WOLF NUMBER 832F

Wolf 832 is on the right.  Her mate, left, was killed
by a hunter last month.  Photo by Doug McLaughlin

Some people called her "a rock star" and "the most famous wolf in the world."  They called her these things because she lived in Yellowstone National Park, and lots of tourists went there to see her.  Biologists liked to study her because she was the alpha female of her pack in Lamar Canyon, and she had a lot of things to teach people.  But sadly, last week Wolf 832 went outside of the park, and she got shot by a hunter.  This was totally legal for the hunter to do because wolves were taken off the endangered species list in Wyoming a few months ago.  But it's still a sad ending for such a famous wolf.



Back in the old days, when people first discovered Yellowstone, there were lots of gray wolves living there.  But then settlers started coming to the area, and they shot the wolves because they didn't want them to kill their cattle and sheep.  So by the 1930s, there were no more wolves.  But in 1995 and 1996, about 30 wolves were brought from Canada to the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone.  This was done to try to make the wildlife balance be more like it was in the 19th century.  The wolves had babies, and more wolves were brought in later, and now there are 10 packs of wolves in the park.

Of course, wolves like to eat elk, so this has made the elk population smaller, which means there is more food for the elk that haven't been eaten by wolves.  Also, trees such as cottonwoods, willows, and aspens are growing better because the elk don't eat all the new baby trees.  There are more beavers now, more songbirds, and more fish.  There are fewer coyotes, because the wolves see them as competitors for food and kill them.  But fewer coyotes means more foxes.  Also there are more carcasses for scavengers like ravens and bears.

So bringing back the wolves has made these things better.  But sometimes the wolves go out of the park and kill cattle and sheep, which are easy to kill because they are in fenced areas.  Ranchers depend on their livestock to make a living, so they don't want wolves eating all their animals.  But wolves are just looking for a tasty meal.  The government will pay a rancher for livestock that is killed by wolves, but the rancher has to find the kill right away, and there has to be enough of the animal left so that it is clear that a wolf killed it and not some other predator.  Which makes it hard sometimes for the ranchers to get reimbursed for their losses.

Because the wolf population of Yellowstone has been growing, wolves have been taken off the endangered species list, which made it legal to hunt them.  Wyoming was the last of the three states around the park where wolf hunting got okayed.  Ranchers feel better and more tolerant of wolves now that wolves can be hunted, but other people think the hunting is "too aggressive."  At least that's what Suzanne Stone, who is a wolf expert from Defenders of Wildlife says.  She also says that the wolf reintroduction program is being threatened.

Wolf 832 on the left.
Photo by Doug McLaughlin

Wolf 832 had not gone outside the park very often in the past.  She had lived there for 6 years, and scientists watched her behavior in her pack.  They were surprised to find out that alpha females are the true leaders of their packs, and not alpha males, like the scientists used to think.  Also 832 was an excellent hunter and could bring down a full-grown elk all by herself.  In February, she started wearing a $4,000 GPS tracking collar.  Before that, the biologists could never capture her to put a collar on her because she was so clever and kept getting away from them.

Since the wolf hunting season opened this fall in Wyoming, eight wolves wearing GPS collars have been killed.  Nobody knows exactly how many wolves without collars have been killed, but it might have been something like 50.  Last Friday, the Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals filed a lawsuit to try to make the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put wolves back on the endangered species list in Wyoming.

Jonathan Lovvorn, of the HSUS, said in a statement that "The agency's decision to strip Wyoming wolves of federal protection is biologically reckless and contrary to the requirements of the Endangered Species Act.  Wyoming's regressive wolf management plan is reminiscent of a time when bounties paid by state and federal governments triggered mass killings that nearly exterminated wolves from the lower 48 states."

Wolves from the Lamar Canyon pack.
©Meg Sommers

I guess the nice judges in the courts will have to figure out who's right and who's wrong.  I kind of understand why ranchers would get mad when wolves eat their cows or sheep, but as a dog, I can't help thinking about how yummy those cows and sheep would taste.  Most of all, I am really sorry that Wolf 832 got killed because she was the kind of strong female that anybody could admire.

