"Well, every year in the U.S. one billion songbirds are murdered by domestic and feral cats. It’s one of the leading causes of songbird decline in North America. But no one gives a shit because they love their own individual kitty cat."
Says a character in Jonathan Franzen's novel "Freedom" (commission earned).
Something to contemplate in the context of this week's foofaraw about non-native human beings snatching up kitty cats. True or false, I don't know.
But I want to examine the outrage. Why are the cats out where they can be caught? The cats are an invasive and predatory species, and the human beings — who style themselves victims when their cats go missing — are responsible for allowing them to invade the habitat of the native birds.
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134 comments:
Talk about cruel neutrality!!!!!!
1) Nobody ate anyone's cat.
2) Well maybe you should let your cat run around outside all day.
3) Why do you like cats better than birds?
4) Your cat deserved to get eaten and I hope it was during a voodoo ritual.
The war on cats has been going on for a while. Can Democrats really afford Feline Americans backing Trump by pushing Harris 24 mugs off tables? We are about to find out.
And cats enjoy immunity from damage claims. Dogs are considered an extension of the owner and are controlled by leash laws and liability laws. Cats just do whatever the F they want. Still they would much rather catch rodents, lizards and other creepy crawly things than hunt birds. Birds do have natural predators in the cat family and dog family in addition to other natural predators they face. Life's tough out there for God's little critters.
So we are at step three heading for four.
Humans are also an invasive and predatory species.
Don't think the cats haven't taken notice.
The cats and humans take the place of the snakes and weasels and bobcats, etc. that control the songbird population. Bigger threats to native songbirds are Starlings and Brown-Headed Cowbirds.
so..
two days ago, it was: No Haitians are killing and eating cats
one day ago, it was: Well, culturally, they've Always done it.. have a problem, Racist?
today, it is: cats DESERVE TO DIE! and the Haitians are doing us a VALUABLE SERVICE!!
Did the character place his pinkie near his cheek when he said "one BILLION" songbirds"?
Cats - all of them - [ think Lions and Tigers ] - NEED to roam. That's why they look so depressed, and ARE so depressed, in Zoos.
My cats go out with the dogs in the morning. By 10 am, one of them is ready to come back in and loll. The other one follows us on walks in the woods. In all the time we've had them - almost 6 years - they've brought in about 3 or 4 birds, and a few more lizards, and one or two snakes. I've lost 4x that amount of birds at least, from having them kamikaze the windows, breaking their necks. Sometimes they just stun themselves, and when that happens, I pick them up off the porch floor and sit them on the BBQ counter, looking out to the trees. The cats don't fool with them either way. Cats are supreme predators, but I think the birders get a little carried away - but I'm basing that on my cats and could be wrong.
Humans killed all sorts of North American birds - to extinction. Often to decorate women's hats with their feathers.
ot: if you listen to the ads on TV - circa now - women are not allowed to vote.
Let the cats out at night when the songbirds are in bed. Duh.
California has nature's perfect "invasive cat control" solution: coyotes. In our neighborhood in Santa Barbara, any cat that was allowed to roam free outside eventually got its own "Missing Cat" poster among dozens of other posters.
I review my cat's activities when I get up in the morning and all he does is sit by the door waiting to get back in.
That is, I review the security cam video. What a boring cat.
Ohhh, immigrants saving the wild bird population.
Nobody seems to care about free-ranging cats killing songbirds, though there are pretty solid studies about their effectiveness in wiping out large swaths of local reptile and bird populations, here and in Europe. Cat lovers feed "urban feral cats" as an act of kindness, or something, caring not about how these domesticated creatures that we let loose on the environment damage other animal populations. As a quail hunter, I've seen barn cats that roamed fence lines and killed most of a covey of birds, just for the fun of killing. Same with rabbits. It's a big ho-hum for most people, but I've never understood why.
Last I knew, Madison has a leash law for any domestic animal while it's outside. For cats, when we lived there, it looked to us like it was pretty much ignored.
I see this statistic about cats devouring millions of songbirds every year quoted quite often.
And I don’t believe it. I think it’s just made up.
