Animals dedicated to Brian K. Vaughn

Deer meander down from the hills behind Cabrillo to meet their death on the roads going through campus. What once was their home is no longer. “Animals are being pushed into smaller and smaller areas because of human encroachment, they come into contact with humans more often. They can also take off with all kinds of horrendous injuries. Deer cannot be rehabilitated. If it is a remote area, they shoot the animals. If its in a more populated area, they give the animal a lethal injection of sodium Phenobarbital.” said a spokesperson for the SPCA, Marile Geyer. Injured deer can be dangerous. Deer that are hit by vehicles like other animals, panic and try to escape. Richard VanKleeck from the Public Works Department feels deer crossing signs do little to remedy the problem. “Deer signs probably do not help. The big problem with deer crossing signs is the deer are all over the county. We find that there not that effective because we don't know where they are going to cross.” His agency is responsible for deciding where signs will go up. They get dozens of calls a week regarding deer, and they put the complaints on a list to be investigated. If the county crew who pick up the kill, notices there is an inordinate amount of dead deer in an area, that is where a sign goes up. When animals are downed on the highways, the California Transportation Department scrapes them up. The Santa Cruz County road crews pick the rest of the up.

The October 1987 issue of Animal Agenda magazine cover had a deer facing a car's looming headlights, with the title “400 million road kills a year.” Vickie Stevens from Fund for Animals said, “When I'm home in Ohio, in the rural areas, they always shoot the deer signs full of holes. I assume this is done by hunters, so I know a lot of people disrespect the signs.” In Rappahannock County, Virginia, officials found out how the public feels about deer. They set up a “Bambi-scam” posing a stuffed deer and her fawn near the edge of county road. Virtually every car that approached the fake deer's stopped and fired. Police sent summonses to 27 people. The Washington Post headlined story:” Hunters Can't Pass the Buck.” The best way to lower animal collision and road kill is to slow down and watch carefully. If there was an educational effort it might make a difference. Planners of roads and highways put shrubbery and make it esthetically pleasing to humans, but they don't consider that its a potential habitat for wildlife.”
I remember reading about a duck who had her babies by a freeway and when she tried to get across with her whole brood of babies walking in a line, they were all run down. Once when I was coming down Graham Hill in Santa Cruz, I drove by a duck walking with her babies on the side of the road. I felt horror as I watched, I went by and then decided to come back to see if I could help, just as I turned my car around I was heading back to her family, she began to cross with her babies waddling behind her and I stopped my car put on the emergency lights and got out to wave down a car which was about to barrel down, they could see but were not slowing down, they were going to run them over. I hope she went far from the road to raise her family. I had a duck as a friend when i was a child and loved my Nasha The Nibbler so much.
The body count of animals will go down when humans slow down enough to take notice of other species in the environment. We are not traveling alone in this life, there are animals on the roads. Drive slower, be careful; they have the right to be on this planet too.


	This ink drawing is dedicated to Chicken Swoop AKA Brian Keith Vaughn. A soldier in the Crip Nation. Let there be peace between the Gangs, Tribes and Nations. Let the blood shed end, lets unite for the revolution. Can't Stop, Won't Stop,Our Struggle Continues, Forward Ever,Backward Never. The Mouse Loves the Chicken, you are always in the forefront of my mind.