Oh, and if you want to learn more about the subject of wolves in Yellowstone, including all the issues that biologists and ranchers are dealing with, you should read this really interesting article in American Scientist magazine.

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THE BURY HUNT

Maybe you will sort of remember that Mom bought four placemats at an estate sale several months ago, and these placemats had pictures of English hunt scenes on them.  I already told your about three of these hunt scenes, and today I will finally get around to telling you about the last one, which is called THE BURY HUNT.  The dedication under the title says this:  To Edmund Grundy, Esq. of Bury, Lancashire -- this Engraving is by permission respectfully dedicated, by his obliged Servant, Joseph Zanetti.

The way this picture was made turned out to be kind of confusing to understand, because I thought Joseph Zanetti was the artist, but I was totally wrong about that.  Instead, the artist was somebody named C. Agar.  This person's whole name was Charles D'agar, which sounds like a French name, but Mr. D'agar was actually born in Shropshire, England in 1669.  He almost always painted portraits, but he seems to have also painted this picture of all these gentlemen out with their fox hounds and horses, ready to go on a hunt.

To make things more confusing, the name of a second artist, J. Maiden, showed up in some places on the internet where engravings or prints of The Bury Hunt were for sale.  One of these listings said "Painted by C. Agar The Animals by J. Maiden."  I think maybe this means that Mr. Maiden painted the dogs and horses, since Mr. Agar was mostly used to painting people.  This is just my theory, but I think it is probably the correct one.

A third important person in making this piece of art was the engraver, whose name was Frederick Bromley.  What Mr. Bromley did was to etch lines in a metal plate, based on the painting, and the plate was used to do the printing.  So the engraver really had to be an artist, too, so that he could make a good copy of the original.  And he had to do it in reverse, so that it would print the correct way.

I couldn't really learn anything about J. Maiden, the artist, or about Frederick Bromley, the engraver.  What I did find out was that in 2009, Christie's auction house in London sold a print of The Bury Hunt that was engraved by Frederick Bromley and first published in January, 1840.  This engraving sold for £625 ($911).

Zanetti's shop in Market Street, about 1820

Now you are probably wondering who the other people mentioned in the engraving's dedication are.  One of these people is Joseph Zanetti, and he turned out to be the publisher of the engraving.  Joseph Zanetti's father, Vittore, had immigrated to England and set up shop as a carver and gilder.  He made picture frames and scientific instruments.  About 1813, he took on Thomas Agnew as an apprentice, and moved to a bigger shop.  In 1816, Mr. Agnew became partners with Vittore Zanetti.  They did high-quality printing, framed the prints, and set up a gallery to show and sell them.  Mr. Zanetti's son, Joseph, got into the business in 1825.

The other person mentioned in The Bury Hunt dedication is Edmund Grundy.  I found a British genealogical site with 2 or 3 people named Edmund Grundy, but Mom does not belong to that site, so I was not allowed to see the information.  Anyway, I think we can safely guess that Mr. Grundy was rich and lived in a big manor house and had lots of servants, dogs, and horses.  He is probably the person who asked for the painting to be made in the first place.  Maybe he is that man wearing a red coat and sitting on the white horse, just to the right of the center of the picture.  Or maybe he is on the bay horse just to the left of center.  Both of these men look to me like they are important, but so do the two men walking in the front of the picture.  I guess we will never know who's who, and anyway, I prefer looking at the dogs!

How Fort Bury might have looked, with the River Irwell in the background.

I also did a little in-depth research on the town of Bury, and what I learned is that Bury is located on the River Irwell, in the Greater Manchester area.  The word bury comes from an Old English word that means "castle" or "stronghold."  The town of Bury goes all the way back to Saxon times.  There used to be a fortified manor house there, but then it got destroyed in a war.  Now some archeologists are trying to dig up the old walls of the castle.

