See Ya in Hell Jerry!! Is it Safe to Eat Yet? More Baby Birds....

This is my boyfriend, Henry. He lives at the bird store as their pet...Indeed, spring brings out the romance in a young guy's heart, and Henry has decided that I am sweet. I know its a ruse so that he can snap me in two with that big beak of his, as he has tried before...but, he has drawn me into his trap with his head turned down for neck scratches and all that purring, upchucking of food, and holding his huge taloned hand up for me to pick him up (ha!...yeah right!)...
I am such a sucker for all that sweet talk...


























At last God has worked his way through the virtual Netflix backup of what his "servants" have been up to down here, and upon viewing the hijinx of his servant Jerry, he has immediately removed him from this planet in the hopes of giving us some shot at healing this country's horribly damaged psyche. Oh, some out there will blame the gays and some will blame the druggies, but this is clearly a case of karma coming back around...Good riddance Jerry...I will not shed one tear for you and your filthy mind that would take every nice thing about the Christian sensibility and wring it of any humanity, turn it upside down, and spew it out as some sort of bastardized truth, to an under educated and scared flock who deserve better than the likes of you as a teacher and spiritual leader! What an absolutely ugly person...rotten from the inside out!

Seeing the likes of Rudy Guilliani and John McCain eulogize Falwell makes me just want to post this again:



I'm so tired of liars....power hungry, money grubbing, self righteous, jerks, who would sell out any basic American value in their climb to some imagined pinnacle of power or wealth. And I really hope, for Jerry especially, that there is an afterlife and a God there that is sitting in judgment of people like him...and I hope that he is sweating out the hearing of his life.(..Be sure to save Rudy and Johnny Mac a seat Jer...they'll be joining you.)

Its been a week of playing catch up for me, and the overflow of the water table in this part of the world has caused an incredible tree pollen season (not to mention the mosquitoes,) so Ive been in a daze from that, or the medicine for that, while watching the idyllic spring appear magically as the world greens up and the little frogs go into overdrive in deafening song every night.
Will and Ben have been hanging out, skipping rocks at the pond, catch and releasing peepers, and making s'mores at the fire pit. Its a very different childhood than I had, and its so nice as to almost feel uncomfortable to me...constantly looking up for the shadow of the other shoe...dropping...
















Among other things, I've been continuing on the Chinese plastics trail, and trying to figure out if its safe yet to feed the animals, much less myself and the kids....The conclusion does not look too good.
See, I've got this view of the situation at this point where, by the time we have enslaved the Chinese and upset their cultural curve in order to turn them into worker bees for our light (aka plastics, etc...) industries...and also as we build everything to break, out of plastic that is getting weaker and cheaper every year, to ensure that we will have to replace the plastics overflowing our lives over and over...the natural next step is the infusion of plastics into our food and bodies which will then, when combined with the myriad other chemicals that have infused our world, sicken and even kill us. I'm sure that somewhere soon the music from Children of Men will swell and Clive Owen will burst into the room babbling something about infertility caused by.....

Now, I know that the FDA says not to worry our pretty little heads about all of this, but melamine has caused tumors in mice and rats and sickened and killed dogs and cats. There are NO studies being presented that show that this stuff, even in small doses, is safe for humans. So I would prefer to avoid it as a primary additive in say, imported Chinese products that might be used by the local Chinese restaurant, or secondarily in meats that have been fed with feed using Chinese wheat, rice, or whatever protein. It seems to be in everything; fish food, possibly vitamins made in china, the list goes on...and definitely looking at dog treats such as dried pig ears and rawhide that are made in China, there is going to be a great, huge chance that melamine is going to be present. As I've said before, without so much as a class action threat, Menu Foods is paying vet bills for pets sickened by the melamine contained in their now recalled foods....when has any of us ever, ever seen a big corporation like that just pay up of their own accord?...so quietly, so quickly...? It indicates to me that this thing runs alot deeper than they want any investigation to get.
But the bigger question is not just about melamine, but the whole damned food chain and the clear fact that deregulation has not worked, large corporations cannot be trusted to police themselves, and that the savings due to outsourcing which surely in a different world would have been applied to heightened security in the face of increased imports have been funneled into the bank accounts of the CEO's and top management types. How much money does any one person or family need at the expense of the health and safety of others around the world?
So, secure in the knowledge that the CEO's of Hills and Menu etc... have provided for the next 5 generations of their families, can we now spend a little money on the feed that the protein components are built on?...what a crock of shit this whole story is!
So, yeah, I expect that its in human foods, along with all sorts of assorted toxins.
And the predictable thing about all of this is that upon further testing, other problems were found, like salmonella in some dried chicken treats...
Hows that deregulation and globalization working now? Who is benefiting and who is getting hurt? Follow the money....