	Deer and other animals become Road Kill Ella Seneres Staff writer In Ohio over 400,000 deer are killed annually. It is estimated that over 1 million animals are killed on usa's roads daily. Yearly we experiment and kill over 100 million lab animals, 200,000 killed by hunters. Deer meander down from the hills behind Cabrillo to meet their death on the roads going through campus. What once was their home is no longer. “Animals are being pushed into smaller and smaller areas because of human encroachment, they come into contact with humans more often. They can also take off with all kinds of horrendous injuries. Deer cannot be rehabilitated. If it is a remote area, they shoot the animals. If its in a more populated area, they give the animal a lethal injection of sodium Phenobarbital.” said a spokesperson for the SPCA, Marile Geyer. Injured deer can be dangerous. Deer that are hit by vehicles like other animals, panic and try to escape. Richard VanKleeck from the Public Works Department feels deer crossing signs do little to remedy the problem. “Deer signs probably do not help. The big problem with deer crossing signs is the deer are all over the county. We find that there not that effective because we don't know where they are going to cross.” His agency is responsible for deciding where signs will go up. They get dozens of calls a week regarding deer, and they put the complaints on a list to be investigated. If the county crew who pick up the kill, notices there is an inordinate amount of dead deer in an area, that is where a sign goes up. When animals are downed on the highways, the California Transportation Department scrapes them up. The Santa Cruz County road crews pick the rest of the up. The October 1987 issue of Animal Agenda magazine cover had a deer facing a car's looming headlights, with the title “400 million road kills a year.” Vickie Stevens from Fund for Animals said, “When I'm home in Ohio, in the rural areas, they always shoot the deer signs full of holes. I assume this is done by hunters, so I know a lot of people disrespect the signs.” In Rappahannock County, Virginia, officials found out how the public feels about deer. They set up a “Bambi-scam” posing a stuffed deer and her fawn near the edge of county road. Virtually every car that approached the fake deer's stopped and fired. Police sent summonses to 27 people. The Washington Post headlined story:” Hunters Can't Pass the Buck.” The best way to lower animal collision and road kill is to slow down and watch carefully. If there was an educational effort it might make a difference. Planners of roads and highways put shrubbery and make it esthetically pleasing to humans, but they don't consider that its a potential habitat for wildlife.” I remember reading about a duck who had her babies by a freeway and when she tried to get across with her whole brood of babies walking in a line, they were all run down. Once when I was coming down Graham Hill in Santa Cruz, I drove by a duck walking with her babies on the side of the road. I felt horror as I watched, I went by and then decided to come back to see if I could help, just as I turned my car around I was heading back to her family, she began to cross with her babies waddling behind her and I stopped my car put on the emergency lights and got out to wave down a car which was about to barrel down, they could see but were not slowing down, they were going to run them over. I hope she went far from the road to raise her family. I had a duck as a friend when i was a child and loved my Nasha The Nibbler so much. The body count of animals will go down when humans slow down enough to take notice of other species in the environment. We are not traveling alone in this life, there are animals on the roads. Drive slower, be careful; they have the right to be on this planet too.
	Speciesism, Nazis & the New Resistance. Earth First! Pg. 11 1993 It seems appropriate that I am writing an article on “speciesism” the same week as the official anniversary of the Holocaust. The daily Missoulian reports that a majority of American high school children cannot correctly identify the holocaust as a historical event, nor do they show recognition of the word “holocaust.” It is my biased belief that future generations will refer to the twentieth century as a combined holocaust of epic dimensions in both human and non human terms. Not only did we humans accept multiple wars of mass destruction against other humans in this century, we accepted and perpetrated a gross and extreme global war of wanton mass destruction against other species. To me, it's all one catastrophe of human character. I’d like to be able to write a nice, non-controversial article on this subject, approach it rationally, quote the quotes, state the statistics, attempt to establish on philosophical grounds the moral imperative to act with respect and care towards the rest of our planet's inhabitants, be reasonable about the whole thing. That would be proper and correct and would stop me from hurting anyone's bloody feelings on this matter. I'm sorry, but I've had enough of all that. Feelings need to be ruffled, jumped on, darn well steamrollered until people pay attention. The situation is simple and terrible. Almost every habitat, every species and every blome on this planet is directly threatened in some way by the greed and compulsiveness of humans. Every last living thing, every plant and animal that is of beauty or beautifully ugly, every landscape, and every indigenous human tribe is in direct danger. There is not one living thing in the whole of creation that we are not directly threatening with our desire and our ignorance. This is “speciesism” a belief that logging and logger's livings are more important than Spotted Owls, rainforests, Siberian Tigers or the cultural survival of the primitive Penan tribe; that the continued wealth of the American elite is more important than the air we breathe or the ozone layer; that our “right” to develop private lands is weighed up against the right of the Marbled Murrelet to exist. I could approach it rationally; say that it's simply a matter of allocation of resources that it can be fixed by the application of conservation principles. That loggers and their corporate controllers could be given incentives to properly manage the forest. But it's already beyond manageable. I could quote the quotes, tell you that Aldo Leopold said that the “first requirement in intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.” that Gary Snyder said, “There is no other life,” that even the chrisitan bible says that god said to Noah that he should take “of clean beasts and of beasts that were not clean and of everything that creepeth upon the Earth” into the ark with him and his kin, that the bible grants humans only “dominion,” not the right to rape and pillage. But it's beyond words now. I could state the statistics, bore you with the fact that one hundred species a day become extinct; that the current rate of extinction is faster than the estimated rate of extinction at the end of the age of dinosaurs, when the Earth might have been hit by an asteroid; that our human population will exceed ten billion early next century. It's too late for numbers. I could attempt to establish on philosophical grounds the moral imperative to act with respect and care towards the rest of our planet's inhabitants, talk about St. Francis and rational beings and the categorical imperative and the rest, but I'm sick of all that. For me, its the Holocaust, continued. You're either a Nazi, or you're a spineless bystander, or you're in the resistance. If you're a Nazi, you intend to get what you can out of the dying biosphere and could not care less about the beauty of the world. If you're a spineless bystander you probably have some vague feelings about “your beach,” “your forest,” “your backyard,” or “your Jews.” And the resistance? You're doing something, for Earths sake! You are jumping up and down on street corners, screaming at passers-by, wearing a bear suit, or teaching grade-schoolers about “the environment,” or growing organic gardens or raising goats. You're in Greenpeace or Earth First! or the Green Party, or leading wilderness programs or subverting the Forest Service or anything but accepting the status quo. Because at least you aren't so sick with work or alcohol or drugs or christianity that you can't feel good when the cool waters of a creek flow over our toes, when you eat a dirty carrot from our own patch, when your best beloved hugs you fair-and-square. Because you can understand the value gained in a summer's day, as a human animal is beyond anything you can earn in a whole summer working in a Nazi corporation. Because when you're old and grey and children turn and ask you what you did in the Holocaust you will say with pride that you were in the resistance. Mic Womersley is in the resistance.