Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals: Episode 74 Pigs with iPads

Episode 74 Pigs with iPads

Chicken Friends make for "…a wonderful world" video, New Zealand boats, Cow Crushes and Crushed Cows (or Horses), Bulls labelled with gender identity issues, Mayor Cull, Angle Grinders, Young Farmers, Pigs with iPads, Coal Action Network Aotearoa and "Keep The Coal In The Hole" protest, Fantails, Damn the Dam, The Mighty Boosh and The Hitcher!

Listen now by downloading directly from here or, better yet, subscribe in iTunes to get each episode automagically!

Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals iTunes link

http://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/coexisting-with-nonhuman-animals/id334206335

Hello and welcome to Episode 74 of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals Pigs with iPads

I've got a lot of newspaper stories to cover this episode, I've tried to throw in a bunch of audio clips in between, so you wont fall asleep listening to me drone on and on. To those who listen to Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals as a sleep aid, sorry, you'll be kept awake this episode for a change!

I recently recorded a video of my lovely Hen Friends, "Wonderful World", Hens enjoying themselves in the warm sun, backed by the TOTALLY free to use song "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong.

I hope gentle videos of other animals as they should be can be a positive force for Veganism, I've gotten a few positive comments already:

Lisa wrote

"My grandkids have watched this about a half dozen times this morning. They love your hen friends!"

and Barbara added

"I also know a little boy who will be delighted. He smiles every time he hears about chicken friends. Thanks so much Jordan. "

I wonder how young children who see other animals living peacefully will feel growing up, if decent exposure to such things will stay with them all their lives. I know that once I was sick, in bed as a young boy, and my family brought in some newly hatched chicks, presumably so they would catch my flu, and thus create the dreaded Bird Flu, you know, I never knew until now my parents actively wanted to bring about armageddon, you learn something new every day, I'll never forget those chirping chicks on my brightly covered duvet, and thanks to photos taken, I never will.

A recent news story mentioned passengers on our Interislander ferry being upset when they noticed "farm animals", the animals we use and kill on farms in a sorry looking state on board the boat. New Zealand has two main islands, cleverly dubbed "North Island" and "South Island, although they actually run East and West….noooo, the naming is correct, although everything else I've told you about New Zealand is totally factual, being a South Pacific island nation, all the women are topless, and all the men are bottomless. We're also GUTLESS, in that we gave in to those Womens Rights Facebook groups back in 1893. Not 1000, 800 AND 93, 18-93, you know, like 20-12?

Between the North and South islands run several boats, called ferries. OH, we also have the magical beings here too, I should have mentioned that earlier, and ruby red slippers, at least in the movie version, in New Zealand: the book Dorothy stole magical slippers which were actually silver. We just used red sequins because they were on special at The Warehouse at the time of shooting the movie, and we got to show off the Technicolour colour film process better with bright red.

Apparently, human passengers on the boat could look down from their deck and see cows below, who had all kinds of welts or open wounds on their backs, they were in shocking condition. This was reported to newspapers, and photos were online……UNTIL they were removed… I checked the story after my friend Ashlee sent me a link to the papers website through Facebook, I used my phone to see it during a work break….by the time I came home, to check on my computer, "this page cannot be found". The story was pulled, NOT just the graphic photo, which is perhaps understandable, but the full story, text and everything. One of the companies involved, the boat company or the actual "owners" of the animals must have made the story be taken down…unreal. I doubt the newspaper would have decided "gee, maybe we shouldn't do a story about a few cows having bumps and lumps on their backs", it must have been pulled for other reasons.

The story still shows up in a Google search cache, with just

"Cramped cows crushed into a cattle truck with gaping sores on their backs have horrified passengers during a Cook Strait ferry crossing" , if you try and view the actual article, then you get "page not found".

I've taken both The Lynx, a fast ferry boat which goes across Cook Strait, and the various Interislander boats, which are larger, cruise ship looking things more suited to a leisurely journey and taking freight. The Lynx kind of looked like Earthrace/Ady Gil….not really, it was far bigger and slower….but it was a wave piercing catamaran, although it took 840 passengers, whereas Earth Race, the magical New Zealand made, world record breaking ship destroyed by Sea Shepherd and The Whale Killers only had berths for a maximum of 8 people, 800 vs 8.

