Animals

Ryan Howard felt a tiny pinch Sept. 18 when a team physician's needle penetrated the numbed surface of a left heel that had been throbbing red-hot for weeks. Within seconds, the syringe's milky mixture of cortisone and painkiller rushed warmly into the tiny, inflamed bursa sac at the base of the slugger's Achilles tendon. Howard and the Phillies were rolling the dice. They hoped the cortisone would ease the pain and, after a brief rest, return him to form for the fast-approaching postseason.

You can hear the animals talk at the Philadelphia Zoo. The newest exhibit there, "Xtinkshun: A Wild Puppet Xperience," is a multimedia presentation, featuring seven puppets created by the Jim Henson Co. that talk about animal extinction. The company is best known for creating the Muppets and the puppets for Sesame Street. Theatrical puppet presentations at outdoor stages, daily parades, and a short "mockumentary" film make up "Xtinkshun," which opened Saturday and closes Oct. 31. Most of the puppets represent endangered species, and one, Didi the Dodo, stands in for an animal that is extinct, sharing her wisdom in the hope of preventing other creatures from dying out. Didi is joined by Leo the Golden Lion Tamarin, Alfreda Cheetah, Iggle the Eaglet, Phibi Frog, Igor the Tiger, and the Douc Langur.

Jamie Wyeth, like his late father, Andrew, was destined from childhood to become an artist. Also like Andrew, who died in January 2009, he was a precocious talent. The immediate evidence for that is the earliest work in Jamie's exhibition at the Brandywine River Museum, "Farm Work," accomplished watercolors such as Kennedy's Butter and Eggs, Mr. Borneman's Barn , and Stanchion Stall, all painted between the ages of 13 and 14. Jamie and his father ran on parallel tracks for a half century, but the son was always an independent spirit, especially in later years.

THE advent of Easter and the phenomenal popularity of "The Passion of the Christ" bring to the fore Jesus' powerful message of love and compassion. How can Christians reconcile this message with subsidizing the agony of billions of animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses? Cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens, and other animals raised for food are sentient beings who share many of our own feelings of joy, love, sadness, and pain. Yet from birth they are caged, crowded, drugged, mutilated and manhandled in today's factory farms.

An open season on hunters is an idea suggested by Cleveland Amory as a way of keeping down the growing number of hunters in this country. Amory insists that he is only thinking of what's best for the hunters themselves when he suggests that some of them should be harvested every year. If their ranks are not thinned out, he says, they'll become so numerous that food supplies for them will be inadequate and many of them will die of starvation. Amory wants the hunting of hunters to be carried out in a civilized way. For instance, if someone bags a hunter, Amory does not feel that the dead hunter should be tied to the roof or hood of the hunter hunter's car when being brought back from where it was shot.

Monica Wall, 3, with mom Barbara (left) and grandmom Dolores Whitehead, checks out the creche animals at Old First Reformed Church, 4th and Race streets, last night. The famous live-animal Nativity scene is on display through Dec. 28.

Autistic children from the Center for Autistic Children and the Project Learn School in Mount Airy had a chance to meet a variety of animals yesterday when representatives of Busch Gardens and Sea World visited the center on Conshohocken State Road. Relating to animals is believed to help autistic children form relationships with people.

RE THE LETTER about the cats and dogs that don't pay taxes: These animals didn't ask to be here. A homeless person chooses that life when he or she turns down a shelter that would take them in. When you read what some of these humans do to animals, it's sickening - and, in case you don't know it, they are the same ones killing and torturing humans. You should move because it's an insult to say you're from Philadelphia if you actually feel that way about animals. Sandy Ward Philadelphia

Christina Smallet (left) and Christie Bush, Camden County College vet-tech students, take blood sample at the Humane Society

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Five exotic animals are back on the eastern Ohio farm where they lived months ago before their owner released dozens of wild animals into the rural community, then killed himself. The widow of Terry Thompson picked up two leopards, two primates and a bear from the Columbus zoo on Friday and returned them to their former home in Zanesville where 50 animals - including black bears, mountain lions and Bengal tigers - were released Oct. 18. Authorities killed 48 of the animals, fearing for the public's safety.