So, on the trail for dog foods that are made with American fed, humanely treated protein sources, also known as animals. The pet food store manager that Ive known for quite a few years told me that the companies are all scrambling as to what to say and how to handle what information they have or dont have, as the case may be. And Ive been writing to different pet food companies and reading lots of web pages, only to get mere partial answers, which indicates to me that the companies themselves might not know the full story on the protein sources anyway.
What I've found is that Paul Newman's, Newman's Own Brand is made of organic ingredients and purely American fed and humanely treated animals. It says this on their web site and the pet food store manager knew this right away. There is also a more fancy brand called Canidae that is also along those lines.

I tried to get information on any number of other foods and the replies I got were very spotty and vague, such as this from Timberwolf:

They (sic) chicken is of human grade, raised in the U.S., though we can not officially call it that since we do not pay additional for the USDA stamp of approval. The Bison is American free range. The Venison and Lamb is from New Zealand and is hormone and antibiotic free.

But I had asked them what the animals were fed. Any subcontracting farmer can cut corners by buying Chinese feed or Chinese protein. I wrote them back, but the reply above took a week, so I'm not hopeful. Anyway....I'm sure this is boring to non-pet people, but we all have to look at this as a much bigger problem that stretches into the human food chain.













This is a little finch that my friend Sheryl found in her parking garage. It seems that some kids had been smoking down there and were messing with some active nests, and then these 2 eggs with full term chicks appeared next to Sheryl's car, with no nests nearby. The one little egg baby was dead, but this little guy was wriggling round and opening its little mouth looking for food. This, even though it was stone cold. I took it, wrapped it up and put it in a little container and rushed it to the bird store where Todd put it in the incubator so at least it would warm up a bit. I was so sure that it was going to die, but last I heard it was being carted around with the other very young babies and being fed....I keep thinking that its probably gonna die...but at least if it does it will have a full tummy and be warm when it does.
Thats my spring miracle.
As of today I haven't had any luck with my Conure eggs hatching, but Im only on day 25 of egg # 2, so Ive got 4 other possibilities in there, and would be happy to get even one live one....oh well, its early and there are more clutches in the future....

It was a Clown Strike...And the Clowns Laid Down Their Tools.....Melamine in Our Food...Republicans Get ready to Rumble.....

Its Pandemonium!!....


Chris Matthews is so excited and nervous and thrilled to be there...at the Reagan library to host the clown show that will forever be known as the midpoint of the end for these fools; aka the Republican Debate on Thursday night. Matthews chirps on happily about how great of a tribute this debate will be to the legacy of the great Ronald Reagan...watch out Chris, you might actually have to climb up Nancy Reagan's ass, and its pretty tight in there! If I thought that Matthews could be a good moderator and really ask the hardball questions, I might buy that this is gonna be a good party, but Chris is just a little too impressed and happy and smiley....I don't trust it.
This beautiful wreck of a republican candidate field is surely a perfect tribute to the guy who brought us not only the launch of the neocon movement to dissolve the American Government and funnel all of the money available into the newly deregulated, large corporations, but the decimation of social services across the country at a time when we were entering into a catastrophic medical epidemic that HE was denying, even as his countrymen were dying at his feet.... and I personally watched people grow sick and die around me too. The numbers were astounding, and New York sank into a terrible state with homeless and sick people all over. No, Reagan was not a great President. I'm sorry, but he was an addled Alzheimer's victim who was run by the cabinet...Oh yeah, THEM!! The usual suspects!!





