Excavated wall of fortress

So far, they have managed to find several parts of the base of the wall.  I don't know how much digging the archeologists will be able to do because there are some modern buildings that got built right on top of where the old fortress used to be.  But if the archeologists need any help with their digging, I am going to recommend my greyhound brother, Nicky, because he is a very good digger!

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MOM'S PEDIGREE

A few weeks ago, Mom decided she wanted to know more about the old, dead ancestors in her family tree.  I told her she should just use her registration number to look up her pedigree with the AKC, but Mom said that was only for dogs.  She said it was much more complicated for people, and you could spend lots of time digging up your ancestors, so to speak.  And when you try to do this, it's called genealogy.

So this is the latest thing Mom is doing with all the spare time she doesn't really have.  In my opinion, it's a silly thing to do because she doesn't even have any children or nieces or nephews to give this information to after she finds it.  But Mom says that doesn't matter because she is just doing it for herself.

Anyway, Mom has a couple of distant cousins who already did a bunch of genealogy, and they figured out certain parts of the family tree.  So Mom wanted to work on a different branch of the tree that she didn't know much about.  She chose the Allen branch because her last name is Allen.

Clay County, Missouri

Mom already knew that her great-grandfather, John Allen, came to Clay County, Missouri from Casey County, Kentucky, but she didn't know when he did this exactly.  But after looking at some old obituaries, she learned that the family came to Missouri in the fall of 1855.  First they went by wagon to the Mississippi River, and then they went the rest of the way by steamboat up the Missouri River.  Later on, Mom wants to do some more research on her Great-grandfather Allen, but the thing she really wanted to find out before that was when her first Allen relative came over from England.

The Natchez steamboat and a bunch of wagons

So by using the ancestry.com website (which costs more than Mom expected it would to join), she was able to wade back through a bunch of information and slowly put together the Allen family tree.  And here's how it goes:

John Allen (1834-1920) was born in Casey County, KY and died in Clay County, MO
His father was James Allen (1811-1894), who was born and died in Casey County, KY

Casey County, Kentucky

The father of James was Robert Mark Allen (1772 -1828), who was born in Frederick County, VA
    and died in Casey County, KY
The father of Robert Mark was Benjamin Allen (1745-1826), who was also born in Frederick County,
    VA and died in Casey County, KY

Mom told me that this all fit with what she had learned in school about how America was settled.  First, people came there by ship from Europe, and they just went a little ways from the coast to claim land and make their homes.  But after a while, people started moving farther west, like to the wilds of Tennessee and Kentucky.  Later on, they moved to the new frontier, which by then was in Missouri and Iowa and Arkansas.  Some people went all the way to Oregon or California, but Mom's ancestors did not do that.  They just stayed in Missouri, which is where Mom was born.

Frederick County, Virginia

So anyway, after digging up all these ancestors, Mom was beginning to wonder if she would ever find the first Allen who came to America, but finally she did!  His name was Robert Allen, and he was born in 1695.  But he was not born in England, like Mom expected.  Instead, he was born in IRELAND, in a town called Armagh.  Mom and I had never even heard of this town before, so we had to look it up.  It is located in County Armagh in Northern Ireland.

So that's where Robert Allen was born, and he died in Virginia in 1769.  His first wife was from Cheshire, England, and his second wife was from Ireland.  I think he married the second wife after they got to America, and the same year that his first wife died, but it's hard to get all this ancient information sorted out.

Anyway, if you go back another generation, you learn that the father of Robert Allen was named James Robert Allen, and he was born in Scotland in 1650, but he died in Ireland in 1695.  So really there was only one generation of Allens in Ireland before they immigrated to America.

The city of Armagh

Mom was able to go back one more generation to Henry Allen.  He was the father of James Robert Allen, and he was born in 1626 in Glasgow, Scotland.  He died in 1647 in the same place.  By the time you get back that far with the Allen clan, you start seeing the name spelled "Allan," which is the Scottish way to spell it.  The English way is with an "en," and that's why Mom thought her ancestors came from England.

