Rats

Cats should be kept indoors.  All felines are obligate hunters and cats will hunt even when they are not hungry.  With apologies to Geico, hunting is what they do.  An article in Nature Communications estimates that in the U.S. free-roaming domestic cats kill a minimum of 1.3 billion birds and 6.3 billion mammals a year, with a possible maximum more than three times that high. Overall the scourge of wildlife, the domestic cat is the largest single anthropogenic threat to birds and mammals, killing more than cars, poisons, wind turbines and any other human-created dangers.   In Florida, domestic cats are known to prey on at least a dozen endangered species, including the rice rat, Key Largo cotton mouse, green sea turtle, roseate tern and Florida scrub-jay.

Vernon. Photo by Craig Walters.

That said, we have four indoor-outdoor cats here at Itchy Dog Farm.  With our doors wide open most of the year, dogs, cats and chickens wander in and out at will.  We're lucky the pony is gated in the pasture.  Happily only one of our cats can hunt his way out of a paper bag, and even more happily, he has no interest in feathered things.  Vernon is an orange tabby, a rectangular cat, long and lean and big-headed. No fluffy furball,  he spends most of his day perched on the highest platform of the cat tree looking down on his kingdom.  At night he is the slayer of rodents.  We know, because he brings them home and leaves their parts in the bathtub.

Pocket gopher.  Photo by Wayne Lynch.

Most commonly Vernon delivers rat parts.  Rats are attracted to the chicken palace by spilled feed and scratch and are probably easy targets.  I admit I am not fond of rats and the more I find in the bathtub the happier I am.  Occasionally he brings us a mole or a pocket gopher.  Pocket gophers are ugly little critters with huge orange teeth out of a sci fi movie and long claws on their paws for digging. They spend most of their lives underground, making tunnels that mess up your yard and are a hazard in the pasture.  As they dig, they push soil out of the tunnel to create mounds of loose dirt, the tell-tale sign of resident pocket gophers.  You see them all over Alachua County.

Despite my lack of love for vermin, I like giant rodents as much as anyone.  I really wanted there to be a giant rat of Sumatra and was disappointed to learn the largest Indonesian rat, the mountain giant Sunda rat, only averages a pound.  Chinese bamboo rats are more like it.  They grow 20 inches long and when fattened for market can weigh up to 9 pounds.  (Fun fact: rat meat costs twice as much as beef in China.)  The Gambian pouched rat, wide-spread in sub-Saharan Africa, averages only about 3 pounds but can grow as large as the bamboo rat. Two interesting things about Gambian pouched rats: they can be trained to detect land mines, and they can be found in Florida (of course).

If something is weird and invasive, chances are good that sooner or later it will end up breeding in Florida.  Gambian pouched rats were brought to the Florida Keys by a captive breeder. Eight escaped and established a colony on Grassy Key.  Authorities haven't been able to exterminate them and it is feared they will reach the mainland and wreak havoc with native ecosystems.

Capybara.

My own county is home to a colony of about 60 wild capybara, believed to have originated when the rodents escaped from a research facility near Gainesville.  A pair of juveniles also escaped from the Jacksonville Zoo in 2001 and so far as we know are still on the lam.  Capybara are right out of Monty Python -- they look like 100 pound guinea pigs.  They are semi-aquatic, breed only in water, and are native to South America, where they are raised for food.  Their extinct ancestor, Neochoerus, roamed Florida in the Pleistocene.  Very similar to today's capys, they grew up to 250 pounds.

The largest rodent ever was Josephoartigasia monesi who lived from 4 to 2 million years ago.  These guys were to capybara what capys are to guinea pigs.  They weighed a ton, were as big as buffalo, and had enormous incisors they used like elephant tusks.  Josephoartigasia was a successful wetland herbivore who probably succumbed to climate change. If they existed today they would no doubt be breeding in Florida.

Tales of Valor

My friend Pat Fitzpatrick died this week.  Pat was a devout Catholic and the most pro-life person I ever knew.  He did not manifest this by picketing Planned Parenthood, but by fighting against the death penalty, organizing exploited Immokalee farm workers, and extending a helping hand to anyone who needed one, friend and stranger alike.  Over the last dozen or so years he became increasingly involved with the homeless.  He co-founded the Home Van, a kind of mobile soup kitchen that went out to the tent cities with bottled water and peanut butter sandwiches.  He fought an arbitrary daily limit on the number of meals that the downtown homeless shelter was allowed to provide, making his slogan FEED EVERY ONE the rallying cry of a coalition of activists.   Economically challenged himself, he was generous to a fault.  As one friend said, if you asked him for a dime he would give you a quarter, unless he didn't have a quarter and then he'd let you crash at his apartment.