The Interislander ferries are more like the Bob Barker in design.

These things run multiple times a day, and they have for decades, theres always going to be injuries and problems. A friend of my fathers had his car written off when one of the boats went through rough seas, all the cars below deck were apparently thrown against each other, and they all received damage….a lot of Insurance payouts that day!

Also, one of my more distant family members is into "horse racing", and while onboard the boat, a shipping container fell on their horse float, this thin sheetmetal trailer that horses are driven about in, and a fully laden huge shipping container fell down on it…..imagine dropping a concrete cinderblock on a grape, killing one of their prize "race horses".

Heres a fun phrase from a recent No Agenda episode:

"Like prunes through a duck", meaning something was fast, "gee, the apparently Vegan athlete Carl Lewis is so fast, he's like prunes through a duck!"

Unfortunately, other ducks havnt been so lucky as to enjoy a nice bag of prunes :

"Recent culls of Canada Geese are believed to have killed up to 18,000 birds but the operation has concerned some hunters.

They say Lake Ellesmere has been left in a mess with rotting carcasses on the lake edge.

But those involved in the culling operation say they did clean up.

“They've had over a week now to clean up after the first cull, and there's birds that I’ve seen at different levels of decomposition, which shows they've been there for quite a long time, not just from the last heli-cull,” says Hunter Tom Lanauze.

Federated Farmers, which has complained for years about the voracious birds eating grass and destroying pasture, played a prominent role in the culls.

“Not a pleasant operation, obviously, but it had to be done and it's a successful operation. And now it's really up to the recreational hunters to show us that they can control goose numbers,” says Simon Williamson from the Federated Farmers.

Canada Geese were introduced as a game bird, but last year the Government agreed their population was out of control, and reclassified them as a pest."

As always, the farmers, the shooters "introduce" animals for their industry, in this case to kill for fun, and then they whine when the animals make love faster than they can make war, it takes a while to reload your gun with a beer in each hand you know!

Heres an interesting case of mistaken gender identity, where a MALE bull was referred to as also being a SHE, a "cow", and an IT, as though they were a genderless thing.:

"It was a showdown between man and beast in Hamilton yesterday after a young steer made a bolt for freedom.

But ITs freedom, and that of two fellow cattle beasts, was shortlived, with all three being shot dead by animal control officers.

The white steer, which escaped off the back of a truck, disrupted traffic when IT started running around the roundabout linking the Avalon Dr bypass with Lincoln St and Norton and Rifle Range roads shortly after 3.30pm yesterday.

Wade Gubb and his Transpower workmates were first on the scene and managed to guide the animal on to a stretch of grass along the Avalon Dr bypass. "IT just wouldn't get off the road," he said. "IT was pretty skittish when it was in the traffic."

Animal control, police and members of the public joined forces to corner the steer as IT stood, calmly considering IT's options. After letting out a few defiant moos, it retreated out of sight into a patch of bush.

At the request of the stock owner it was decided the elusive animal would be shot.

"IT's just too dangerous," a policewoman said.

An animal control officer produced a rifle from his ute and initiated the hunt.

There was a lengthy faceoff between man and beast before the steer again bolted, full speed, back towards the roundabout and down Rifle Range Rd.

Everyone manned their vehicles and went after the animal, eventually cornering IT around the back of an industrial building.

Two shots were fired in quick succession, then a third, and when the Waikato Times arrived the young steer was standing, staring at HIS shooter, bleeding profusely from the mouth and nose with a puddle of blood at HIS hooves.

(so, when they were chasing him all around, and having to kill him, he's referred to as an IT, but we can later admIT HE was a HE as he bleeds to death)

IT had to wait while police ensured nobody was inside a nearby shed – despite three shots already having been fired – before IT was put out of HIS misery more than 90 minutes after the escape.