- Rafe
Well, yeah, they can't eat the wild birds if the cats get them first!
My animals are allowed to roam inside the fence. I have the most amazing fence. Found the idea at the Childrens hospital, Anschutz. Sourced it in Wyoming. Yay Wyoming! anyhow - if my animals get out, THEY will be lunch. The coyotes are all around.
I think first everyone has to state are you a cat person? I am not. I am a dog person. I know that means I am presumed to have a certain bias, which I freely concede so let's get that out of the way.
We don't have a cat problem here in the US do we? Do we have too many cats? No. But Australia does. It is a huge and devastating problem there. So I think those who wish to eat cat should move to Australia which needs help getting rid of its cats.
I taught at Bowling Green State in Ohio for a couple of years. Bowling Green had a leash law for cats and dogs. For most of the year, when I took my late afternoon walk around the neighborhood, there was an average of one rabbit per yard hopping around.
That was not entirely a good thing. A faculty colleague who lived in a nearby town with the same law was thrilled when a family of owls picked his yard to roost in. It was the first year his vegetables and flowers hadn't been half-or-more destroyed by the damned (his word) rabbits.
"Bigger threats to native songbirds are Starlings and Brown-Headed Cowbirds."
Preach it, Boat!
oooh . . . a billion in italics - then that must be correct. I thought it was a gazillion!!!!
Something to contemplate in the context of this week's foofaraw about non-native human beings snatching up kitty cats. True or false, I don't know.
And you won’t, Althouse, because my impression is that you mostly get your news from mainstream news sources and none of them are particularly eager to investigate. The mayor says “no evidence” but the.local residents say that there’s plenty of evidence, if anyone really wants to look. The mayor -/ and the mainstream news sources — have axes to grind. The residents of thst city, not do much.
But I want to examine the outrage
Seems obvious to me. People get attached to their pets. Some go do far as to regard their pets as bona fide members of their family, every bit as much as the baby in the bassinet. There’s something very lefty professorish in your suggestion that people adapt to the Haitians by keeping their pets indoors instead of the Haitians adapting to their new country by learning to leave people’s pets the f*** alone.
Yes, I've forgotten to mention, we have coyotes that team up, sending a solitary coyote to drive prey into waiting ambushes. And we have bobcats and jaguarundis, both of which I have caught on my back yard game cams and/or have shown up on neighbor's cams. The cats are not the apex predator of my back yard by any means.
I’m equally concerned about the many legal american citizens who are also stealing and eating pets.
Well, first of all, birds don't exist - so there's that.
And Green wind turbines, affectionately known as whackers or whirly scalpels, aborting birds over green land and blue sea.
"one billion songbirds are murdered by domestic and feral cats"
Murdered? Seriously, someone actually wrote that?
Democratic districts should issue hunting licenses to abort/deport invasive... migratory specimens and sanctuary to whirly scalpels and solar ovens. Bad optics, I suppose.
A quick google search shows that there are approximately 50 billion birds worldwide and 600 million cats. I think the birds will be alright.
My mother and father used to feed any stray cat that showed up on the back stoop here in Oak Ridge (our present housecat showed up the same way as an adolescent cat 13 years ago). When my father's mental ability to reliably feed the two outdoor strays deteriorated, I took over the task in 2016. The first of the two disappeared in 2021 and the second disappeared just last month- both had been feeding at the back stoop since around 2012 when I moved down here. The first of the cats used to leave the remains of a dead bird or ground squirrel under the car port every few months or so.
And, yes, the story from Springfield is evolving exactly the way many predicted- first denial, then explanation for why it might be true, to claims that it is no big deal and might be beneficial.
They are trying to win back the cat ladies
"And you won’t, Althouse, because my impression is that you mostly get your news from mainstream news sources and none of them are particularly eager to investigate."
Internet meme:
- If someone says it's raining and another person says it's dry...
- It's not your job to quote them 'both' , your job is to look out the f**king window...
- And find out which one is true.
But no one gives a shit because they love their own individual kitty cat.
“He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”
My reaction too. A billion seems like a lot of birds. tens or hundreds of millions I might believe. But a billion?
