Animal Stories

My daughter was watching a movie the other day called Hachi: A Dog's Tale. When I realized what she was watching, I knew I couldn't sit and watch it with her. The movie is loosely based on a true story about a dog in Tokyo who every evening walked to the local train station to meet his master as he came home from work, and continued to do so, long after the master died. The real dog Hachiko became a Japanese cultural symbol and hero. To this day there is a statue of him in front of Shibuya Staion in the neighborhood of the same name in the Japanese capital.

Like many people, I can withstand stories dealing with the most profound human suffering, misery and death, but I can't handle sad or sentimental tales about animals. Frankly, I have no idea where this feeling comes from. While I have respect for them and like animals just fine, I don't particularly consider myself an animal lover.

Perhaps my feelings come from the attributes most of us value in animals, especially our pets namely, trust, loyalty and unconditional love. Or maybe it is out of compassion for the vulnerability of all non-human animals, both domestic and in the wild, to the whims of nature and especially from their biggest threat, the most dangerous species of all, Homo sapiens.

We human beings have a peculiar relationship with the other species of life forms with whom we share this small planet. Every culture has a different philosophy regarding non-human life ranging from the profound respect found in certain Native American cultures who see all living things as kindred spirits, to many Western European cultures who took these words found in the Bible...

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

...to mean "and God said: 'the world is your oyster, do whatever the hell you please with it.'".

And Western man did just that.

For example, until well into the twentieth century, it was common for Westerners not to give a second thought about wiping out entire species of plants and animals that were considered useful, dangerous, or simply inconvenient.

That has changed drastically just in my lifetime, brought about not in a small part by the environmental movement of the sixties and seventies which warned of the catastrophic, irreparable destruction we were inflicting upon our planet. Today, most reasonable people understand that all life is connected in one way or other, and the extinction of one species will have drastic repercussions for other forms of life, something Native Americans understood for centuries.

I'd also say it is the evolution, (some might call it devolution) of Western religious thought in recent years, at least in some circles, that enables us to have a more nuanced interpretation of the word"dominion" as found in Genesis 1:28. In other words, to many contemporary Jews and Christians, the phrase "have dominion over" is now closer to "take responsibility for" rather than, "use your capricious will", regarding our fellow travelers aboard Spaceship Earth.

That said, today there is still no common ground, general standard, or set of rules governing how we should feel about or treat animals. That point was was brought home last week after a tragedy that took place at the Cincinnati Zoo. If your memory needs refreshing, a three year old boy snuck away from his mother and found his way into an enclosure which is supposed to separate human visitors from the great apes who call the enclosure home. The boy caught the attention of a 17 year old male western lowland gorilla named Harambe. At first, Harambe went over to the boy and appeared to comfort him as part of the boy's journey into the gorilla's home included a fifteen foot drop into the enclosure. Then, as humans are wont to do in situations like these. witnesses at the scene screamed and carried on, which appeared to startle Harambe who began to drag the boy by his ankles around the enclosure. Zoo officials decided there was nothing they could do but shoot the 450 pound ape to save the little boy, as no one could predict what Harambe's next move would be.

Harambe's death set off a firestorm of protest coming from every point of view along the animal rights vs human sovereignty continuum. Torn as this nation is about politics, I'd say that judging from the articles and comments I've been reading, the struggle over politics is peanuts compared to the emotions stirred by the killing of Harambe.

For starters, there was the natural reaction that questioned why zoo officials couldn't use a tranquilizer dart like they do on TV, rather than live ammunition. The reason given by the zoo made perfect sense, the tranquilizer would take time to take effect, meanwhile the gorilla might have become understandably irascible due to being shot, and take out his anger on the little boy. It's very clear to me that the zoo put every effort they could into insuring the safety of the child, even if it meant putting down one of their most treasured animals. It was a tragic but necessary decision.

