Cruelty

IT IS regrettable that the prestigious Liacouras Center at Temple will be the site of a panorama of pain euphemistically termed a "circus. " Sterling & Reid Bros. will be bringing a collection of captive animal pawns forced to perform unnatural and frightening acts as a result of the generous use of whips, bullhooks, electric prods and deprivation of food and water. Circuses are nothing more than an exercise in cruelty and exploitation masquerading as family entertainment.

An SPCA agent interrupted what looked like a ritualistic ceremony last night when he went to check out a report of live and dead animals in a house in Kensington, police said. The residents of the home, in the 2000 block of East Ontario Street, were arrested at the scene and charged with cruelty to animals and conspiracy. Detectives identified them as William Nenadich, 52, and Clara Nenadich, 47. Police said SPCA agent Gary Lovett knocked at the door of the house, and was allowed in, after a report came into police at 6:30 p.m. Lovett told detectives that inside the house he saw a large group of people who looked like they were conducting a ceremony, and he said there appeared to be an altar with religious statues.

A Southampton pet shop owner was fined $1,000 yesterday after the municipal judge found her guilty of cruelty to animals for leaving 19 dogs and cats unattended over a long weekend in October. Judge Dennis P. McInerney said he did not believe defendent Cheryl Hagenbarth of Vineland when she testified that she had visited her store, Just Pups, on Route 206 in Vincentown, during the weekend in question and attended the animals. The judge said that photos of the animals in their cages presented by prosecutor Mark Tarantino were "very disturbing . . . and very difficult for me to even look at. " The photos were taken by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA)

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER'S SAVAGE GARDEN. 7 p.m. Sunday, TBS. If TBS is going to scare us out of our gardens, the least it could do is give us something decent to watch once we get inside. Instead, Sunday night it gives us "National Geographic Explorer's Savage Garden," a self-proclaimed "natural history comedy" that is one of the strangest specials ever to disturb a summer evening. Hosted by Leslie Nielsen, "Savage Garden" tells us the back yard is a "killing field" ruled by "stalkers and serial killers" - and then tries to exploit the carnage for cheap laughs.

A dog that shelter workers called the victim of the worst cruelty they had ever seen is recovering at the Delaware County SPCA. It will be five to seven days before it is known if the pit bull-boxer mix, dubbed Curious George for his curious nature, will survive, said Justina Calgiano, spokesperson for the Media-based shelter. The dog weighs 35 pounds, half what it should, she said. His nails are overgrown, and he has sores on his backside, probably the result of sitting too long in one spot.

Their first steps outdoors were tentative. The dogs didn't know what grass was, an animal rescuer said yesterday of the Chihuahuas that his group took in from among 88 seized from an accused South Philadelphia animal hoarder last week. "When we took them out on grass, it was actually sad," said Bill Smith, of Main Line Animal Rescue. "I don't think they knew how to walk on grass. " The Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals plans to charge the dogs' owner, who remains unidentified by authorities but who neighbors called "Frannie," with more than 130 counts of cruelty related to the Chihuahuas and other animals seized from a home on Earp Street near 8th, according to PSPCA chief operating officer Marc Peralta.

I was watching Game 5 of the NBA playoffs, and while I was monitoring the commercials, it struck me that they were not just nasty or discourteous - they were cruel. In a Dr. Pepper commercial, a boy is eaten by alligators in a swamp, while his girlfriend coyly asks, "Can I have your Dr. Pepper?" In a Chevrolet commercial, a man falls over a stump while his girlfriend tries to get a picture not of him, but of a Chevy Cavalier. In an Adidas commercial, a boy who's looking for a lost ball gets left to a nasty dog while the other kids run away.

Ask an experimenter about the animals in his laboratory. Nine times out of 10 he will tell you that they are well cared for and that he abides by the Animal Welfare Act passed by Congress in 1966. What he will not say is that both he and his colleagues fought the act and the amendments to it every step of the way; that, under the act, his laboratory is inspected at most (if at all) once a year; that when his animals are under experimentation, the act doesn't apply. Nor will he say that many laboratories ignore the act's most important amendment, passed in 1986, which mandates that at least one member of the public vote on the laboratory's animal care committee.