If this a legitimate stat?
Where is PETA?
John Henry
Two sides.
1. Birds have a LOT of babies over their lifetime, out of which only two need to survive. Nature more or less planned for a huge attrition rate.
2. Cats don't obey the Lotka-Volterra equation (that the wolf population and the rabbit population adjust to each other in an out-of-phase cycle). When cats kill almost all of the birds, the cats don't starve. The humans still feed them at home, so they really do a number on the birds.
But there's still the designed attrition rate.
Show me the science.
Well, it is a quote from a novel. Probably based on a high school ecology report like those ones that have resulted in banning plastic straws and requiring you to pay for shopping bags at the grocery store. Hardly a rigorous scientific study, but who needs those anymore?
Just wondering if Jonathan Franzen will give us a count of birds killed by offshore wind turbines in his next book. Or...if there are categories of acceptable bird kills (while saving the planet) and bad bird kills (allowing Fifi to go out and do what cats do).
Songbirds? Songbirds? When they can belt out Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” on demand I’ll take up their cause.
The loss of song birds to domestic cats is real. England has an even worse problem. Coyote s help in the West but not enough.
We call those monstrous wind turbines the "shredded tweet machines."
Songbirds are prey animals. Hawks, foxes, etc, etc are predators whom we have systematically destroyed in order to safeguard our chickens, ducks, etc, etc. Its not like domestic cats are the only "imbalance" in this disordered world. It would be hard to run the counterfactual experiment, but we do know that the first European explorers made no mention of herds of bison stretching from horizon to horizon. Two hundred years and near erradication of their "natural predators" from small pox and other diseases, the next generation Europeans wondered at the vast abundance of the Great Plains.
True, boat builder. Our barn cats are too busy taking care of mice, gophers and chipmunks. On the other hand, we’ve seen squirrels going into nests after the bird eggs. It’s not very long after that, that the squirrel becomes munchies for the cats.
There are no stray cats here in NW Tucson. The coyotes and bobcats take care of that problem. We have a huge number of quail and doves, plus another group of unknown (to me) bird species.
The Haitians would starve here unless they figured out how to cook javelinas.
I am an equal hater of free-roaming cats and dogs. I keep tall fences around my property. If your pet finds its way in, its life is forfeit.
My guess is that an awful lot of killed birds are babies that have fallen from nests? I find the living version of those, I doubt any survive for very along, and their movements are cat toy-like.
There are two neighborhood cats that consider my yard part of their territories. I mow my lawn, containing lots of bushes, on foot. I've never come across a dead bird while mowing. I did find that a chewed-up mouse a couple of weeks ago.
Conversely, its not at all unusual to see dead birds in the road or gutter. Hit by cars.
I love my cats, which is why they are indoors only. The lifespan of an indoor cat is usually years longer than one that goes outside.
It is my choice to do this, but even if I didn't feel strongly that it is better for them to remain inside, when I adopted each of them, I signed an agreement that included the promise that they would be indoor pets.
Is a billion a lot of birds in a country the size of the U.S.? There are a third of a billion people in this country, so that's only three birds per capita. A quick web search says there are 96 million cats living in households, so something over 100 million cats in America, counting the feral ones. Would these cats be killing an average of 10 birds each per year? Sounds plausible to me. Sure, tens of millions of inside cats aren't killing any, except for the occasional bird that flies or falls down a chimney, but if even a third of the total number of cats (including the ferals) are killing 30 birds a year each (one every 12 days), that adds up to a billion a year. Not proven, but very plausible.
Have we now entered Stage 3: Eating cats is a good thing?
planetgeo said...
“California has nature's perfect "invasive cat control" solution: coyotes. In our neighborhood in Santa Barbara, any cat that was allowed to roam free outside eventually got its own "Missing Cat" poster among dozens of other posters.”
I look forward to discovering California’s solution to their coyote problem.
I am a cat and dog person, but I work every week day and don't think it's ethical to leave a dog home alone for that long so I have cats. They enjoy our company when we are at home, but since they are not pack animals, I don't think they feel our absence as much as a dog would.