Pat was outrageous, profane, and laugh-out-loud funny.  He was fearless, self-deprecating, and totally committed to simple humanity.  Not surprisingly, he and my sister were BFF and sat together at every Gator baseball home game for years.  Some UF film students made a documentary about his battle to end the meal limit.  Civil Indigent is a great piece of work, side-splitting and infuriating at the same time.  You can watch it online and if you pay close attention you might identify a younger me in a drive-by cameo.

Pat was widely known and widely loved.  Hundreds here will mourn his passing and celebrate his life.  He wasn't a saint, but he was a hero.  Thinking about him the last few days has reminded me of other people I know who have also been heroic, maybe not in every aspect of their lives like Pat, but in significant acts of courage or giving.

I volunteer with several groups concerned with animal welfare.  My main commitment is to St. Francis Pet Care which provides free primary veterinary care to pets of homeless and low income people.  We run a licensed clinic open every Tuesday morning, where we also distribute free pet food and flea and heartworm preventives. It is first-come, first-served, and if you want your pet to be seen by a volunteer veterinarian you can easily wait outside for two or three hours.  Many of our clients come regularly and we know them pretty well.

Some people believe that if you can't afford to take care of an animal, you shouldn't have one.  To me that's a little like saying if you can't afford food you shouldn't eat, but I won't argue.  The fact is that many people who can't afford pets do have them, and to some of these people their dog or cat is all they have.  Maybe their dog is their protector and keeps them warm at night.  Maybe the cat is the only living thing they can relate to.  Maybe they're jerks, scamming the social welfare system and collecting strays.  We treat them all.

One Tuesday about a month ago, a male client came in with his ailing pit mix.  Since he has no transportation and the bus system won't take pets too large to carry in a crate, he put the dog in a shopping cart and pushed him all the way to Clinic.  It was hot, maybe in the mid-90s, and both client and patient arrived thirsty and over-heated.  We gave them water and shade, and after a vet saw the dog another volunteer gave them a ride home.  When she returned she reported that they lived with a group of tent campers a good five miles away.  Only a lunatic would walk five unshaded miles in Florida in July -- a lunatic or some kind of quiet hero.

A homeless client has the ugliest dog I've ever seen, a sweet Rottie mix with an underbite that would make a crocodile jealous.  This woman has had the dog since it was a puppy and has taken fabulous care of it for five or six years.  This spring she was diagnosed with a particularly nasty form of cancer and had to undergo major surgery and radiation.  We arranged to board the dog for a month while the client was in hospital and rehab, then got to witness a joyful reunion.  But when our client began her regimen of chemo, she weekly walked miles from her tent to the treatment center and back.  In Florida, in summer.  This woman never, ever once complained or asked for help.  While all this was going on, the dog developed an abscess in her throat, and St Francis Pet Care paid to have it examined by a private veterinarian.  Our client jumped through hoops to arrange transportation to and from the vet for her dog, but never mentioned that she herself was walking to chemo and back to her tent the same day.

We have clients we have helped to get into subsidized housing, pets we've re-homed, and pets we've fostered while the owners were incarcerated or in rehab.  One of our clients is a lovely, lively, elderly, disabled lady who lives in a house she inherited from her parents but cannot maintain.  A couple of weeks ago some vets and other clinic volunteers went to her home and pulled up an old, stained, disgustingly awful living room carpet to reveal a decent terrazzo floor underneath.  The room is lighter, brighter, more sanitary and easier to clean, and the client could not be happier.

Most of our clients have bad teeth, but one of them has the worst mouth I've ever seen.  She is homeless and has the intellect of a child, but was unable to navigate the system to get on Disability.  The State of Florida insisted she testify to her status in person in court in Jacksonville, without advising how an intellectually challenged homeless woman in Gainesville lacking public or private transportation would be able to accomplish this.  A clinic volunteer filled out the paperwork, drove the client to Jax and back, arranged a dental appointment, and drove her to the dentist who pulled every tooth in her upper jaw.  The woman came to Clinic last Tuesday displaying her stitches and grinning like the Cheshire cat.  In time she will get a set of uppers and be able to eat solid food.

Who are the heroes here, the clients or the volunteers?  It's a stupid question -- obviously both.  The clients make the best of the hands they've been dealt and put the welfare of the pets they love above their own.  Our volunteers balance the pain and frustration of all the sad cases they can not help by giving more of themselves to the cases where they can make a difference.

Pat Fitzpatrick, rest in peace.