Got few minutes? A few bucks? A heart? You can pitch in at the PSPCA, 350 E. Erie Ave., 215-426-6300, pspca.org, volunteers@pspca.org . If you wanna go First, sign up for an hourlong volunteer orientation (there are four each month). When you're done, you'll be able to get right to work - and you can come back at your convenience to: Play with a dog outside. Hand-feed a dog or a cat. Clean cat cages. Do laundry. Take photos of animals. Greet clients.

Jonathan Babineaux expressed relief yesterday after he was cleared of a felony animal cruelty charge that could have sent the Atlanta Falcons defensive tackle to prison. "I'm just happy the whole situation is over with," Babineaux said. "It's been a long process. I've been waiting it out and it's finally over. " Gwinnett County (Ga.) District Attorney Danny Porter said yesterday he dismissed the charges following an investigation of the death of a pit bull in February. Pat McDonough, Babineaux's attorney, said it proved Babineaux acted only in self-defense against the aggressive dog that belonged to the player's girlfriend.

Live chickens sharing cages with mummified remains of dead birds. Thousands of chickens dead of dehydration thanks to a water source malfunctioning. A carpet of dead flies so dark that workers in a poultry house needed headlamps to see. Those were some of the things the Humane Society of the United States says its undercover investigation found at a large Lancaster County farm that supplies eggs to ShopRite and other stores. The Humane Society said the conditions its investigator found and videotaped at Kreider Farms in Manheim evidenced the need for a federal law governing treatment of hens in commercial farms.

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.

By Jeanette Winterson Grove Press. 224 pp. $25 Reviewed by Joelle Farrell In her breakthrough novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit , Jeanette Winterson called the coming-out, coming-of-age story "semiautobiographical. " The fictional bits, it turns out, were those characters who helped Jeanette, the teenage main character who suffered under her Pentecostal adoptive mother. In real life, Winterson had no such allies. Winterson titled her new memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

ATLANTIC CITY - The "diving horse" has been put out to pasture before its planned comeback. The owner of Atlantic City's Steel Pier said Tuesday he's dropping a plan to bring back the legendary stunt after animal-rights activists lodged fierce criticism. The act, which ran on the pier from the 1920s to the 1970s, featured a horse and a rider plunging into a 12-foot-deep tank from a platform 40 feet high. Anthony Catanoso, whose family owns the historic pier, said he's no longer interested in reviving the attraction, which had helped make the pier famous last century.

A Monmouth County man accused of running down a flock of seagulls in a mall parking lot has pleaded guilty to animal-cruelty charges. A judge in Eatontown, N.J., levied more than $750 in fines and fees against Jeffrey Karczewski of Hamilton. Victor "Buddy" Amato of the Monmouth County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said witnesses saw the 22-year-old circle the gulls in the Monmouth Mall parking lot before laughing as he ran them over Oct. 18. One bird was killed and two others were never found.

A dog that shelter workers called the victim of the worst cruelty they had ever seen is recovering at the Delaware County SPCA. It will be five to seven days before it is known if the pit bull-boxer mix, dubbed Curious George for his curious nature, will survive, said Justina Calgiano, spokesperson for the Media-based shelter. The dog weighs 35 pounds, half what it should, she said. His nails are overgrown, and he has sores on his backside, probably the result of sitting too long in one spot.

A dog that shelter workers called the victim of the worst cruelty they had ever seen is recovering at the Delaware County SPCA. It will be five to seven days before it is known if the pit bull-boxer mix, dubbed Curious George for his curious nature, will survive, said Justina Calgiano, spokesperson for the Media-based shelter. The dog weighs 35 pounds, half what it should, she said. His nails are overgrown, and he has sores on his backside, probably the result of sitting too long in one spot.

"WHY DOES a raccoon get more civil rights than a rat?" No, that's not a setup for a joke. It was a serious question posed by City Councilman Jim Kenney during Council's Public Health and Human Services Committee hearing yesterday. At issue: a bill by Councilman Darrell Clarke requiring the city to only capture raccoons that are nuisances and to avoid killing them in the process. Says Mayor Nutter: "I do not like raccoons. " Well, virtually no one does, which is why Council passed a Clarke bill in June requiring the animal-control contractor to respond to raccoon-nuisance calls.