My old neighborhood had a feral cat problem and one of my neighbors would feed them and periodically put out a have-a-heart trap with the food. When she caught one, she'd take it to the vet to be spayed/neutered, and then release it again. I thought she was nuts--this would take a decade to make a difference, if it ever did.
I was wrong. The cat problem was solved within a couple years. Turns out the lifespan of an outdoor cat is quite short.
John henry said…
“A billion seems like a lot of birds. tens or hundreds of millions I might believe. But a billion?”
{{ inserts gif of Carl Sagan saying “billions and billions” }}
In New Zealand people blamed the eradication of flightless Kiwis on Possums (not out "opossums") until they put night vision cameras in Kiwi habitats. Cats were killing the Kiwis. Rats were eating their eggs.
Try to keep up.
We've already moved on to mandatory government-funded sex changes for cats and dogs.
We've all seen that billion songbirds number before. Seriously? If all 94 million cats were allowed to roam free, killing birds to their heart's content ... well. That doesn't happen. Most rarely go outside. Many are either too old or too young to hunt. But anyway, assuming all the estimated 94 million cats in the US hunted each cat would have to kill 10 songbirds a year. Does that include crows and sparrows that aren't songbirds? Gimme a frickin' break.
Well, remove those cats and I bet we'd be in Alfred Hitchcock territory in no time.
The biggest consumer of small birds I've witnessed was the pair of peregrin falcons living atop the UC Davis Medical Center. The hospital has a falcon cam mounted near the nest and the mom and dad falcons are bringing small birds to feed their chicks day in and day out for the three or four months it takes them to mature. We've always had cats. Finding feathers and bones in the yard has been a rare thing. Ours prefer rats and mice.
I've watched small birds get caught and eaten by larger birds. Birds aren't even allies with each other in their war against cats. And coyotes. And wolves. And anything else that eats them.
As the drug addicted "homeless" have invaded the river parkway the coyotes have been driven out. The city animal control says the coyotes are our neighbors and we have to learn to live side by side with them. I've lived in this city since 1961 and it's only in the last 5 years, as the homeless epidemic was allowed to fester, that coyotes have been seen roaming residential neighborhoods. So we're not allowed to shoot them. They're too smart to trap and the city won't do much about the bum camps amonst the riparian habitat in which the coyotes formally lived.
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!
Go to another country and wipe your ass on their social structure. See how far that gets you.
If I see one more young couple pushing a baby stroller occupied by a dog…
“ I've watched small birds get caught and eaten by larger birds. Birds aren't even allies with each other in their war against cats. And coyotes. And wolves. And anything else that eats them”
There were all sorts of predictions about the effects of reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone would have on other species. And, yes, the wolves did reduce bison and elk a bit there. But the biggest effect they had? On the coyote population! Apparently the reintroduction of wolves there ultimately cut the coyote population in half. And it wasn’t through interbreeding, though the two species can, and do so successfully, on occasion.
Feral cats may kill a lot of birds, because they need them for food. Domestic cats aren't hungry like that. If they kill something just out of hunting instinct, they bring it home to show you.
There's not much meat on them after you clean them.
Iman:
Could be worse. I once saw a young couple pushing a baby stroller occupied by a pig. Yes it was tucked up in blankets, looking very comfortable. In an antique mall in Gordonsville, Virginia, if you're wondering.
I've never noticed very many feral cats here in the urban NE. Maybe there are more in the midwest and far west, or in rural areas. I've noticed many more in European big cities. Not sure why that would be. Perhaps people here don't abandon their cats so much?
What' your point, Anne?
You thjnk when cannibalism becomes the fashion franzen will come up witu a clever line for it
There are 8 billion people in the world. I would guess there are at least 10 birds for every person.
If you've ever seen the swallows gathering to roost at sundown at the mouth of the Connecticut River, a billion doesn't seem like a lot.
Bird mortality is pretty high, even without cats. While some species are having trouble reproducing at sustainable levels, others more than make up for it. Cats aren't particularly selective--they just catch the slow ones.
Dog person. Encourage cats to visit our yard to catch chipmunks and rabbits. Despite the best of intentions, our dog is not going to catch any of them.