A spokesman for Hamilton City Council Animal Control said the incident would be investigated.

"One of our staff has discharged a weapon under the supervision of police, but the exact circumstances of the euthanasing of the animals will be part of our investigation."

A man at the scene said bullets could ricochet off bone, which is why an area should be cleared first.

Two other escaped cattle, were killed further north on Avalon Dr. It is believed the trio were destined for the Frankton saleyard, where they would likely have been sold to a farmer and fattened for slaughter."

I left a comment on the article,

"Look at the last photo, where the murdered cows (or bulls) were killed, "butchered" as if by Baghdad Butcher Saddam Hussein in front of a Fonterra sign - Fon Terror, dairy for death!

Cattle are mammals, animals just like you or I, female Cows dont produce milk year round, but as mothers, for their babies. To keep mothers producing milk, they are repeatedly and forcibly "artificially inseminated", which is in itself a horrific ordeal, setting aside the lack of ethics behind keeping females pregnant and killing their children ASAP, as an unwanted "byproduct" of the dairy industry.

CIDR's are something to look into, the use of "hormone tampons" to even force female animals to ovulate, to be physically made ready for pregnancy, before the awful event takes place, handled by the "Artificial Insemination Technician", with a straw full of semen "milked" from a male Bull elsewhere, by hand....to be "inserted", by hand, wearing long gloves...

CIDR's and "induction", abortions of the unwanted "byproduct" children, treating other animals, the female reproductive cycle as commodity, theres nothing ethical about dairy.

http://www.pfizeranimalhealth.co.nz/sites/pfizeranimalhealth/Pages/CIDRCattleInsert.aspx?Species=Dairy

Its easy to be Vegan, Other Animals will thank you! :-)

Jordan Wyatt

INVERCARGILL VEGAN SOCIETY

"all animals are equal"

http://www.invsoc.org.nz"

I read another interesting article, about the sexual politics of meat, to steal the title of a well known book, where Men were described as being more likely to choose eating flesh over eating a quiche:

""We can explain different gendered eating habits and tastes via an evolutionary story about what men and women 'naturally' do and 'naturally' like," he says, where every choice we make leads back to the need to propagate the species, as Yale's David Katz proposed.

Man is the hunter, therefore the breadwinner, the meat eater, the firemaker, the king of barbecues. Woman is the gatherer of vegetables, the salad eater, the nurturer, the homemaker, the cupcake-maker. "And clearly we rely on a set of gendered understandings here, but when we grasp around for reasons, this evolutionary story is all we grab on to. Gender, like nature itself, isn't 'natural', it's something we 'do'. And we do it all the time, which means we do it when we eat. We learn our tastes, and part of that learning is gendered.""

Ever opinionated, I left another comment :

"Always interesting to see the sociological issues of killing other animals raised, of linking the killing of Hens, Cattle, Pigs and Sheep to "being a man".

For those interested in reading more, author Carol J Adams writes extensively on such topics, with her book "The Sexual Politics of Meat" in particular proving useful in this context:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_J._Adams

English Sociologist Dr Roger Yates is another leading expert, with articles such as

"Whatever you do, dont do that!"

"...keen on the child of the household remaining ignorant about what "meat" was. The friends said to the activist, "We're not going to say anything about food" - and essentially they seemed extremely worried that information about the "meat" in the boy's meal may "start him thinking."

http://human-nonhuman.blogspot.com/2011/08/whatever-you-do-dont-do-that.html

Speaking as a 1.95M tall male woodworker, the same profession as Donald Watson, coiner of the term "Vegan" back in 1944, its easy to be Vegan, regardless of your gender! "Be a man", stand up for respecting other animals!

Jordan Wyatt

INVERCARGILL VEGAN SOCIETY

"all animals are equal"

http://www.invsoc.org.nz""

On the topic of masculinity and domination, a farming group I often visit showed photos of a quote "Professional Hoof Trimmer", a man who cuts down the hooves of cattle on farms…..