Charing Cross in Glasgow, Scotland

Of course, some other branches of Mom's family tree really did come from England, but Mom will have to do some serious research to find out which part of England they came from.  I'm not sure why Mom is so excited to have all these ancestors from a place like Great Britain.  If she were a basenji like me, she could have ancestors from the Congo, which is so much more interesting and exotic!

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GIRAFFES

I haven't told you about any African animals for a while, but today I'm going to that, and my subject is the giraffe.  Everybody knows that giraffes have really long legs and long necks.  Giraffes are the tallest animals that live on land, and they are also the biggest ruminants.  Which means they chew their cud, just like cows do.  A giraffe is 16 to 20 feet tall, and the males weigh 3,500 pounds.  Females only weigh about 1,800 pounds, but this is still a lot more than a basenji weighs, and I would not want to be stepped on by a giraffe.

Photo: Roland H.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rolandh/

Mostly, the giraffe is not an endangered species, but there are six subspecies, and some of the subspecies are getting close to being endangered.  The names of the six subspecies are the West African, Rothschild, reticulated, Masai, Angolan, and South African.  Some scientists are now starting to think that these subspecies are actually six separate species.  They think this because of differences in the giraffes' DNA and because the different types of giraffes usually don't mate with each other, even if they live in the same neighborhood.

You can tell the different subspecies of giraffes apart by the patterns of spots they have.  The patterns of their coats are good camouflage when the giraffes are hanging out in the savannah woodlands, eating acacia leaves, which is their favorite thing to eat.

On top the giraffes' heads, there are some hornlike things, and these are called ossicones.  Both males and females have them.  The females' ossicones are hairier on top, and the male ones just have sort of bald knobs.  This is one way you can tell boy giraffes from girls, is by looking at their ossicones.

The only two gaits a giraffe can do are walking and galloping.  When they walk, giraffes move both legs on one side of the body forward, and then they move the legs on the other side.  When they gallop, they bring the back legs up to straddle the front legs, then move the front legs.  Giraffes can sprint at about 37 mph, and can keep going at about 30 mph for a couple of miles or so.

Giraffes have tough, prehensile lips and long tongues
that help them eat thorny leaves and twigs.

When a giraffe wants to lie down, he kneels on his front legs and then lowers the back end of his body.  To get up, he has to get back on his knees and then spread his hind legs to raise his rear end.  Giraffes only sleep about 4.6 hours a day, which is way less than the amount of sleep dogs and cats get, so I don't know how giraffes can even function, but somehow they do.  Usually giraffes sleep lying down, but sometimes an older giraffe will sleep standing up, like a horse does.

The neck of a giraffe can be over six feet long.  You would think that such a long neck would have lots more vertebrae in it, but this is not how a giraffe's neck is made.  Instead, the vertebrae are just longer than in other animals, like for example one vertebra could be eleven inches long.  What holds a giraffe's neck up are some really big muscles that attach to the spine.  This gives the animal a hump in the front part of the back.

Museum of Osteology
Oklahoma City, OK

Charles Darwin said that the reason giraffes had evolved to have such long necks was so that they could reach high up in the trees and eat the leaves that shorter animals couldn't get to.  And Mr. Darwin could be right about this.  But some studies have shown that giraffes with the longest necks are the most likely to die when there is a drought.  This is because giraffes with long necks need more nutrients.

So now there is another theory that says long necks evolved as a sex characteristic, because the longer the neck of a male giraffe, the more likely he would be to win a "necking" contest with another male.  These contests are how the giraffes decide who gets to mate with the females.  When the necking gets serious, the giraffes swing their heads and try to hit each other with their ossicones.  After one giraffe admits that the other giraffe is the dominant one, the two of them will often caress each other in a very sexual way.  Then the dominant male will mount the other one and even reach a climax.

Giraffes Necking
Photo by Brocken Inaglory

It turns out this same-sex activity is even more common than mounting of females by males.  Studies show that 30% to 75% of mounting is between males.  But the girl giraffes don't seem to get turned on by each other, since only 1% of them do the mounting thing.

