Dear CNN,

I’m sick of all the primary coverage. I implore you: More rat on cat on dog.

Sincerely,

Amanda Hess

I thought we, as a civilization, were going downhill. Smoking bans are spreading across the country. New York is outlawing trans fat. Chicago (and soon California) put the kibosh on foie gras. Apparently it’s cruel. (Too bad it’s oh so delicious.) But there is light at the end of the smokeless, healthy, svelte tunnel. Chicago has overturned its two-year-old foie gras ban. Does this mark a new bellwether? Does my future involve eating a plate of foie gras, followed by a doughnut fried in trans fat, and finished off with a cigarette over a cocktail? One can only hope.

Inventions! We all use them. And Erik Roberts of Bowie, Maryland has another one for us: The Animal Sounds Whistle.

Part hunting call, part See ‘n Say, the Animal Sounds Whistle means to turn regular old human breath into the mighty calls, terrifying growls, and subtle moos of the animal kingdom. Roberts’ lightbulb moment came seven years ago, while visiting the National Zoo with his two young sons. “They were trying to call the animals. Kids do it all the time, they try to make the animal noises,” says Roberts. But when Roberts, 37, checked the gift shop for a whistle that would aid in their animal calls, he discovered that no such thing existed—yet.

Years later, “I saw this commercial on TV after a court show for InventHelp, that had a caveman beating on a wheel,” says Roberts. “It comes on after Oprah and Judge Mathis.” He called them immediately. After suggesting a couple other inventions—a child beeper and a video game system that used a built-in camera to superimpose a child’s image on the screen—Roberts finally hit on a patent-worthy invention with the Animal Sounds Whistle. “I’ve always been thinking about this one, the whistle,” says Roberts. “It’s been on the backburner for the longest time.”

Truck driver by trade, inventor by nature, Roberts says he’s always had a lot of ideas. “I mean, ever since I was like 17 or 18, I’ve just been coming up with things,” says Roberts. “And everything I came up with, a year or two later, I’d see it come out.”

But with patent secured, now it’s Roberts who will be disappointing other would-be animal sound whistlers. Roberts will exhibit his invention at InventHelp’s invention trade show, INPEX, to be held in Pittsburgh this June. He hopes to sell the idea to a distributer—maybe it will even end up in the zoo. “That’s my dream,” says Roberts.

Roberts says he’s pretty confident he’ll find some takers: “You know, because animals have been around forever, it’s not going to just be some fad.”

WaPo’s Juliet Eilperin clocks in today with an update on the court case over giving the polar bear a little bureaucratic love under the Endangered Species Act. Like many such cases, this one is gummed up in federal court, with environmental groups pushing the Bush administration to make a decision on the Endangered designation. The Interior Department missed its own deadline on this matter back in early January.

It all boils down to ice. That is the PB’s habitat, and that’s what’s melting everywhere. The Bushies don’t wanna act because protecting the habitat would require it to make the sacrifices it hasn’t wanted to make ever since it kicked Kyoto to the curb.

But I swear–who in good conscience can stand around while another big animal fades from the landscape. Last time I checked, there were, like, 3,000 tigers left in the entire world, a fact I’m not going to verify right now. Elephants are in trouble. Grizzlies have serious issues.

Large vertebrates! We all love them. Kids, especially, adore them. Though I am a professional journalist and unbiased and objective on all issues, I say, List the PB. I’ll gladly install solar panels, cut back on auto trips, use corn in more creative ways, eat cereal out of the same, uncleaned bowl every morning, make greater use of the hand dryer, refrain from liposuction, or do what’s necessary to stave off a planet consisting solely of humans and squirrels.

The black squirrel has spent the last century colonizing the District of Columbia—even earning its own Adams Morgan hotspot—and it’s made its rounds around the rest of the United States, too. Now, the black squirrel has popped up in England, and according to British tabloid the Daily Mail, it’s “left the grey squirrel population in fear.”

The black squirrel has done well in the District since its 1906 import from Canada. Despite its conspicuous coat, some scientists have hypothesized that the American black squirrel has survived through its dark fur’s superior solar retention. Cute.

But the Daily Mail has another explanation for the black squirrel’s newfound prominence in the UK: It cites a scientific study that claims the black squirrel is “testosterone-charged,” showing “higher levels of the male sex hormone testosterone—making them more aggressive and more successful.”

Throughout, the Daily Mail’s often-inflammatory tone turns this fluffy tale (get it!?) into a screed against the “aggressive” and “mutant” black squirrel—and it ends up reading like strange racial satire. The piece details the grey squirrel’s history of “driving its red cousin into the remotest corners of the country,” implies anti-miscegenation fears in noting that “female greys appear to prefer them [black squirrels] as mates,” and describes the black squirrel’s survival success as a “rampage.” It doesn’t help that throughout, the black squirrels are referred to simply as “blacks.”

Members of NFL fan sites are among those mourning Stephan Miller, the Hollywood animal trainer who died after he was attacked by a celebrity grizzly bear on Monday.

Turns out Miller was devoted to the Redskins and went by the screen name Punishment on warpathinsiders.com, a fan site he founded.