The photo showed cows being put into a "crush", a horrible metal contraption which traps them in through lateral pressure, imagine a sort of metal trap which snares them inside by applying pressure around their neck, on their sides, while a metal slope is used to position the cows leg, bent up and back, so they can have their hooves "ground down by a professional", using a bloody Angle Grinder!

Now, I use an Angle Grinder in my workshop, for cutting metal. Today I pulled apart some bed frames, old wooden frames with tightly coiled steel mesh in between, the way they used to make them. The beds are fairly worthless now, so we break them down to keep the headboards for timber, to have the metal recycled by a scrap dealer. To do that, I use a crescent wrench to carefully loosen the bolts, theres two of them holding the tensioned steel mesh in place, and as you take the nut off the last of the two, there'll be a bang as the bed wire pops off, all the tension held back for years, decades being released, as the mesh goes slack.

I'm then left with two long beams of timber, the sides, with the end pieces of wood left attached to the wire, the back and front bits stay attached.

Thats when I step in with the angle grinder, using a bench vise to clamp the wood in position, I run my Angle Grinder along the steel, it cleanly grinds through the metal.

An Angle Grinder like the kind I used, like the kind the quote "professional hoof trimmer" uses on poor cows feet is about 30cm long, about a foot long, runs on power, I have an extension cord in place above my main work bench,

From our friend Wikipedia

"Angle grinders may be used both for removing excess material from a piece or simply cutting into a piece. There are many different kinds of discs that are used for various materials and tasks, such as cut-off discs (diamond blade), abrasive grinding discs, grinding stones, sanding discs, wire brush wheels and polishing pads. The angle grinder has large bearings to counter side forces generated during cutting, unlike a power drill, where the force is axial.

Angle grinders are widely used in metalworking and construction, as well as in emergency rescues. They are commonly found in workshops, service garages and auto body repair shops."

So this tool that I use for cutting through metal, that can be used for constructing buildings, metalwork, and hell, emergency rescues, as in being able to cut through a car if required, farmers actually use these on animals hooves? I realise a cows hoof is a little bit thicker than our toenails, but HELL! Thats bloody nuts.

Does it sound like I'm appearing on Mister Rogers, explaining how things work? Sorry!

The Hitachi angle grinder I use has a disc of about 12cm securely fastened to it, as they wear down you replace them, thats about 5 inches if you're used to working in American Freedom Units. The grinding discs I use are as thick as a dinner plate, of ceramic or hardened metal.

Thinner cutting discs apply more of the great force through a smaller area, they easily slice through metal, where as the grinding discs I use generally wear down the metal, rather than slice through.

An Angle Grinder throws off sparks, the metal filings that are ground off, burning molten hot as they get flung away from the disc, spraying out in a fountain about 30cm or a Freedom unit "foot" long, about 15cm or half a Freedom foot wide. You have a long plastic and metal tool in your hand, running off an extension cord, that spins a metal or ceramic disc at 10,000 RPM, that throws off sparks as it grinds through solid metal.

I guess the sparks look a LITTLE like the sparkler fireworks you give to kids so they can write their names, excepts theres a heck of a lot more sparks, and its not from some lovely metal burning away on a thin wire, but instead molten metal fillings being thrown off a disc rotating 10,000 times per minute, as it cuts through solid metal!

Heres a clip I recorded of the Angle Grinder I use in my workshop, imagine using this thing to grind down a large animals hooves, while you have her trapped in some crazy "cattle crush" contraption. As I recorded this, I had my dust mask down to talk, earmuffs on, and safety goggles, like the kind you wear in a high school science lab, when you want to seduce someone special.

And luckily, you didn't get to hear the sound of a hand being ground off.

Think about how careful pet owners are when trimming the toenails of a cat or dog, or guinea pig or rabbit, how worrisome it can be, trying to avoid nicking any little veins inside their claws, if you cut too deep, they'll bleed and bleed and bleed. And here quote "Professional Hoof Trimmers" are, using industrial tools which are capable of cutting a car open, on the feet of these gentle herbivores, known for motherhood. Its a disgrace.

< long pause then No Agenda woman clones dog clip>

Certainly an odd story!