That logic was not accepted by scores of individuals who  were appalled by the willful taking of Harambe's life. Some went so far as to say that every effort should have been made to protect the gorilla, even if it meant sacrificing the child. Along those lines, there has been a groundswell of public opinion stating that the mother of the boy should be held liable for Harambe's death. After all, the gorilla did nothing wrong, it was the mother who failed to watch her child properly, or so they say. An online petition called "Justice for Harrambe" was circulated by the organization Change.org and was signed by hundreds of thousands of individuals. The petition states:

This beautiful gorilla lost his life because the boy's parents did not keep a closer watch on the child. We the undersigned believe that the child would not have been able to enter the enclosure under proper parental supervision. Witnesses claim that they heard the child state that he wished to go into the enclosure and was actively trying to breach the barriers. This should have prompted the parents to immediately remove the child from the vicinity. It is believed that the situation was caused by parental negligence and the zoo is not responsible for the child's injuries and possible trauma.We the undersigned want the parents to be held accountable for the lack of supervision and negligence that caused Harambe to lose his life.

Other individuals blame the zoo for failing to make the enclosure, which apparently has been around many years without incident. more secure. Still others claim the very existence of zoos in the first place is cruel and unnecessary. 

On the other side are the folks who are appalled that so much attention was given to the death of a gorilla. Many are using this story as a jumping off point for advancing their own agenda. Father Michael Pfleger of Chicago, never one to miss an opportunity to get attention, publicly expressed disgust that the death of a gorilla was getting more press than the shooting deaths of scores of young Chicagoans, (I'm not so sure that is true). Pro-lifers are taking the opportunity to say that people are more concerned about one gorilla than the tens of thousands of un-born children who are aborted each year. Even the Black Lives Matter folks have gotten in on the act claiming (in my opinion rightfully so) that the animal rights people seem to value the life of the gorilla more than the little boy, who happened to be black. They go on to condemn the creation of the "Justice for Harambe" petition for its being in their opinion, racially motivated, an idea which I think is absurd.

Mona Charen wrote an article in the conservative publication National Review titled: A Gorilla "Tragedy". The quotes around the word tragedy should tip the reader off that the writer believes tragedy in this case, is a poor choice of words. For Charen, we are "confusing animals with people" and that shame would be a better word to describe what befell Harambe. The fact that Ms. Charen took pains to point out that President Obama called Harambe's death a tragedy, leads me to believe that her concern here is more her own political agenda than philosophy or semantics.

She does make some interesting points however. Here's how she ends her piece:

Concern for animal welfare is not decadent. Some serious people argue that zoos and aquariums are inherently cruel, and they deserve a hearing. What’s so off about the reactions to this sad tale is the confusion about who has moral standing. “Justice” is not something to which animals are entitled, because animals are not moral agents. Those demanding “justice” for a gorilla are saying something nonsensical. Suppose the gorilla had climbed out of the enclosure and grabbed the boy? Would his advocates demand that he be tried for assault? Of course not. The gorilla cannot be held legally or morally liable for his actions, because he is a dumb beast. By the same token, he cannot receive “justice” from anyone. Animals can and should be treated humanely not because they are humane but because we are.

I agree with everything she says in her conclusion with the exception of her own poor choice of these words: "because he is a dumb beast." Here she is using this hopelessly outdated and intentionally provocative expression, in order to taunt certain (i.e.: liberal) readers whom she knew would find the term objectionable and yes, politically incorrect. Indeed it worked, several comments to the article slammed her use of that term.

Yet she is on to something here, namely the issue of justice for animals. It is no accident that our symbol for justice is a blindfolded woman holding a scale, the message being that all under the law are equal. It hasn't always worked that way in practice but that is the very foundation of our system of jurisprudence. 

Simply put, it is impossible to equate the lives of animals with the lives of human beings. If we did, I would be spending my life behind bars charged with, and admittedly guilty of the serial murder of countless creepy crawly animals in my home. You might argue that a gorilla is not the same as a cockroach. With this I agree, but that argument only serves to prove my point. Either all species are equal, or they are not. If in our eyes, the life of a gorilla is as valuable as the life of a human being, why then isn't the life of a cockroach equal to the life of a gorilla? Where do we draw the line?