JAMIE WYETH left school in sixth grade, so, in his formative years, he interacted far more with animals than people. "I spent a lot of time alone; I left school to be tutored," the 65-year-old artist said last week. "So most of my companions were animals. It's as simple as that. I knew more animals than I did people. " He was talking about his life on the porch outside the throwback home he shares with his wife Phyllis at the glorious Point Lookout in Chadds Ford, the land spreading out below almost as far as the eye can see, the rolling Brandywine Creek and a railroad track sharing the foreground, a perfect frame for the deer lounging near the faraway tree line.

ALMOST NO ONE who read Gideon Defoe's cult series of absurdist novels about 19th-century pirates put the books down and thought: Claymation! No one except fellow Brit Peter Lord, head of Aardman Animations, the company behind the "Wallace and Gromit," franchise, and when you think about it, the perfect outfit to grasp the author's Anglo-eccentricities and convey them safely to screen. Just to make sure, Aardman hired Defoe to develop the screenplay. Their collaboration is called "Pirates: Band of Misfits.

HARRISBURG — An admission by state agriculture officials Wednesday that fewer than half the large breeding kennels in Pennsylvania were meeting the full requirements of the 2008 dog law and that the state had decided not to enforce some provisions of the law touched off a series of heated exchanges between officials and animal-welfare advocates. Officials told members of the governor's Dog Law Advisory Board — meeting for the first time since Gov. Corbett took office 15 months ago — that only 17 of 52 commercial kennels were in compliance with regulations governing temperature, humidity, ventilation, and ammonia levels that were supposed to take effect almost one year ago, prompting one board member to ask why they were allowed to stay in business if they were violating the law. Lynn Diehl, director of the Office of Dog Law Enforcement, said state dog wardens were working with the remaining kennels to get them into compliance.

THE HORRIFYING report of the Gloucester County woman charged with starving her dog nearly to death seems to warrant specific attention from prosecutors. The condition of both the dog and the cat, who was euthanized, indicate, at minimum, a disturbing lack of empathy on the part of the owner. Caring for one dog but abusing another might also involve some sort of punitive action that needs explaining. As a psychotherapist familiar with animal-related cases, I know from experience that animal neglect and abuse are cause for serious concern, especially in cases of starvation that happen over a long period of time.

HERCULES was barely a dog anymore, confined and forgotten in a Gloucester County basement like a box of dusty, old toys. Meanwhile, upstairs, Roxanne Notaro's chocolate Labrador, "Little," had food, warmth and love. Officials with the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals say it's a miracle that Hercules, an American bulldog, is alive after cops found him locked in a small crate and covered in feces, urine and fleas in the basement of Notaro's home on Vassar Road in Wenonah last week.

A DO-WOP singer and a dolphin trainer. Now there's a combination for you. But Jimmy Mullen excelled at both. He was the baritone in the South Philadelphia singing group the Four Epics, which cut records and performed widely on the East Coast in the '60s. He later decided to exploit his love of animals and the sea to become a trainer of dolphins at the old Aquarama in South Philly, and in later years in California. "I thought I married a singer, not a dolphin trainer," said his wife of 46 years, the former Gerry Lewis.

SOME DREAMS just have to surrender to reality. Ronald Spencer Brisbane, an animal-lover, dreamt of being a veterinarian. But duty to his country interfered, and the dream was never realized. Instead, Ronald spent 20 years in the Army, including three combat tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, retiring as a major. He later worked for Homeland Security before he became ill. He died March 14 at the age of 48. He lived in Horsham. Ronald was born in Philadelphia and graduated from the High School for Creative and Performing Arts.

A GAME OF Executive Musical Chairs in the animal-welfare world has slowed progress toward making this a "no-kill" city. After less than three years on the job, Pennsylvania SPCA CEO Sue Cosby resigned in order to run the Animal Care and Control Team (ACCT), a soon-to-expire subsidiary of the PSPCA, which now is seeking a new top dog - its third leader since 2007. A new ACCT starts as a city-created, city-related nonprofit agency on April 1, which is no joke. There are no laughs for the 30,000 dogs and cats that annually languish in cages in the city's shelter.