Sierra Club Cuisinarts.
Bomb threats force second consecutive day of school closures in Springfield, Ohio
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bomb-threats-force-second-consecutive-day-school-closures-springfield-rcna171043
Today, two Springfield, Ohio elementary schools are evacuated due to threats stemming from Trump's racist conspiracy theories, he repeats them on national television.
Trump and his lies are dangerous for Americans.
Owls are pretty good at catching cats who are our at night. There are a surprising number of owls in urban NE.
https://x.com/mcgmouton57/status/1834545056885149972
https://x.com/robbystarbuck/status/1834638367666946501/mediaViewer
I remember a BBC documentary long ago about a rural veterinarian who surveyed cat owners in his service area about the killer cat toll.
This is similar report...
https://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/flora-and-fauna/cats-as-predators/
"one billion songbirds are murdered by domestic and feral cats"
Hopefully, Franzen was intending for the reader to hold that character in contempt.
I'll tell you something else: We've got barred owls here, in the woods behind the house. There are quite a few - they engage in nightly hoot-offs, and you can hear up to four of them, scattered around our property in different directions, responding to the trash talking of other owls.
Most cats - by this I mean the domesticated variety that often goes feral - are around 8-12 lb. A barred owl can snatch one of these up with no problem, and they'll usually get up to height with this prey, and start looking around for big trees. They drop them into the crotch of a big tree, to kill them - as well as keeping them off the ground, for safer eating.
It's particularly dangerous in late spring to mid-summer, because the bobcats have their kits and they get desperate for easy protein sources while they're nursing. I've seen bobcats come in and hide in the house shrub, the shrubs right next to the house, laying in ambush for rabbits, house cats, birds, whatever they can get. They're bold.
Coyote vs. Bum fights anyone? /sarc
I think that means your kitty is a dog. ;)
I have taught my local robins to sing "Werewolves of London".
Non-barn cats in this part of the world don't last long because of the abundance of coyotes here. I never thought about the impact of Barred and Great Horned Owls - we have both and I know they do some damage to the rabbit population, why not cats? Seriously though whatever the number, domestic cats do a lot of harm to the bird population. I have never understood why most responsible dog owners keep their animals under control and cat owners think it is some how an inherent right that cats should be allowed to roam free and do as much damage as their instincts demand.
OK, now do "Karens enraged by wind turbines killing millions of birds, including eagles and hawks, Demand they be taken down.""
Our housecat once came inside with crazed eyes and a live cicada in her mouth buzzing like crazy.
She obviously didn't know what to do with her catch, but still wanted to show it to us.
When we lived in Utah the cat would bring three voles a day into the house and eat them. Over the years I've seen him take down mice, shrews, sparrows, and once even a large dove with most of the bird hanging out the side of his mouth. Always left his kill spot clean. We finally put him down at 22 when his hips stopped working. He was magnificent.
I don't think I can forgive the Professor for this anti-kot bigotry.
“…I've lived in this city since 1961 and it's only in the last 5 years, as the homeless epidemic was allowed to fester, that coyotes have been seen roaming residential neighborhoods. So we're not allowed to shoot them. They're too smart to trap and the city won't do much about the bum camps amonst the riparian habitat in which the coyotes formally lived.”
We have a large open space south of us in NW Phoenix, that is home to a pack of 4 or so coyotes. They will, at times, run the neighborhood - most brazenly with 4 of them about 10 am one morning. Definitely come into the subdivision late at night, and you can hear them when they are hunting, howling back and forth. Can be a bit scary. And there is video of them jumping nearly six foot walls between houses to get at cats and small dogs in back yards.
Our small dog and walk in that open space. It’s close, and I don’t have to pick up her poop (ignoring my daughter and SIL who go on about non-indigenous plants from said poop). Had te opportunity a couple years ago, to ask about the PXPD policy on shooting coyotes to protect said dog, and their response was that it was perfectly fine. Their response probably would have been different if I had just asked if I could just hunt them. The moral of the story (beyond that PXPD is reasonable) is that if you want to shoot coyotes, and are caught, emphasize tat you were just protecting your pet, and thus, ultimately, yourself. In any case, I go armed late at night or in the open space - walking stick, pepper spray, and a 9 mm handgun (typically a G19 or G43X MOS).