Harambe - REUTERS/Cincinnati Zoo/Handout via Reuters

Animal lovers in fact are always drawing lines. Harambe has been described over and over again in the most superlative of terms, beautiful, magnificent, majestic, intelligent, and so on. Much has been made of the fact that members of Harambe's species are seriously endangered in the wild. If a child found himself inside say a hyena enclosure and zoo officials decided to shoot one or two of those animals to save that child, would there have been even a fraction of the outrage that resulted after Harambe's death?

Let's face it, plentiful, ugly animals always get the short shrift when it comes to PR, even among animal lovers.

What about the mother, did she neglect her responsibility to keep her child out of harm's way? I don't know, I wasn't there. The same witnesses who were cited in the "Justice for Harambe" petition were also quoted elsewhere as saying the child went from declaring his intention to descend into the gorilla enclosure to actually being there, in the blink of an eye. "The mother was not negligent" were the emphatic words of the people who were actually there. A few days ago Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters declined to press any charges against the mother. 

What I can say as a parent, is that two times my daughter was involved in accidents requiring a visit to the hospital, both of which took place literally right under my nose. In both cases she zigged when she should have zagged, but I'd be lying to you if I claimed there was nothing I could have done to prevent those accidents. What I could have done was prevent her from exploring the world,  from expanding her boundaries, from acting upon her creativity, and from having fun, but I didn't. Unfortunately, accidents happen, it's the way if the world. 

Likewise the little boy's mother could have prevented him from falling into Harambe's enclosure. Had she only tethered him to a leash so she could tend to her other children while preventing him from straying too far away, none of this would have happened. Short of that, she could have wrapped him head to toe in a bubble wrap suit so if he did manage to get away and roll or bounce into the enclosure, Harrambe's dragging him around his confines like a rag doll wouldn't have injured him, and he could have been rescued without the gorilla having to die. Of course the most effective thing the mother could have done was to stay home.

Because this incident concluded with the death of Harambe, people feel the need to blame someone. Had the ending been different, as it was in Chicago a few years ago when a child ended up in the arms of a female gorilla in a similar enclosure who tended to him and gently carried the child to the zookeepers, the attitude of the public would have been, no harm, no foul. That incident, exactly the same situation with a much different result, became the feel good story of the year, so no one batted an eye about those parents' supposed neglect.

Finally, what about our complicated relationship with animals? Is it possible to respect animals and still confine them to zoos, use them for scientific experiments, or eat them? I believe the answer lies in understanding our own place in nature. As I've stated before in this space, nature itself has no value system, nature simply reacts.

As the most successful species we know of, humans now have the power to destroy virtually all life on Planet Earth. We also have the power to save our planet from ourselves. A small part of that is the effort to bring species of plants and animals back from the verge of extinction. Conservatories and zoos play a huge role in that effort through education, research, fund raising and to a lesser extent, reintroducing captive members of an endangered species back into the wild. Zoos are important institutions because they teach us and future generations about animals, their role (and ours) in nature, and the necessity of conservation. All of the nature documentaries in the world can't hold a candle to the impact of seeing a gorilla or lion or any wild animal up close, looking at you straight in the eye. Nature doesn't care about the fate of species of plants and animals. Nature simply adapts, human beings either care, or they don't.

Like it or not, humans are among the animals on this planet who eat other animals. True, unlike certain meat eating animals, we don't have to eat meat in order to survive and it certainly would benefit many of us to eat less of it. As it's part of our nature however, I don't have a moral issue with eating meat. Nor by the same token, do I have a problem with using animals for responsible scientific research. 

The one caveat I would add in regards to our treatment of animals in captivity can be summed up in one word, respect. We need to learn from Native Americans who prayed for the souls of the animals they took for food. We need to be constantly vigilant to insure that the animals we use for our food or for research are treated humanely during their lifetimes. We must remember that everything we eat, plant or animal, was once alive, and we must teach ourselves to be thankful to those living things for giving up their lives so that we may live. Again, nature doesn't care if we live or die, any more than it cares about the lives of the plants and animals we eat. But human beings do care, or at least they should. The word humane sums up all the positive attributes that define us as human beings.