©Longleat Safari Park

Giraffe calves are born about 15 months after the mating.  There is usually just one calf, and it comes out with the front legs and head first.  Since the female giraffe gives birth standing up, this means that the baby falls about 6 feet to the ground.  The mother grooms it and helps it stand up.  A newborn calf is about 6 feet tall, and within a few hours it can already run around.  The calf's ossicones were lying flat before it was born, but they stand up after a few days.

Adult giraffes can live as long as 25 years in the wild.  Sometimes a lion will kill one, or a Nile crocodile grabs one while it is drinking water.  But mostly, a giraffe's size, good eyesight, and strong kicks keep it safe.  Sadly, the calves are more likely to get eaten by leopards, hyenas, and wild dogs.  Probably only one-fourth to one-half of calves grow up to be adults.

Photo by Robin Moore
Giraffe Manor, Nairobi, Kenya

I think giraffes are very cool animals, and I wish we could have one of our very own.  But Mom says we can't, because we don't have any acacia trees in our back yard.  Mom has a commiphora tree in a pot, and that's another thing giraffes like to eat, but Mom says her commiphora is way too small to feed a giraffe.  Plus she likes the tree and wants to keep it.  I think this is a very selfish attitude on her part, but what can I do?  I wonder if it would help if I wrote a letter to Santa.

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OUR KITTENS ARE READY FOR ADOPTION!

Yesterday our little foster kittens "lost their jewels," as Mom likes to say.  This is a silly way to describe it, but sometimes you just have to put up with such things.  Anyway, now that the kittens had their surgery, they can be adopted, and they will become somebody's loving pets, and they will never be able to help make more unwanted, homeless kittens.

So here are some pictures of them, and I think you will see that they are really quite cute, in spite of being kittens and not puppies.  The adoption fee is $85, and this pays for their neutering, vaccinations, deworming, and a microchip.  If you adopt two kittens, the adoption fee for the second one is half as much.  This is a very good deal because you are getting twice as much fun kitten-ness for only 1.5 the price.

Later today the kittens will be listed on Petfinder.  You can find the listings by going to http://www.divapets.net and clicking on "Our Adoptable Cats."

Here are some pictures of the kittens, who are 4 months old now.  They are full of energy and playfulness, and they run all over the house, getting into everything.  It makes me tired just watching them!


This is Dunlop:

And here's Cooper:

This is Michelin:

And here's a picture of the three of them together:

Okay, so if you want to help us have a nice, quiet home again, you need to help find somebody to adopt these adorable kittens.  And if you do that, I will be really, really grateful!

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CORNISH REX CATS

Best of Breed
GC, BW, NW WHITEWEB HARLOW
Photo: © Larry Johnson

Cornish Rex cats are kind of strange-looking, which is why I thought they would be interesting to write about.  The breed started out in Cornwall, England, back in the 1950s.  And in case your British geography is rusty, I will just tell you that Cornwall is that pointy part at the very bottom of England that sticks out to the left.  And the very tip of Cornwall is called Land's End.  Mom was there once on a hiking trip, and she said it looks a little bit like a fiscal cliff, but that's not what I'm going to talk about in my blog today.

Anyway, back in 1950 or so, there was a litter of British Domestic Shorthair cats born in Cornwall, and one of the kittens looked really different from the others.  It turned out that this kitten, who was a cream-colored male named Kallibunker, had a genetic mutation that gave him a very fine, curly coat.  Cats can have three layers in their coats, and these layers are (1) the outer "guard hair," (2) the middle "awn hair," and (3) the "down hair" or undercoat.  What Kallibunker had was only the undercoat, without the two top layers.

The person who owned Kallibunker wanted more cats like him and asked a geneticist how to get them. The geneticist suggested breeding Kallibunker back to him mother, which the owner did.  This produced a litter of three kittens, and two of them had the unusual coats.  So by doing this kind of breeding, there eventually got to be more and more Cornish Rex cats.  When the first of them got to the U.S., they were bred with Siamese cats, which gave them big ears and long, skinny tails.  In 1962, the Cat Fanciers Association accepted the Cornish Rex as a breed.  The International Cat Association and the American Cat Fanciers Association have also recognized the breed.