In New Zealand, we have the "Young Farmers" competition, to build interest in farming, through various challenges.

Future "Young Farmers" competitions aim to be held in larger cities, with the grand finale held in Dunedin, the second largest city on the South Island, and as far as I know, home to the closest Vegan cafe to Invercargill, called "Circadium Rhythm" In this article, pay attention to the mayors name:

""It's showing New Zealand, rural and urban, the food story is pretty exciting, pretty interesting and dynamic.

"So coming to Dunedin ... we are actually positioning agriculture in front of what we hope will be a good urban audience, helping them understand that agriculture is a pretty dynamic and complex business."

Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull said hosting the grand final presented a chance to celebrate the large rural side of the city's character."

Mayor Cull, in farming, "cull" C U L L essentially is the polite way to say KILL, "we had to cull a number of the herd", "the annual cull" etc. The mayor excited about hosting the animal agriculture competition in its latter stages is named KILL.

Another play on words, kind of, "playing with your food".

This article was spotted on The Verge, my favourite tech site:

"It started out as a way to stop pigs awaiting slaughter from chewing on each other. But video game design initiative Playing with Pigs quickly evolved to become something more than a simple video game that gets humans to play with their future pork meals.

A team of game designers, a philosopher and an animal welfare scientist hope to create something that also spurs people to reexamine the way they think about animals destined for the dinner table.

The idea for creating a video game that gets people to play with farm pigs through a computer tablet and a wall-sized projection screen came out of a study into the ethics of pig farming in the Netherlands by Clemens Driessen, an applied philosopher at Wageningen University.

Driessen was looking into the issue of tail biting among farmed pigs. Some pigs become so frustrated and bored with their captivity that they start chewing on other pigs' tails. The issue has become such a problem that farmed pigs in the European Union are required to have access to "enrichment materials" to reduce pig boredom and tail biting.

One farmer asked Driessen if pigs would enjoy the sorts of video games her kids play on their Nintendo Wii. The suggestion drove the philosopher to contact Utrecht School of Arts to suggest collaboration on a video game for pigs.

"Later, we decided to broaden the scope of the project to include the question of how we relate to pigs and how we might change that through a game," said Kars Alfrink, designer and researcher at Utrecht School of the Arts. "We therefore decided it would be more interesting to create a game that people could play with pigs. This also provided us with the opportunity to use humans to entertain pigs, which we thought would be an interesting twist."

Pig Chase is played with an iPad or other tablet device. Players will see a live video feed from a pig barn on their screen. By touching the screen, players move a ball of light around one of the walls of the enclosure of the barn. The goal is to attract a pig to the light and, with the help of the pig's snout, move the ball to a target shown on both the barn wall and the player's iPad. Early on, game designers discovered that pigs respond strongly to lights and will follow them.

The team is currently building a playable prototype using a "modest budget." Their ultimate goal is to create a system that farmers can integrate into their barns, but Alfrink says they still have a long way to go.

A panel of experts on enrichment materials for pigs were shown the game and weren't that impressed with it, said Marc Bracke, the team's animal welfare scientist from Wageningen University.

"They were only moderately positive about the game as such," he said. "Perhaps it is not immediately clear how useful this can be in practice."

But early tests show that pigs seem to enjoy this new type of play. Players, currently just the design team and some students, also seem to enjoy the game. Alfrink adds that over time the game has "changed the way we think about" the pigs.

It may seem macabre to be designing a game to entertain pigs destined for slaughter. Alfrink says his work on the project has made him even more consciously about the issues surrounding livestock farming. But he still eats meat.

Philosopher Driessen says he doesn't expect the game to turn people into vegetarians. But, he says, he hopes it will get people to think more about the issues surrounding farmed animals.

What starts out as an innocent invitation to play with a pig, Driessen suspects, could raise some mixed, unsettling emotions.

"I have a sort of dual hypothesis on what could happen," he said. "On the one hand this could be a playful and high-tech way to restore the proximity and perhaps bond that humans and pigs have had since the very dawn of civilization up until one or two generations ago. On the other hand, playing a game with a pig might intensify our latent sense of inconsistency in the way we treat animals based on the sole fact of whether they are designated a pet or food."

