January 30, 2004
The main cause behind the catastrophic decline of Asian vultures may have been found. Hopefully this will lead to less use of the drug, and the Parsis won't have to resort to solar panels.
we're all carrion. That's all we are.
Carry on, then!
Are any organizations planning legal action against the manufacturers/distributors of this drug?
I wonder if the breeders are feeding the animals diclofenac just in case they hurt. Doesn't seem logical they enough of the animals have serious inflammatory deseases to need big enough doses to kill carrion eaters. Or, maybe it's our modern inclination to give every drug possible to make sure that no food animal will die before it can be harvested?
Some years ago, Mexican produce was close to being banned from the US because of the tendency to use a chemical soup of every pesticide known, whether they were needed or not.
Maybe a little education would help in both cases.
Nah, let them evolve resistance.
Seriously, what path said. Probably breeders are misusing the drug. Legal action against drug manufacturers won't solve the problem alone. They also need a change in policy and education.
Before finding a solution to this (or any) problem, it's helpful gather as much information as possible.
It would be useful to know how this drug works -- and how, in particular, it affects birds. It would also be useful to know what tests, if any, were made on birds with the drug by the manufacturer before its release.
Other questions, too, spring to mind-- what instructions are on the containers; whether any training is required of those who use it in the affected countries; and whether its use is limited to, say, vets or physicians or agricultural advisers, or can just anyone acquire it; where the drug come from, how is it supposed to be administered, and who typically purchases it.
I don't think I know enough yet to reach any hard and fast conclusions, but getting the drug's manufacturers to endorse avian protection, and, hopefully, interested in controlling or curtailing indiscriminate distribution seems the most promising area to consider first.
The scope of the problem makes this an international concern. Have to wonder what the effects on other animals and fish might be. Does it get into the water or the grass or what happens when carcasses decay? Have any other studies been done yet on this?
beeswacky: you may be to sexy (or rational) for your name. Nothing whacky about that comment.
Oh, um, ah...of course, just so, dear Path, absolutely, irrefutably, and definitely too sexy, ahem, hmm.
Asian vultures need vet drug ban
'Breed vultures to save them'
Carry on, then!
posted by Wolof
OH, GAG!!
I would have thought that was below even YOUR standards, Wolof.
*slaps Wolof with a buzzard craw
Vulture looking at? There's nothing to see here. Go on about your bizzness.
No statute of limitations on puns, then?
Many thanks for the updates, homunculus.
Whip me with a feather, horsie.
Watching the Vulture
at the Road Kill
Alicia E. Stallings
You know Death by his leisure—take
The time we saw the vulture make
His slow, hot-air-balloon descent
To a possum smashed beside the pavement.
We stopped the car to watch. Too close.
He bounced his moon-walk bounce and rose
With a shrug up to the kudzu sleeve
Of a pine, to wait for us to leave.
What else can afford to linger?
The eagle has his trigger-finger,
Quails and doves their shell-shocked nerves—
There is no peace but scavengers.
you touch me, vulture
shred-pecker
sinew-snapper
worn bare
where your crest
would be
if you weren't
forever
dining in
gut-puller
old flapper
in your
wingspread cape
of feathers
always first
among the strippers
at each final
feast
peering through
those
shadowed sockets
with the gravest
courtesy
now I
know you
heartstring-tugger
feel free
to pick
a bone
with me
WOW Bees, IMHO that's one of your best! You must really be inspired by those old grizzle guts.
Vulture's a useful fellow. In Tibet, dismemberment of a corpse is followed by the vultures feasting, a practice going back for centuries.
I'm pleased ye like it, BlueHorse.
Vultures
Achebe
In the greyness
and drizzle of one despondent
dawn unstirred by harbingers
of sunbreak a vulture
perching high on broken
bone of a dead tree
nestled close to his
mate his smooth
bashed-in head, a pebble
on a stem rooted in
a dump of gross
feathers, inclined affectionately
to hers. Yesterday they picked
the eyes of a swollen
corpse in a water-logged
trench and ate the things in its bowel. Full
gorged they chose their roost
keeping the hollowed remnant
in easy range of cold
telescopic eyes ...
Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep - her face
turned to the wall!
... Thus the Commandant at Belsen
Camp going home for
the day with fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils will stop
at the wayside sweet-shop
and pick up a chocolate
for his tender offspring
waiting at home for Daddy's return ...
Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in every germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.
vulture knows us
from the inside out
he's willing to catch
whoever drops out
he knows that men
will soldier on
and he likes the way we
carrion
OH BEES!
HOW COULD YOU!!
*clutches ribcage, gasps
Vulture
Robinson Jeffers
I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing, I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, "My dear bird, we are wasting time here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you." But how beautiful he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the sea-light over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him.
To be eaten by that beak and become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment; what a life after death.
peck after peck
without great fuss
vulture with
his long bare neck
goes to the very heart
of us
each cow that falls
into a ditch
and can't escape
is vulture's pitch
dear vulture heads
the clean-up crew
and tidies after
me and you
Nepal's vulture restaurant; diclofenac being replaced with Meloxicam, which does not harm the birds.
I'd like you to meet my new BFF. He just "love(s) the putrid smell of dead human flesh."
And soon he'll be your ONLY friend.
Well, at least he'll come and find you when you get lost in the desert. He might take a while...
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