You know, I don't think that even Ronald Reagan would believe the shit that Bush/Cheney have gotten us into. I don't believe that Reagan could have ever imagined the American government doing so much damage to our constitution, rights, diplomatic standing, and environment....You'd have to be an idiot, brain-dead, or dead.....
That brings me to idiot-in-chief W, who vetoed the bill to put a limit on the war today, like we knew he would, saying that it would guarantee chaos.....and your point is? Thats different, like, how? Isn't it preferable to allow them their own chaos that will eventually form into their own order? Can't we allow them to try to heal themselves instead of insisting on "helping" until there is no them anymore. No matter how much we "help" them in ordering things in our imperial image, when we leave eventually (or never,) they will have some amount of chaos, forming into order again. How else will they right themselves after all that we've done to them?... its gonna take a long, long time...and its our fault. We have a responsibility to pour assistance into that country to help them rebuild and to finance social and medical programs, but not to stay as a military force, because its not working and it wont work...ever.
So, the clowns will line up on Thursday and hopefully get shot down. It could be a really good show if Matthews does his job. He is currently a little too giddy for my taste.
This is where Rudy starts unraveling and McCain implodes on TV, and Romny gets to try to explain it all away.
Why oh why cant we have ANY good commentators on AAR at this point? I could so use some sort of intelligent and snarky commentary. There is nothing...nothing at all...enough said...I have nothing left for that situation.

And in the same vein as deregulated big corporations, the deconstruction of our government, and the profit motive in this global economy....what the fuck is going on with our food supply? The melamine contamination controversy grows daily and its not just pet food, folks! Get this: I got worried about parrot food and the various chows and meats that I am feeding my way-too-many animals. I made some organic chicken and rice and veggie stew for the dogs and have been feeding them a kibble that seems O.K. for now...we'll see...but as this thing unfolds and it becomes clear that any farmer could feed livestock this cheaper feed with protein from china, then we all have to know that the stuff is in OUR food and most pet food...and FISH!! Its indirect exposure so how can it be traced?
So, doing my own research, I started to look around at different pet food companies and call some of them because I sometimes buy chew bones at the market or whatever, and I cant guarantee that all of the brands of snacks and food that I feed my animals is human grade, health food, and/or organic, not that any of those categories of food is let out of this unless and until the companies state where each of their ingredients come from.
Hartz features a disclaimer on their website that claims that they in no way have anything to do with the recalls, and that their wheat gluten is clear. But it doesn't address meats or rice or...what, if anything, they import from China. I called customer service and tried to get a straight answer about all of this....Well, the smoked pig's ears are actually from Brazil! There is no way to tease this all out.
What would a Brazilian farmer who grows pigs, and sells at least the ears to Hartz , feed their pigs? Probably the cheapest feed from China.
Well, from there I went to the big bag of chicken jerky from Costco that I just bought for my dogs. Where is it made?? China!!
What do they feed livestock in China? Melamine laced feed!
The Kaytee company, to its credit, uses American grown grains in their foods but there is some confusion in that Kaytee is also 8 in 1 (which makes the hedgehog chow we use here for Tumbleweed, and many bird snacks that I have used,) and though I was assured by Kaytee's web page and customer service that there was NO problem at all, I got an email today saying that the 8 in 1 chicken jerky was found to have salmonella in it...now that they're testing, you know, other problems are showing up.
Let me get this straight: You work with chicken that you are drying and smoking for pets to eat, and you don't spot test daily, every shift, for salmonella? It took a pet food crisis to get these companies testing? My god, what else will they find?

The really big issue here is not the pets, though they are very important to me, but the human food confusion and the F.D.A.'s insistence that this stuff is not dangerous, even though it causes sickness and death in dogs, cats, and mice. And what of birds, the actual canaries in the coal mine, who die all the time and, short of a necropsy, no one pays attention?...No, it takes a big jump in larger pet deaths to get this looked into...because we have no government oversight of anything anymore (and I can remember so clearly, Ronald Reagan saying how large corporations don't need the government to police them...they can police themselves!! yeah right...hows that working?) This is big and growing..but not in the M$M...no sir, the New York Times had a cover story on it yesterday, but its not really on the news much except for a small article in back of the paper here and there. Why is that? And why is at least one pet food company quietly paying the vet bills? What corporation ever started to pay a class quietly to head off a huge class action? I really cant believe that it has something to do with kindness and care...no, its to head off the hug payoff at the pass!

Right now I am trying to feed us all as much organic and US grain fed food as I can. I'm not sure if it even makes a difference because this feed thing is insidious, and this unregulated, uncontrolled globalism has made things too complicated...who can say what is going to happen next? But every day we are getting more and more reports of melamine getting into the American human food chain. Pigs yesterday, fish and chickens today, and a little too much assurance for agencies about how there is no danger to humans...but I don't see the studies. Where are the studies?
Send in the clowns......



Speaking of Clowns: RIP Tom Poston. You will be missed!

Even a Clown Knows When to Strike....