An outcome that leads to people spending more on pork to pay for better treatment of pigs, or people becoming vegetarians, is almost beside the point. It's the discussion, the philosophical and intellectual journey that seems most important to Driessen.

"I don't know what is best for pigs, whether to play a well-designed game with a prospective consumer, run around outside in the mud and then be slaughtered, or never having been born in the first place," he said. "This project for me is a way not to discuss these questions in the solemn and abstract language of moral philosophy, but to make it into something that everyone can explore for themselves, and in a way that not completely silences the pigs but involves their active participation."

Giving pigs iPads? Well, using iPads to move a light around the poor pigs cage is more accurate, supposedly to keep them mentally active, because we all know animals will just follow a little light that they can never catch around a room all day, until they are finally killed.

Pigs with iPads…where have I heard that before? OH! From the consumers friend, David Martosko, of the Center For Consumer Freedom, who advertises and lobbies for the most unethical companies around, as long as they pay him with briefcases stacked with crisp hundred dollar bills!

Damn right I'm not happy! We shouldn't be harming and killing others in the first place! The Center For Consumer Freedom were originally founded to defend tobacco companies from governmental regulation, basically saying "oh, four out of five doctors recommend you smoke Camel brand cigarettes, they CURE cancer, and make you a real man!" Now, they act like a mafia racket, demanding money from Coca Cola, Pepsi, McDonalds, Burger King, "pork producers" and basically all aspects of Non Veganism in its most harmful concentrations, using that money to attack Animal Welfare reforms, making websites against PETA, HSUS and others, defending vivisection and rubbishing the work of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, among others.

Another group on the PR warpath has been Solid Energy, a government owned business which mines coal, here in New Zealand. They plan to mine lignite, perhaps the dirtiest kind of coal in my province of Southland, theres recently been a lot of protests and coverage about the mining schemes, as you'll find out…..NOW.

The John Hanlon song "Damn the Dam" mentioned is a New Zealand classic, even all these years on. The song was written in protest to the proposal to raise lake levels, to increase the amount of hydroelectric energy available, see, just because somethings "renewable" doesn't mean its 100% perfect, to do so required merging two of our lakes and destroying many tiny islands on the lakes. From the source of all wisdom, Wikipedia:

"The Save Manapouri Campaign was an environmental campaign waged between 1959 and 1972 in New Zealand to prevent the raising of the levels of lakes Manapouri and Te Anau as part of the construction of the Manapouri Power Project.

The original plans for Manapouri Power Station development in the 1950s involved raising Lake Manapouri by up to 30 metres, and merging Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau. The Save Manapouri Campaign, which commenced in 1959, later came to manifest the international awareness of the environment that came with the prosperity of the 1960s.

"At its simplest, the issue was about whether Lake Manapouri should be raised by as much as 30 metres. But there was much more at stake than that. There were strong economic and engineering arguments opposing lake raising, and there were also legal and democratic issues underlying the whole debate. What captured the public's imagination across the country was the prospect that a lake as beautiful as Manapouri could be interfered with, despoiled and debased", wrote Neville Peat.

In 1970, 264,907 New Zealanders, almost 10% of the population, signed the Save Manapouri petition. Nevertheless, the Cabinet Committee on Manapouri and the Manapouri Commission of Inquiry both concluded that the New Zealand Government was obligated under the terms of the Manapouri-Te Anau Development Act 1963 to raise the levels of Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau in order to guarantee the supply to Comalco of electricity for the aluminium smelter based at Tiwai Point. In the 1972 general electionManapouri was a significant issue, and the Labour Government of Norman Kirk was elected on a platform that included a strong endorsement of the Save Manapouri ideals.

In 1973 Kirk honoured his party’s election pledge. He created an independent body, the Guardians of Lake Manapouri, Monowai, and Te Anau to oversee management of the lake levels, which they do to this day.[1] The original six Guardians were all prominent leaders of the Save Manapouri Campaign.