Growing up we had a cat. He lived to be a bit over 20 years. Mostly an outdoors cat, but we left the window open in the garage so he could get in to eat, and stay warm in the winter. We also had a series of dogs. He was born before the first of them, and died well after the last one. We could tell when the poodle was getting into the cat’s food, because we would start finding dead, half eaten, birds in the back yard. Move where we were feeding the cat, and the birdicide would end, until next time.
On the flip side, there were a pair of indoor/outdoor cats living mostly in the house a couple down by us in MT. The female got stuck on our roof one time during a blizzard. She survived. The songbird population definitely was thinned Their human sold and moved down to Yancey’s part of the country. Cats stayed. First one, then the other, disappeared, over the next two years. We do have larger predators in the neighborhood there. Songbird population seems to be recovering. Except that there is a stray roaming the neighborhood, that our cat screeches at late at night.
Our cat is strictly an indoor cat. Declawed and neutered. Hard to get cats declawed in PHX. No problem in MT. In any case, the reason for that is that my partner brought home a kitten and a German Shepherd puppy, when she was previously married. The two grew up together, and in the summer, on the ranch in MT, they would sleep on the porch together. Until one night, an owl tried to snatch the cat, sleeping on the dog. Cat survived being “owled”, but only probably because the dog kept him warm until morning. Her husband wrapped the bleeding cat tightly in a towel, and took him to the vet 25 miles away, to sew him up. Several thousand dollar vet bill, and the cat had the effrontery to run away the first time he had a chance, back in PHX. A year later, her daughter saw him sunning in a neighbor’s window. Apparently, he had found a better host family, who wouldn’t expose him to owls.
Our current cat was the progeny of barn cats. One, a Siamese, gave him his temperament and much of his coloring. Someone had a cage of kittens outside the local grocery store in MT. The ones who weren’t picked, probably ended up in a burlap sack in the river. He was the runt of the litter, but was able to push his way to the front when my partner came to investigate. He’s now just shy of 25 lbs, at 6 years old. He esp gets fat here in Las Vegas, where he is indulged by her, and doesn’t get enough exercise. In any case, he ended up having parasite worms and ear mites from literally having been born in a barn. It’s probably unlikely with the parasites, if he had lasted very long, if no one had picked him, and he hadn’t ended up in a burlap sack.
My partner is more a cat person, than a dog person. Has been that way since kindergarten. She brought home a Siamese. Named her Tiki. She had a litter of kittens, and only one survived, a male, thanks to adult males often killing kittens when they can. That male was named Tiki II. Both had long lives, over 20 years each. T2 was the terror of the neighborhood, tearing up the other males, and impregnating the females. Our current half Siamese was therefore named Tiki III (T3).
"True or false, I don't know."
Althouse is starting to sound like Trump.
"But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there."
Save the birds with illegal alien Voodoo.
I guess there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Kamala got more voters and less cats.
She killed two birds with one stone.
One of those trendy pot bellied pigs that wound up in shelters?
Let's train those invasive cats to eat North America's invasive BIRD species, such as the:
European Starling
Rock Pigeon
House Finch
Cattle Egret
House Sparrow
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Ring-necked Pheasant
https://abcbirds.org/blog20/invasive-birds/
Well, every year in the U.S. one billion songbirds are murdered by domestic and feral cats.
And how many songbirds are alive today because humans feed them seed and suet and bread and crackers while providing fancy bird "houses?"
No, just a regular pale spotty pig about the size of a human baby: somewhere between a foot and a foot and a half long.
Tell us more about your repeated claims Trump told people to drink bleach.
Drago said...
"Tell us more about your repeated claims Trump told people to drink bleach."
Trump has said things in the past few days that make the bleach quote sound like it came from Winston Churchill.
Well, every year in the U.S. one billion songbirds are murdered by domestic and feral cats.
Since there appears to be barely one significant digit there, I'm going to guess that the source is someone who made a WAG -- a Wild A__ Guess -- rather than doing any kind of real research.
