Train cancelled in UK After Squirrel Refuses to Disembark.

Actually, the poor wee fella was scared – and there is a happy ending. He got off the train at Reading. Gotta love the Brits.

We truly don’t. Three animals have already died at the 2024 Calgary Stampede. The animal acts need to be stopped. Link to a piece I wrote last year and have re-pinned to the top of my Substack.

I love this! We need more voices for animals. More voices for conservation and for the planet.

Anne Innis Dagg passed away – she was known as “the woman who loves giraffes.” There’s a halfway decent documentary about her that airs occasionally on HBO (I think). I enjoyed her autobiography, Smitten by Giraffe: My Life as a Citizen Scientist, although it made for tough reading in parts (when she writes about her time working in laboratories and the unnecessary testing on animals that she witnessed).

It is Thanksgiving here in Canada and I am thankful for much in my life – certainly living in this peaceful, if silly, little country must be on my gratitude list. Also, people who are kind to animals. Some cheer for the day and for this often sad world:

This story, of a chimp who saw the sky for the first time in her life – previously caged in a lab – got a lot of coverage. I had been meaning to post it. Here is the same story with an added compilation of animals seeing outdoors for the first time. (What we do to them is horrifying.) Get out your Kleenex, though.

If there is one thing I love, it is stories about animals making it clear they are none too pleased with us. I’ve collected a few:

Orcas are ramming boats.

Sea lions are charging humans.

Dolphins attack swimmers.

Birds are using anti-bird spikes in their nests.

Birds undermine human attempt at fun in most delightful way.

Keep it up, animals. We deserve a lot worse.

...up at my Substack. About animals.

This fellow has sure seen a lot!

This should have been included in my most recent Beryl O’Links – it’s such a gorgeous story, though, that perhaps it is fitting to give it its own post. Ndakasi, an orphaned gorilla, dies in the arms of the ranger who saved her. (There is glory on this earth. We just don’t see it enough.)