I believe it is not only right, but our moral imperative to take responsibility for the welfare of our world. Integral to that is to treat all life, plant and animal with respect, and to treat all animals, especially those whom we put into our service, be they housed in zoos, laboratories, farms or our homes, humanely. 

If we fail at this, then we are the ones who are the dumb beasts.

The ethical treatment of animals

I could see it coming for years. Perhaps it was when I first saw a mouse in the basement of my childhood home. Questioning the morality of setting a trap to break the neck of the tiny rodent, I pleaded with my parents to let it live while quietly wishing would it go away on its own. When the critter's offspring made their way upstairs into the kitchen and den, then ultimately up to the second floor where my bedroom was, not only was I setting the traps myself, but I went from timidly disposing the trap and the dead mouse together all the while keeping my eyes closed, to looking the little buggers in the eye as I loosened the spring trap, thereby releasing their lifeless bodies into the trash so I could reset the bloody instrument of death.

Maybe I saw it coming when I read an article in high school saying the problem of world hunger could be solved simply if the highly inefficient system of devoting millions of acres of farmland to raising feed crop for livestock were instead devoted to raising crops intended solely for human consumption. I toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian myself, but never stuck to my guns, I just liked eating meat too much.

That didn't stop me from having ferocious arguments with my father about the morality of eating animals, since it was a luxury I felt, we could learn to live without. My reasoning was there would be enough food for everyone, the animals we ate would be spared, and we would all live happily ever after. My father countered my argument by saying: "shut up, you don't know what you're talking about." Having experienced real hardship in his life, the loss of both his parents before his tenth birthday, the first hand experience of war, the occupation of his country by two hostile foreign powers, leaving his homeland for a foreign country with nothing but the clothes on his back and lots of ambition, my father, God rest his soul, didn't have the luxury of time on his hands to philosophize about what he was eating. He experienced times in his life when just having something to eat at all was enough. That feeling never left him.

Not having had that problem, what occurred to me back in my formative years was that one day, society would have to come to grips with our relationship with animals. On that day I reckoned, it would no longer suffice to justify our treatment of animals by simply stating that the difference was this: animals are animals, period. They're not human beings. "But aren't people animals too?" I'd ask. "Shut up, you talk too much" was the answer I got.

That only strengthened my resolve. My brazenness regarding our rodent intruders and my fondness for eating animal flesh notwithstanding, I could not bring myself to feel superior to non-human animals. For example, I never bought into the idea perpetuated by the religious, that human beings had souls while other animals did not. Nor did I agree with my mother's less metaphysical assertion that animals only acted upon instinct, not logic or acquired knowledge like humans.

My formative years coincided with a period in history when ideas about how people treated each other were turned upside down. Civil rights was the burning issue of the day along with the Vietnam War and the battle for equal rights for women. All those issues centered around ethics and morality, the struggle between the "us versus them" mentality, and the idea that all human beings deserve to be treated equally with respect and dignity. Hard to believe given the way people continue to treat one another today, but I truly believe we have come a long way in our society since those days. This country is more racially and ethnically diverse than at any time in its history and I believe, all the better for it.

Back in the seventies while I was having all those arguments with my father, it occurred to me that once the battle for the ethical treatment of human beings would be won, there would be new battles to be fought, as there always have been throughout human history. One of those battles I thought  to myself, would be the struggle for animal rights.

Sure enough, in 1980 the organization PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) was founded. There are lots of animal welfare organizations that pre-date PETA, the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) comes immediately to mind. The difference is that PETA's goal is not humane treatment, but equality for animals; its catchy slogan, "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment or abuse in any way" tells us in no uncertain terms that this is an organization with radical ideals.

It's the letter "E" in PETA that is the organization's linchpin, and what is the most complicated aspect of the group. On the surface, the idea of the ethical treatment of animals is not troubling. After all, anyone with half a conscience understands that animals at the very least experience pain and would agree that it is unethical to make an animal needlessly suffer.

