering off.

The website for local newspaper The Herald said it had received tributes from around the world.

“Casper was a special cat and he had a wonderful life. He will be missed in the Netherlands too,” Jelle from Holland wrote.

[SG: May the creature who did not stop to see if Casper could have been saved by driving him to a veterinary get run down by an animal rescue van.]