Finally: The New York Times’ Andy Newman gets to the bottom of Pope Benedict XVI’s relationship to kitties. This overdue link-up between the pope and crazy cat people is a nice change of pace from weeks of papal coverage that has too often glanced over the ridiculous side of pope and pope-related activity.

Meow:

Benedict’s kindness toward the strays of Rome is already the stuff of Vatican legend. His house in Germany, its garden guarded by a cat statue, was filled with cats when Benedict lived there full time before he was posted to the Vatican in 1982.

The article then delves into a close reading of Joseph and Chico: The Life of Pope Benedict XVI as Told By a Cat, the first (but please, not the last) biography of a pope written from a cat’s perspective. It’s also a true story, Vatican approved.

But with the pope’s schedule filled with human concerns, whither the felines? A phone interview with Chico’s owner reveals the stunning truth. According to Rupert Hofbauer, “Chico, now 10, misses his old friend, who has not been back to visit since becoming pope.”

Photo of “Pope” courtesy of swanksalot

A couple weeks ago, my roommate and I enlisted your help in ridding our basement apartment of the mouse that had taken up residence there (many thanks for your advice, archived here, here, and here).

Our mouse has since disappeared, so, thanks! And since we’ve detected no rotting corpse smell emanating from beneath our dishwasher, we’d like to think that the little critter’s just moved on, very much alive, from our subterranean dwelling. Hey, I don’t want to live in my basement anymore, either.

But living underground isn’t all rodent-free bliss. Introducing a new installment in our Basement Livin’ series:

Upstairs Neighbors, What Is Going On Up There?

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Last time in Managing Your Rodent Infestation, we planted new snap traps, baited, once again, with delicious peanut butter. A while back, we switched to smooth butter after our mouse simply ate the chunks out of the chunky, leaving only the butter behind. Picky, picky!

Since setting our new traps, my roommate and I haven’t heard a squeak out of our as-yet-unnamed mouse. The traps are set, the peanut butter is creamy, but the mouse isn’t licking. What, wee rodent? Lost your appetite, have you? Or perhaps, sensing your impending doom at the hands of our advanced weaponry, you have retreated from our basement in order to seek your scrumptious protein-rich handouts elsewhere?

The mouse isn’t talking. But the public is! As it turns out, everybody’s a mouse extermination critic!

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Last time in Managing Your Rodent Infestation, my roommate and I identified that we had a problem, sampled several implements of torture, and asked for help. I think that’s pretty good progress. But despite our three-pronged assault (poison! stick! snap!) , with efforts concentrated largely in the Kitchen Theatre, the yet-to-be-named mouse is still using our basement as a giant mouse playground/poop depository. It grows bolder: Earlier this week, my roommate heard it investigating her closet. I’m afraid it may be time to extend our efforts to the bedrooms.

For now, though, we’ve decided to stay the course in the kitchen: this time, with upgraded snap traps. Yesterday, we replaced these:

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Sports Illustrated has come into my life. My inlaws got some deal where they could send it to us for half of a penny or something like that, which is about what it’s worth in our household. The only sport we (OK, my husband) follow is hockey and this is pretty much accomplished by actually watching the games. So SI ends up in the recycling, unread, week after week.

Until this week of course! The swimsuit issue is here! The swimsuit issue is here! Only the swimsuit top on the cover? It’s beads. Strategically placed beads. Which my cat finds irresistably yummy. Yes, that’s her, licking the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. If only the magazine was this entertaining the rest of the year…

Last night, I awoke in the darkness to the sound of a low buzzing near my ear. A woman who was temporarily sleeping in my apartment was attempting to reach me by telephone. Though I questioned why she had called me from such close proximity, I answered.

“Hello,” I said.

“I found a mouse,” the woman informed me. As we were both stationed within the apartment, I could hear her voice clearly without the aid of the telephone. Still, we did not abandon the mechanism. “It ran under a pile of clothes,” she added.

Months earlier, my landlord spoke of a similar class of rodents that had invaded his home in search of shelter and food scraps. He informed me that though he had once been pestered by the vermin, he and his housemates had since been able to systematically locate, isolate, and delete the creatures. A housemate explained one particularly cruel game they had played: “All I had to do was corner the mouse into the sink,” she said. “Then, I took hold of the spray faucet and shot the mouse until it had drowned.”

I did not relate this to the woman over the telephone. “What should I do?” she asked me.

Several years ago, while living in the Los Santos province of Panama, I found the helix of my ear caught between the jaws of a large and brazen rat. I had been sleeping soundly at the time–lost in the midst of a strange, hallucinatory dream, the specifics of which I do not recall–when the rat approached, squeaked violently, and bit. After the modest flow of blood from my head confirmed that I was not, in fact, still hallucinating, I located a man outside my domicile for help. The man offered me illicit drugs, an oversized conch shell with which to conceal a gaping, rat-friendly hole in my bedroom wall, and an outdoor hammock as a temporary bed. I accepted two of his offers.

Back in my apartment, I considered the mouse. I had no drugs, nor shells; my sole hammock was folded deep within my closet, out of use during the cool winter months.