But ethics go much deeper than that. It's not difficult to determine basic right from wrong when it comes to human beings. That's because people of all colors and creeds have come to accept an axiom that serves as their moral guidepost, one that stands alone above all others. It has been around as long as people have been making rules of behavior, and it forms the backbone of just about every religion and legal system we have devised. So by and large how to we determine if our intended actions are ethical? We ask ourselves this simple question: "How would I like it if somebody did that to me?"

Now suppose we apply that "Golden Rule" to our treatment of animals. Since we wouldn't want ourselves or our children to be killed and eaten, applying the Golden Rule to animals obviously would preclude eating them. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Taking the application of ethics to determine our relationship with animals to its logical conclusion, any domestication of animals would have to be considered unethical, since we expect as human beings that it is our inherent right to have free will to determine our lives.

This means that every animal from a lion in a zoo, to a pig or horse on a farm, to a lab rat in a cage, to a goldfish in a bowl, ethically speaking, should be allowed the freedom to choose its own destiny. Anything less, PETA and its allies argue, is tantamount to slavery.

I should point out that PETA does not advocate releasing domesticated animals into the wild, far from it; but they do say we'd all be better off had the domestication of animals never happened in the first place.

Now I'm not going to slam PETA or similar minded organizations, they are a committed bunch whose heart is in the right place. As you can see from reading the top of this post, I asked those questions myself at one time; in a way I'm cut from the same cloth.

Unlike PETA members however, when I was a teenager I felt I had to reconcile my shortcomings when it came the inconsistencies of my feelings about animals and my actions that were very unlikely to change anytime soon. It turned out the answer to the problem was ridiculously simple.

We got a cat.

Before long, our mouse problem was solved. Of course, death by cat is much more gruesome than the trap. But I reasoned that has been nature's way of population control for eons, and who was I to argue with Mother Nature?

The cat experience made me understand that we humans live part time in two worlds, the natural world and the man made one. As much as we may try to avoid the former in favor of the latter, we can't completely avoid the laws of nature. We all experience bad weather, we all get sick, and even though we may be able to put it off, at some point we will all die. The man made world has done a good job of making nature's less appealing aspects more bearable for many of us but in the end, we are all at the mercy of its whims.

A big difference between the natural world and the man made world is that in nature, there is no concept of ethics. In nature, it is the strong who survive to live another day, while the weak inevitably perish. There are animals who by nature are predators and other animals who are prey. Most predators are both. By human standards, this system in inherently unfair. In the anthropomorphic world of fairy tales, nature documentaries  and Disney films, we root for the underdog: the poor three little pigs against the big bad wolf, the Emperor penguin mother on her unbearably long quest for food for her family against the seal that wants to eat her, or the brave, morally superior lion king Mufasa against his corrupt brother Scar.

But nature could not care less about the plight of the poor penguin and her starving family back home, any more than it cares who leads the pride of lions, evil Scar or noble Mufasa. Nature doesn't care, it simply adapts.

Right and wrong are man made concepts. I have no idea whether some animals share these concepts.  My guess is that most wild animals, (large herbivores like elephants and gorillas may be an exception), are so busy, engaged with everyday survival that even if they could, developing systems of ethics would not be particularly beneficial to them from an evolutionary standpoint.

Through domestication which began thousands of years ago, human beings brought animals into their own world of right and wrong, of laws and ethics. Gradually over time, changing ideas of ethics, and most importantly, the decline of our dependence upon animals, our attitudes toward them have changed. A PETA member might argue that since domesticated animals have been forcibly removed from the natural world to reside in the human one, they deserve to benefit from the same laws that protect human beings. In one of their tracts, PETA says this :

Animals surely deserve to live their lives free from suffering and exploitation.

The paradox is that statement flies in the face of their saying animals should never have been domesticated in the first place. It seems PETA is as guilty as anyone when it comes to anthropomorphizing nature. As opposed to domesticated animals, animals in the wild have no rights whatsoever, they have only their strength, perseverance and their will to survive to protect them.  No animal in nature is ever free from suffering and exploitation. No animal in nature dies of old age.

