THE PRESS
Your Voice on the Street: By Stephanie Szozda
Do you take part in the eating of Paczkis this time of year?
MARCH 6
3, 2017
9
The Press Poll
Would you feel comfortable
motoring in a driverless car?
Yes, the roads could be safer
than with some drivers
No thanks, I choose life
Not yet
Jennifer Koester
Williston
“Yes and not just on
Fat Tuesday. I get
them as soon as
they come out! I pick
them up at whatever
grocery store I’m at.
I love the cream
cheese ones.”
Mike Flannagan
Millbury
“No. I’m a diabetic so
I stay away from pretty much all sweets.
They’re not good for
you anyways.”
Mike Wade
Rossford
“Eww, gross... Never.”
Myles Holliday
Toledo
“Yes, Chocolate is
my favorite of course.
The old library on
Lagrange Street sells
them. They’re the
best 1,800 calories
ever!”
To cast your ballot, go to
www.presspublications.com
Michael O’Bryan
Oak Harbor
“Yes, I shouldn’t but
I do. The Bavarian
Cream ſlled are my
favorite and they’re
the best from the IGA
in Oak Harbor... At
least that is where
my friend said he got
them and they were
great!”
Last Week's Results
How do you prepare your taxes?
58% I pay an accountant or tax service
34% I use a website/software
8% The old fashioned way. I use a tax
workbook, a pen and a calculator
Beyond ‘Greatest Show on Earth,’ who’s the rabbit now?
Early this year Ringling Bros. and
Barnum & Bailey Circus announced that it
would be shutting down with the final installment of the “Greatest Show on Earth”
this May. This is at least partially a result
of one final trick from the wildly popular
Barnum & Bailey performing elephants —
they disappeared.
Tickets sales for the circus really
slumped after the touring elephants were
retired in mid-2016 to the point that, when
paired with high operating costs, the business became unsustainable. Of course, animal rights activist organizations, including People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA), were behind the push to
pull elephants from the circus.
The event attracted roughly 10 million
visitors a year who will now have to seek
new venues to get their fix of exotic animals and human oddities galore. There is
no doubt that the circus that ran for nearly
150 years will be missed by many, but as
the legendary Barnum & Bailey fades from
our memories in the name of “progress,”
will the thought of performing elephants
one day be as foreign as phones with cords
that hang on the wall and 8-track players?
The circus is just one more victim in a
long line of animal-human relationships no
longer a part of our society. Human-animal
relationships have changed in recent generations in ways that were once fairly common and accepted, but nearly unimaginable today. Here are a couple of examples.
The FFA pest hunt
My father recently relayed to me that
back in his high school days, he would
gather a bunch of buddies after school multiple days a week to visit pest infested barns
in the tri-county area to shoot rats, pigeons
and starlings. He fondly reminisced about
going into the barns, shutting off the lights
and listening as the rats crawled out from
their hiding spots before turning the lights
back on and blasting away with their .22s
and doing their best to avoid putting holes
in the barn siding. He spent many hours engaged in this pursuit that was both enjoyable and a very valuable service for the area
farmers in the days before grain bins and
extensive grain handling systems. Rats and
birds could do extensive damage to a crop
stored in a corncrib.
This is the part that really gets me
though. After each successful hunt, my father and his friends would cut off the rat
tales and bird heads from their quarry to
fill garbage sacks that they would take to
school. There the pest parts were carefully
tallied and a running score was kept to earn
extra credit for class. The competition was
countywide and the top pest hunters were
invited to an end-of-year banquet to recognize their success. This story of the FFA
pest hunt (which I had never heard of) led
to several questions.
1. How much property damage was
done to the barns and did it offset the value
of the service being provided? Dad claimed
that the benefits outweighed the costs for
the farmers.
2. Can you imagine what would happen to a student who showed up to school
today carrying a bag stuffed full of choppedoff rat tails? I would guess at the very least
there would be some extensive counseling.
3. Whose incredibly unpleasant job
was it to count the rat-tails and bird heads
after they had been sitting in a trash bag
Fresh
Country
Air
by Matt Reese
Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey set up at the Toledo Sports Arena in the mid
1980’s. (Press file photo by Ken Grosjean)
since the previous day? The FFA advisor?
4. What did they do with the animal
parts after they were tallied?
5. What did they serve for dinner at the
Pest Hunt Banquet?
One question that did not come up was
“Why don’t they do this anymore?”
Rabbit test
Around 1925 it was discovered that
significant amounts of human chorionic
gonadotropin hormone were only found
in pregnant women. This meant that early
pregnancy could be detected by testing for
this hormone. To do this, a woman’s urine
was injected into female rabbits, mice or
rats and the animal’s ovaries would be ex-
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amined a couple days later through a surgery that would typically end the animal’s
life. If the ovaries were enlarged it would
mean that the woman was pregnant. It was
a common misconception that the injected
mammal would die only if the woman was
pregnant and this led to the somewhat misleading phrase “the rabbit died” for a positive pregnancy test. In the harsh reality of
the rabbit test, the rabbit would die either
way in most cases.
Think for a moment about a modern
PETA response to an animal life sacrificing pregnancy test. Wow. I can’t imagine
that the “rabbit test” for pregnancy was
all that common, but it was used enough
that references to it found their way into
popular culture. Though I never heard of
this until a recent Sunday school class (you
never know what kinds of interesting stuff
comes up in Sunday school), there was a
M*A*S*H episode that covered the subject
when “Hot Lips” Houlihan wondered if she
was pregnant and Radar’s cherished rabbit
was the only testing option available. The
top-notch M*A*S*H docs solved the dilemma with careful surgery to do the test
and spare the bunny’s life.
The band Aerosmith also referenced
the “rabbit test” topic in the popular rock
song “Sweet Emotion” in one of the verses:
“You’re telling me things but your girlfriend lied. You can’t catch me ‘cause the
rabbit done died.”
In the end, as a society we are probably
better off without the “rabbit test” and barn
siding, school boards and FFA students
are probably all a bit safer in the absence
of school-sanctioned Pest Hunts. But, I
often marvel at how the extreme views of
a few have the incredible power to shape
life and society for the rest of us. While the
disappearance of elephants from the circus
does nothing to impact my daily reality,
there are people out there who had their
lives drastically altered for the worse with
the end of the incredible era of Barnum &
Bailey. Parts of their lives were destroyed
based on the whims of a few people with a
misguided agenda. It makes me wonder in
a society such as ours where animal rights
sometimes seem to trump those of humans,
who’s the rabbit now?
Matt Reese is the editor for Ohio’s
Country Journal. For more from Reese, visit
ocj.com.
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