Maybe you are wondering why the word Rex, which means "king" in Latin, got added to the breed name.  Well, now I am going to tell you.  One time while King Albert I of Belgium was on the throne, which was between 1909 and 1934, he entered some rabbits in a rabbit show.  These rabbits had curly hair, which wasn't really allowed by the rabbit breed standard, but the show officials did not want to insult the king, so they wrote "rex" beside the rabbit entries' names to let the judges would know who entered them.  After that, animals with curly or wavy hair started being called "rex."  Besides the Cornish Rex, there is also a Devon Rex cat breed.  It has curly hair like the Cornish Rex, but it also has some short guard hairs, and it sheds more than the Cornish Rex.

The coat of the Cornish Rex can be all sorts of different colors, but it is always curly.  Even the whiskers are curly.  The coat is very soft to touch, sort of like rabbit fur or cut velvet.  These cats cannot live outdoors because they would get too cold and die from exposure.  They like to be in warm places such as people's laps or under light bulbs.

Sometimes people think this breed is hypoallergenic because of its short hair, but this is not true.  When people are allergic to cats, what they are allergic to is cat saliva and dander.  Cornish Rex cats have both of these, just like other cats.  But at least they shed less than other breeds.

Cornish Rex cats are tall and slender.  They look dainty, but they are actually strong and muscular.  They have an arch in their backs, a tucked-up waist, a long tail, and they walk on tip-toes.  As I mentioned before, Cornish Rex kitties have large ears.  These are set high on their heads, which are shaped pretty much like eggs.  Male cats weigh 8-10 pounds, and females weigh 5-7 pounds.

Bebops Lilac Prince
Photo:  m.Gerver

This is a very active breed of cat, and they love to go exploring all sorts of places, such as jumping into the refrigerator to see what's in there.  They are affectionate and playful, and they like to be the center of attention.  They get along well with children and other pets.  You cannot just ignore a Cornish Rex cat because it will want to be part of whatever is going on in the family.

I did not ask Mom if we could get one of these cats because I think we have way too many cats around here already.  But if we didn't have any cats, and we wanted to get one, I think the Cornish Rex might be a good kind to get.

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A DOG NAMED TRUE

Here's another story about an ordinary dog who turned into a real hero.  This dog is named True, and he lives in Grady County, Oklahoma.  He was adopted by a woman named Katie Crawley, who is a dog groomer.  True's owners didn't want him anymore because he was deaf and mostly blind, so Ms. Crawley adopted him.  "I felt he deserved a chance just like any 'normal' dog," she said.  "I taught him sign language and he has the best personality."  True lost his leg after he was hit by a car.  It's the left hind leg, but you can't see that in this picture.

Photo credit KFOR-TV

A couple of months ago, Ms. Crawley had a baby boy named Jace, but he was born with a heart problem, so he had to spend four weeks in NICU, which is what they call Intensive Care for babies.  Then finally Jace got to come home from the hospital.

Three weeks later, while Jace and his mom were sleeping one night, True started barking a whole bunch and trying to wake  them up.  Ms. Crawley thought maybe True needed to go outside to potty, so she went to the front door and opened it, and she was shocked to see a big fire right out there on her front porch!  So she grabbed up little Jace, and the two of them and True found their way through the smoke to the back door and managed to get out.

Their whole cabin that they lived in got totally burned up, including all of Jace's little baby clothes and toys and the medicine and stuff he had from the hospital to help take care of him.  Their money got burned up and a set of antique dishes and pretty much everything they owned.  But because of True, the brave little dachshund, they got out alive, so that was the good part.

Lots of people in the community have helped the Crawleys by giving them food and clothes and money and baby things for Jace.  Ms. Crawley says she is very thankful for everything people have done for her, and she is especially thankful for her her little dog True, her "guardian angel."

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