I said earlier that the day of reckoning would soon be at hand. I was reminded of that when I heard the story about the new mayor of New York City waging a controversial campaign to ban horse drawn carriages in that city. The horse carriages, in Mayor Bill de Blasio's words' are:

...not humane; they're not appropriate to the year 2014; it's over.

I find it an interesting debate because it illustrates the widely divergent opinions we have on the treatment of animals, even within the animal welfare community. PETA (who has  remained uncharacteristically silent on this issue as far as I can tell), would argue that putting any animal to work, especially for "entertainment" purposes, is unethical. The ASPCA has argued that while they don't object to working animals per se, putting an animal in the dangerous environment of the streets of New York, constitutes animal cruelty. Other animal advocates have countered no, these animals have been bred particularly for this type of work, and it does them no harm at all. Still others would say quite reasonably: "an out of work horse is a dead horse."

The thing that troubles me about the horse carriage issue in New York is that the mayor and his allies are prepared to wipe out an entire business and the livelihoods of people based solely on personal conviction, rather than credible, objective, evidence. Whether the horse carriages are "humane" or not is opinion, not fact. The mayor is certainly entitled to his beliefs as much as anyone, however running a city based upon a mayor's personal conviction is in my opinion no different than running any government based upon an elected official's religious views.

Clearly we have a long way to go before we can learn to justly adjudicate issues regarding animal rights. As we have no Golden Rule regarding animals we can all rally around, it's going to be a struggle. PETA and other radical animal rights groups don't do themselves any favors by making statements like this one:

Only prejudice allows us to deny others the rights that we expect to have for ourselves. Whether it’s based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or species, prejudice is morally unacceptable.

Species prejudice, really?

There is also a backlash against PETA from other pro-animal rights groups regarding their support of euthanasia over so called "no-kill" shelters which in effect sentence unwanted animals to lifetime confinement in a cage.

Full disclosure: I happen to agree with PETA on that one, as well as several other stances of theirs.

I do think the tide is turning and if the current New York animal rights struggle is any indication, we'll be seeing a lot more controversial struggles regarding animals in the near future.

For what it's worth, my theory is this: nature for better or worse has put human beings at the top of the food chain. We are far and away the most adaptable and as a result, successful species of life on the planet, (with the possible exception of rats and cockroaches). The fact that we evolved to eat meat is neither right nor wrong, as nothing in nature can be judged by those criteria. Therefore the personal choice to eat meat, even when there is an alternative, cannot be unethical; it is simply put, part of our nature.

As for our other employment of animals this is what I think:

• Animals and humans have lived together for thousands of years. Contrary to what many in the animal rights movements believe, I feel it has for the most part been a mutually beneficial relationship, certainly not without exceptions. 
• I believe that zoos when well designed, play an important role in society, educating and sometimes inspiring visitors about wildlife, ecology, and the natural world. 
• I believe that while countless animals have died in scientific studies, their lives were not lost in vain, and we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude, since many of us even owe our lives to their sacrifice. 
• I find it very difficult indeed to question the ethics of employing working animals such as those who give help to the blind, comfort to the sick and grieving, and countless other valuable services.
• Likewise for pets who often provide the only loving companionship their people experience.

In return, I believe that it is our moral imperative to treat every living creature with honor and respect. We are without a doubt responsible for the animals we created and for their welfare. As I said before, no animal should suffer needlessly.

Having said that, as a part time resident of the natural world, I am a human being and as such, I am compelled to put members of my own species first, just as I believe nature intended it to be.

Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it. It's continuously a work in progress and make no claims for it being bulletproof. 

We humans may not be the masters of the universe we think we are. Yet the power is surely within our hands to destroy all life (save perhaps the rats and the cockroaches) on our tiny planet. In that vein, we truly as it says in Genesis, have dominion over the world and all those that live in it. Since that is the case, it would behoove us to rule wisely.

Unfortunately, we're not a very wise species, we can't even figure out how to best get along with each other, let alone the other species with whom we share this planet.

Hold on tight my friends, it's going to be a long and bumpy ride.