“Sleep on the futon,” I suggested to the woman. “I will call my landlord in the morning.”

Jonathan Yardley wrote a piece for yesterday’s Outlook section about putting pets to sleep, revealing that he’s escorted seven pets to their final reward.

I wonder how the hell he managed to do that around here.

I own two cats, one at least 11 years old, another 6 1/2. Both were strays my wife and I found in New York, and both have had medical problems. Our older cat had a cancerous growth on her lower lip. At the time we were both childless and employed and didn’t think twice about shelling out for the TWO operations this condition occasioned. She was the very picture of health afterward, even though she developed the soul-crushing habit of pooping outside the litter box once our first child was born, a habit that has so far eluded a solution despite much veterinary advice (separate litter boxes, any number of different litters, etc.).

Now we have two kids, and I have to admit that when the older cat came upstairs with her head cocked permanently to one side and wouldn’t eat, my first thoughts were celebratory rather than sympathetic. Could this be it? I wondered. I know, I know, but I have picked up A LOT of cat poop.

Apparently the only treatment for cats that may have had a cerebrovascular accident is a night of observation, followed by a visit to a veterinary neurosurgeon for an MRI. A. Veterinary. Neurosurgeon. The first step of this process would have set us back about $1,000. The neurosurgeon’s services would be priced separately. I asked if there were anything else—hint, hint—we could do. We walked outta there with some medication they didn’t think would work. It worked.

Recently our younger cat developed a urinary tract blockage. We rushed him from our vet to the all-night veterinary hospital, which wanted to keep him overnight for observation, then possibly perform surgery to—I’m not making this up—remove his penis and create a hole he could pee through for the rest of his unhappy life. This time euthanasia might have been on the table had the cat not, uh, unblocked himself when we got there. (”We’d be having a very different conversation,” our vet told us.) We walked out with some medication that they didn’t think would work. It worked. So did my debit card: $400.

What struck me both times was the extraordinary (and extraordinarily expensive) measures to which the vets went to as option A. Look, I’m sympathetic to the concept of keeping your beloved companions around, and I’m glad both my cats are still with us. OK, I’m only glad the younger one is still with us, but it’s just that when I was a kid, I remember talking my Dad and our vet OUT of euthanizing a cat of ours that had a broken leg. “Doesn’t cost nothing to bring a shovel to the ground,” one of my uncles observed, watching kitty drag around the resulting cast. Do vets ever offer euthanasia instead of referrals to veterinary specialists? Or do you have to go to less fancy veterinary hospitals for that? I gotta say, the patrons of vets’ offices in Alexandria, at least, seem strikingly similar to the people I see at Whole Foods. Is it possible that death is doled out less stingily to pets in less desirable Zip codes?

How low can it go?

Wall Street sent Six Flags (SIX) closer to the floor. Stock in Dan Snyder’s amusement company fell to $1.70 per share during Friday’s trading, its lowest level in at least 10 years.

For perspective, the same stock traded at $11.91 in January 2006, shortly after Snyder installed a new board of directors and put himself atop it.

Two-legged folks aren’t the only ones taking a beating from Six Flags.

Last week, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, the company’s Vallejo, Calif., outpost, was named the worst park for elephants in the entire country.

The honor was bestowed by In Defense of Animals, a San Rafael-based animal rights group, for offenses including cruel treatment, lack of exercise, and lack of proper medical care.

An IDA spokesperson also said Six Flags elephants are routinely “hit, hurt, prodded, poked and beaten” with a device called a bull hook, which is a metal hook on the end of a long pole.

The group has asked the federal government to investigate the same Six Flags park because one of the giraffes there died in a fire last fall.

Yuk.

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

There is a steaming pound of meat on my desk and I don’t know what to do with it.

Okay, that’s not true. On my desk, there is actually a ticket stub from yesterday’s New Year’s Day matinee match-up between the Washington Capitals and the Eastern Conference-leading Ottawa Senators, whom the Caps beat by the score of 6-3. (Last Saturday, the Capitals beat the Senators in Ottawa by the score of 8-6; the lowly Caps are 3-0 against the Sens so far this season.) Should I make the trip to any nearby Austin Grill, however, I would be able to trade this now-seemingly worthless ticket stub for one free pound of chicken wings, while supplies last. (What, is Austin Grill going to run out of wings?) It’s all part of a game-day promotion; any time the Caps score six or more goals in a home game, attendees can get a free pound of wings at Austin Grill the following day with a valid ticket stub.

Had the game been just two days earlier, I would have happily devoured that pound of quivering chicken flesh the following afternoon. I would have done so without bothering to wipe the sauce from my glistening mouth until I was completely finished; perhaps, for good measure, I would have thrown the bony remains at my co-workers while letting out a bellowing belch to signify my dominant place at the top of the food chain. Unfortunately, less than a week ago I was told by my doctor that I need to get my cholesterol down—and, as a result, I made a New Year’s resolution to return to a pesco-vegetarian diet. (I’m pretty sure that, in some other language, “pesco” means “not a.”) So chicken—and, by extension, chicken wings (be they of a free nature or not)—is out.

It’s been real, meat.