I was with you until those last two.
Ann: Now looking into the damage that feral hogs do every year. Some have even migrated up to south central Nebraska. They are a huge problem in TX. They dig up yards in my sister's neighborhood.
I can understand that people may have seen Haitians with a wild goose, but that's a lot different then saying the Haitians are trespassing on private property, stealing people's pet dogs and cats, and eating them. Even Scot Adams doesn't believe that. When Trump repeats such nonsense, claiming that he "saw it on TV," that's an unforced error.
About twenty years ago I was informed about Blue Jays being a nest robber of other bird's eggs and youngins. The guy then hit one dead center at one hundred yards, that had landed on a target holder, with a 7MM magnum.
Saved lives!
Nobody in the press even knows what a standard deviation is, let alone how to estimate measurement error with partial derivatives, and therefore nobody ever reports anything with a reasonable two or three digits of precision any more.
It's either a big fat eye-popping round number like this one, which as you imply is obviously pulled out of the nether parts of a public relations spokesditz at the Audubon Society, or it's more digits of precision than we could measure with a fleet of GPS satellites and a laser micrometer.
Either "One BILLION dead songbirds!" or "1,017,284,396 dead songbirds!"
Journalists are near the top of the list of stupid people who flatter themselves on how smart they are, ahead of elementary-education majors but behind career politicians.
The "Only 10 years to save the planet!" horse shit is more of the same.
Morgan Freeman Narrator Voice: There is no such thing as a Trump "drink bleach" quote. It never existed....though Mutaman insists that it does.
they seem to last 2 (MAYBE 3) winters here in northeast iowa..
Whether Trump's eating the pets remark is true or not it sure making for some hilarious memes.
Drago said...
"Morgan Freeman Narrator Voice: There is no such thing as a Trump "drink bleach" quote. It never existed....though Mutaman insists that it does."
Oh yeah--- What about "They're killing the dogs, they're killing the cats, they're killing the geese, they're drinking all the bleach"
I saw it on tv.
My daughter came in crying one day because she saw a squirrel come down the tree with bird legs coming out of its mouth. I guess they will eat baby birds. Our dog would stalk the tall grass and catch birds as they flew out of their nest in the grasses.
500 mm lbs of bird meat! That is an important part of our gnp. Was Beiden slipping this important economic fact up someone?
What about millions of illegal entrants - all allowed in and secretly transported all over the nation with 90+ Biden Executive orders - orders bragged about by Myorkas. (roll the tape) and the lies that its even happening?
What about the Charlotsville lie? or the Bloodbath lie?
In my yard, I've seen cats, rabbits, possums, groundhogs, and a fox, but a loose dog is very rare. I wish they'd gang up on the squirrels.
Mom got a collar with a bell for our cat because he loved to go outside, but he still managed to kill birds. He never brought fleas home.
Liberals?
A few years ago at dusk, an owl attacked the back of my head, almost knocking me down. I couldn't figure out what had happened until he began mocking me from the telephone cable.
I saw it on TV is the very old person's version of 'I saw it on the internet'.
Lots of rationalizing about cats eating birds today. It has always been known that cats, domestic or ferel, eat lots of birds. Apparently we don't care. Cat lovers unite!!!
Here in our bucolic town along the Fox River we used to be inundated with feral cats. Hundreds of them. Bedcause well meaning brain dead people kept feeding them. Then the coyotes came. The coyotes got fat on the kitties. We have coyotes roaming the neighborhoods looking for food.
Cats and dogs are preditors and are gonna do preditor things. Keep em inside. Our Siberian Husky would leave us possums, mice and a couple of times skunks on our back deck. It was her nature.
Cats vs Wind Generators! Who has the greater Kill Count??
"I think first everyone has to state are you a cat person?"
It all depends what's in the traps.
In the same vein. This past weekend I found a baby snapping turtle on the bike path. It must have hatched just a day or two ago. I picked it up and walked it to a little nearby creek. I gently placed it on the mudbank. In a second the biggest bukkfrog I've ever seen ate that turtle.
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