The Carriage Trade

Riding in a horse drawn carriage through Central Park on a snowy winter's day is a unique urban experience.  I wouldn't personally know since I've never shelled out the fifty bucks not including tip for a twenty minute buggy ride, but it sure looks swell. If the new mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio gets his way, that iconic 150 year New York institution will soon go the way of Gage & Tollner, Penn Station and the automat.

One of de Blasio's campaign promises, along with other "progressive" issues such as universal pre-K, and the growing problem of income equality in the Big Apple, was to ban the the horse carriages. Citing cruelty to animals, the mayor said:

We are going to quickly and aggressively move to make horse carriages no longer a part of the landscape in New York City... They're not humane; they're not appropriate to the year 2014; it's over.

While de Blasio's other big ticket issues are on the back burner, the mayor is going full steam ahead with his plan to put hundreds of New Yorkers, both human and equine, out of work. Not to worry says the mayor, the future of the horses is secure as provisions for all of them have been assured on farms designed to take care of former work horses. As for the humans, the mayor has told them there will be jobs waiting for them as drivers of the new electric powered "vintage style" automobiles that are planned to replace the carriages. That is of course if they can come up with the $150,000 medallion fee.

Two groups, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Annimals (ASPCA) and a group called New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets (NYCLASS), are staunchly in favor of the ban. The director of the New York branch of another another animal advocacy group, Friends of Animals had this to say about the condition of the horses:

They are shackled into their carriages, pulling through streets of a chaotic unnatural environment and go back to their cells... They need the ability to graze and roam freely. They never get that in New York. They live a life of total confinement, day after day.

Some of that may be correct, however there are strict rules in place governing the treatment of the animals. The horses get every other day off, they are not permitted to work in temperatures below 18F or above 90F, and they each get five weeks vacation in the country every year. From all the accounts I've read, each carriage horse resides in a well maintained stall whose size is mandated by the city to be no less than 64 square feet, about the size of a great many New York City apartments and hotel rooms.

Many New Yorkers of the species Homo sapiens in fact would be more than happy to live under those conditions.

It's true the streets of New York City may have been a chaotic, unnatural environment for the horses' distant wild relatives. Not so for the horses of today which are the result of domestication and breeding that has gone on some say for over 6000 years. The carriage horses are draft horses, bred specifically to pull heavy loads. Draft horses have been doing this kind of work in the county and city alike for millennia; it is in their nature to pull things just as it is the nature of a thoroughbred to run, a retriever to retrieve, and a sheep dog to herd. One can say these animals are just as much the creation of human beings and as such are just as unnatural as cars, streets and traffic jams.

The big difference of course is that animals are living beings. Just as we created them, we have the responsibility to care for their welfare. With a few rare exceptions, the people in New York's carriage industry have proven to do just that. The most sensible piece I've read about the horses themselves was written a couple years ago and was published on a web site devoted to sustainability issues called, (what else?) Tree Hugger.com. You can read that piece written by Jaymi Heimbuch here. In a nutshell, she writes that the horses of New York City live and work in no worse conditions than the humans.

Not surprisingly, the people working in the industry are less than thrilled with the prospect of losing their livelihoods. Most of them consider themselves horse people, not gearheads. Driving a car through the busy New York streets while being expected to give tours at the same time, is not the same thing as doing it while at the reins of a carriage. Clearly it's not a slam dunk by any means that the horse people will make a successful transition to the cars, even if they wanted to.

The New York City horse carriages provide a valuable service not only to tourists who can afford to ride in them, but also to the countless men, women and children, New Yorkers and visitors alike, who get the chance to see, hear, to of course smell, and on occasion interact with the animals. My own experience of observing the horse drawn carriages while walking through Calvert Vaux and Fredrick Law Olmsted's beautiful Central Park, smack dab in the middle of the magnificent concrete jungle of Manhattan is this: an overwhelming feeling that all is right with the world. They just happen to be one of those lovely things that make New York, well, New York.

Incidentally, the cars that Mayor de Blasio and others have proposed to replace the carriages look similar to the car used in the 1968 movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. If you're old like me and can remember the film, that car could fly. If the mayor's new cars could also fly, even I would pay the fifty bucks for a short ride. Grounded however, I can't imagine many people would find the experience appealing for that price.