The single "Damn the Dam" recorded and released in 1973 by John Hanlon has retrospectively become associated with the Save Manapouri Campaign. Hanlon's song was originally an energy conservation jingle to advertise home insulation, with the proceeds from its release going to charities. However, since the release of this song followed on from the successful conclusion of the Save Manapouri Campaign, 'Damn the Dam' is now popularly recognised as an anthem in tribute for one of New Zealand's longest and hardest-fought environmental campaigns. [2]"

Yes, Damn the Dam…..a song written from the perspective of a Fantail, a sweet little New Zealand native bird, sort of similar to a Hummingbird in many ways, they cant hover, but they're very agile little flyers, who swoop and dive every which way, they never really sit still. The jump from branch to branch, this tiny little bird using their giant fanned out tail as an air break, to stop on the spot. Fantails like to follow humans through the bush, they'll stay a couple of metres in front of you, squeaking away, never stopping, apparently because our clumsy feet stir up insects for the fantail to kill and eat.

This is how Fantails sound, theres two clips here, one of a North Island Fantail, and another of one in the South Island, hmm, I guess they have different accents, just like how I speak slightly differrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrent from my friends in Auckland.

I'll play the North Island one first:

and now the South

AHA! So the Southern Fantail, he has a deeper voice, more masculine, I KNEW IT!

Damn the dam is a great song, no doubt available on iTunes so I can purchase it for use in this episode…..oh yes, I see its on a "classic kiwi hits" album called Heartland, ah yes…..wait….it says VIEW……not buy……

WHAT! I CANT JUST GET THE ONE SONG!?!?!? "ALBUM ONLY"?!?!?!?! I HAVE TO BUY THE WHOLE AWFUL "CLASSIC KIWI HITS" ALBUM?!?!?!?! 27.99!?!??!?!??!?!?!?! $23 American Dollars for one crappy song from the 1970's!?!?!?!

*ahem*, let me compose myself.

In the words of The Mighty Boosh

At least once the show has mentioned Vegetarianism

Heres to hoping they next mention Veganism, as we become more and more mainstream!

My favourite character, The Hitcher had a way of puttin' rip off prices from one hit wonders in the picture,

Overlooking the fact Hornet Shamen men most likely WOULDN'T have a quote "tiny insect skull", being mostly insect like, they might have an exo skull-eton, the rest of the clip is thats a bloody right! 27.99 for the one song on the album I want, Damn the Dam? WELL DAMN YOU JOHN HANLON! MAY THAT PROPHESIED FANTAIL PECK AT YOUR GREEDY EYES………

Here my friends is a recording of the 90 second preview our friends at iTunes provide, unlike the greedy artist (ok, more the label behind this classic New Zealand hits album), who wouldn't let me buy the song for a reasonable 1.79, or even a gouging 2.39, like the more expensive songs in iTunes Music Store New Zealand, nooooo, they had to go and make the one song I wanted 27.99!!! Talking about thinking outside the box, these criminals clearly escaped from the "Centre for Consumer Freedom", they're firmly on the edge of how to rip off a poor young New Zealand activist, who just wanted to play a lovely song for his friends:

Ohh, that music there at the end….its so sweet, it stirs all kinds of patriotic feelings in my manly breast, I just know I'm going to be drawn into paying 28 bloody dollars for that one damn song!

What have we learnt today boys and girls? Well, Angle Grinders make all kinds of loud noises, and throw off scary sparks, pigs will follow a ball of light around their enclosure, which we tell ourselves is entertaining them until the day we kill them, musicians from the 1970's often find their one huge hit being made "album only" by the record label, theres a few boats that run or more accurately swim between the north and south islands of New Zealand, and fan tails from each of these islands squeak differently.

Thank you for listening to Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals at www.coexisting.co.nz

If you want to contact me, I'd really love to hear from YOU, please send me an email to info@invsoc.org.nz

I'm also on Facebook and Twitter, Jordan Wyatt, W Y A T T

Thank you for listening.