One might assume the new mayor of the largest, most important city in this country would have more pressing matters at hand than 250 or so well cared for animals. A cynic might even suggest that beyond an overwhelming concern for the horses' well being, the mayor might have an ulterior motive. Well it turns out he does.

It just so happens that one of the major contributors to the mayor's election campaign was a fellow by the name of Steven Nislick. Nislick founded NYCLASS, one of the the organizations mentioned above. For years he has been a major critic of the carriage companies and the stables that house the animals. He also gave a significant amount of money to a group focused on defeating de Blasio's primary opponent, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was opposed to the ban. Nislick also happens to be a very successful real estate developer. While he denies it, it has been widely speculated that Nislick has set his sights on the land where several horse stables currently sit upon, valuable Manhattan real estate on the West Side. With the carriages and stables gone, one would assume that the land they occupy would become available, and someone (hmmm someone like Nislick perhaps?) could get in on the action. Adding fuel to the fire, an anti-carriage leaflet in 2008 distributed by Nislick stated:

Currently, the stables consist of 64,000 square feet of valuable real estate on lots that could accommodate up to 150,000 square feet of development. These lots could be sold for new development.

Again it's only speculation that Steve Nislick and Mayor de Blasio's motivations are not entirely pure. But it would seem if they were truly concerned about animal welfare, especially the fate of domesticated horses, there would be bigger fish to fry. Why for example doesn't the mayor go after the horse racing industry? One of the most storied race tracks in America sits within de Blasio's jurisdiction. It's called Aqueduct Racetrack and it has been a fixture in South Ozone Park in Queens since 1894. The racing industry has a dreadful record when it comes to animal welfare. Where the carriage industry often takes in animals that would otherwise be rejected, breeders of race horses annually produce thousands more animals than can adequately be taken care of after their racing days are over. Given that the life expectancy of a horse is about fifteen years longer than the average racing career, most race horses face uncertain fates after retirement, many of them are shipped off to slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada. In some cases, those are the lucky ones.

As far as I know, de Blasio has not uttered a word about the humaneness, or lack thereof, of horse racing. The jobs and revenue that the horse carriages bring into the city are a mere drop in the bucket compared to the vast potential of the racetrack and it's adjacent "racino." If you believe that Mayor de Blasio will make an impassioned demand to make Aqueduct and its casino go away for the sake of the horses' quality of life, then I have a nice bridge spanning the East River you may be interested in buying.

The mayor's prompt action regarding the ban has drawn ridicule in many circles from the New York Times to Rush Limbaugh. Already a favorite target of Limbaugh's, the horse issue has given the bellicose right-wing commentator/entertainer plenty of fodder for his diatribes against the mayor and his progressive agenda. At best, if the mayor is indeed sincere (and I have every reason to believe he is) in his concern for the animals' well being, putting this particular issue at the forefront of his administration in City Hall makes him appear frivolous and out of touch, given all the serious issues he must deal with. At worst, given his relationship with Nislick, even the suspicion of impropriety which certainly exists now, makes the new mayor appear to be a demagogue and a hypocrite, playing on the emotions of a small but vociferous group of well intentioned people, (the carriage opponents), as a springboard for his political ambitions. His actions as far as this issue is concerned will do little to promote his ambitious plans of helping the less fortunate people of New York, and perhaps will even go a long way to destroy them.

On the first day of this year, addressing the state of economic inequality in NYC in his inaugural address to his new constituents, newly sworn in Mayor de Blasio had this to say:

So let me be clear. When I said we would take dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities, I meant it. And we will do it. I will honor the faith and trust you have placed in me. And we will give life to the hope of so many in our city. We will succeed as One City.

By attempting to destroy an industry, its infrastructure, the other businesses that support it, and the working class jobs that go along with them, Mayor Bill de Blasio is perhaps unwittingly taking his city yet another step closer toward his stated goal of "One City".

One City that is, made up entirely of millionaires.