Satirical fiction in newspaper form
Dorika Pumi, curator at The Park Museum, has produced a simple yet powerful piece entitled, Pet Project: Monikers of Domestication to honour Enforced Domestication Awareness Month in The Park.
Pumi used one whole museum wall at the west side of the main building, as the backdrop for the video.
“There is no voiceover or commentary,” Pumi emphasizes. “The video speaks for itself.”
“The Wall,” as Pumi refers to it, will be on display at the museum until the end of the year.
Six Park Animals were arrested and are currently in jail awaiting a bail hearing after being charged with stripespotting within the boundaries of The Park.
In a short statement released at noon today, Inspector Maurice Addax of the Specist and Hate Crimes Unit (SHCU) confirmed the arrest early this morning.
“On the morning of June 25, Park Police attended at the site of the Ancient Oak Tree and found six Animals, residents of The Park, engaged in the illegal activity of stripespotting. Following confirmation of these activities, Police arrested all six Animals. The Animals are now at the Park Jail awaiting the assessment of bail charges and the setting of dates for trial,” the statement said.
Legal experts told The Mammalian Daily that the arrested Animals are likely to be waiting in jail for some time.
“They picked a bad day to be arrested, particularly on those charges,” said Delwyn Terrier, founding partner of Terrier, Terrier, Wolfhound and Shepherd.
Terrier was referring to the fact that Mr. Justice Augustus Dindon of The Park’s Superior Court is presently hearing opening arguments on the first day of the trial of SplotchWatch owner and operator Raimundo Zorro. In April, Zorro was charged with two counts of “inciting hate” and one count of “inciting discord” by means of operating the SplotchWatch web site, which names Animals who have had their spots or stripes removed.
“I don’t think there’ll be much sympathy for those Animals today, not if they were caught stripespotting,” Terrier said.
The act of stripespotting, which is a form of bullying, involves pointing to and calling out striped Animals as they pass by. The calling out is usually done in a threatening voice. Although some Animals still consider it a harmless prank or even a valid pastime, the act itself was outlawed eleven years ago and, according to Terrier, those few who still practise it can expect harsh punishment from the courts.
Speaking out for the first time since his return to The Park in early January, Chef Tab Tricolore recounted the details surrounding his December disappearance in a radio interview yesterday. He also spoke candidly about the obvious changes in his behaviour.
“I was forcibly taken from The Park and neutered,” he told host Yannis Tavros on his Toro Talk Radio show yesterday afternoon.
“I was trapped by Humans while sourcing food for Klo [Tricolore’s fine dining establishment]. Of course, I didn’t know it was a trap. I sniffed something incredible and thought I have to get some of that for tonight’s service. It was something I’d never tasted before. It had a different aroma from anything I’d ever smelled. I think it was smoked. As soon as I’d ingested a piece of it, I heard a door slam behind me and I realized what had happened,” he said.
Tavros, who sounded visibly shaken by the revelation, asked Tricolore if he had tried to escape.
“There was no escaping,” Tricolore replied. “But I did manage to draw blood from a number of them.”
He said he was put in the back of a van and realized he was only one of many who’d been caught that morning.
“We all had the same story. It was terrifying. At that moment, I realized it didn’t matter who you were or what you’d accomplished. Humans see us as all the same.”
Tricolore said that, along with the others, he was taken to a clinic where he was anaesthetized and then neutered.
“I woke up in this prison cell. It was horrible. Some of the hair was missing from my arm and my whole body ached. I was parched, but there was no water bowl. A few hours later, they brought me some food and water…something awful that came out of a can. I don’t know what it was. But I was so hungry, I ate it. I spent a couple of days there, never going out, never seeing the light of day. There were at least a dozen of us. We were in the middle of planning an escape when three Humans came in with the biggest cage I’ve ever seen. They herded us into it and then back into the van and dropped us off just outside The Park.”
The renowned chef, restaurateur, and award-winning author said he “struggled every day with the reality of what happened to him” until he finally came to a “place of acceptance.”
“It’s done,” he said, matter-of-factly. “There’s nothing I can do to undo it. I could, as some have suggested, plot my revenge. But these Humans are dangerous and there’s no guarantee I could survive an attempt at revenge,” he said.
Instead, Tricolore said he’d rather use his new and hard-won knowledge to educate Park Animals. And that’s the reason he chose to speak out during Enforced Domestication Awareness Month.
“I’m a different Cat now. There’s no getting away from that. Some say I’m ‘mellow,’ but that’s just a euphemism. I’m just not the same. But I think I can do some good and that’s what I’m trying to do. If I can prevent this from happening to one other Cat, it will have been worth it,” he said.
MAMMALIAN DAILY EXCLUSIVE
The effects of enforced domestication are often felt several generations down the road, say experts who participated in a panel discussion yesterday at the University of West Terrier’s Medical College.
Entitled “Acquired Misery: The Effects of Enforced Domestication on the Offspring of Survivors,” the event marked the first time that such a group has gathered to share their knowledge of the after-effects of enforced domestication and the toll it takes on Animal families.
Panel members included psychotherapist Dr. Berthilidis Strix, author of Shaken But Not Stirred and co-author of The Silent Cluck, Dr. Gudrun L. Gibbon, a Park psychotherapist and staff member at the Extinction Anxiety Clinic, psychoanalyst Dr. Elinore E. Owl, UWT researcher Dr. Chloris Cougar, known for her work in the area of Feline Unipolar Depressive Disorder (FUDD), and Dr. Simon Crow, director of Avian Medicine at UWT. The panel also included representatives of The Park’s many aid groups, including Home to Roost, Runaway Rovers, and the Tortoise Immigrant Aid and Mentor Programme.
The panel’s honorary guest participant was novelist Hercule Parrot, winner of a 2012 Chitter Radio Literary Award and part-time mentor at BirdBrains, The Park’s first Avian mentoring programme. A domestication survivor himself, Parrot gave a very moving speech at the concluding ceremonies at last year’s Enforced Domestication Awareness Month.
Yesterday’s full-day discussion centred on the psychological and physical effects of enforced domestication on the offspring of survivors.
“This is an area that has rarely been discussed openly, but we see the effects of it every day,” said Angus Deerhound, a representative of Runaway Rovers, an aid group that assists formerly domestic Canines.
“These Canines make a life for themselves in The Park and then they respond to messages that they should reproduce…[they are told] that they can make better lives for their offspring and, somehow, right a wrong. But they can’t do that without our help. They end up just making another wrong,” Deerhound said.
Statistics presented by the UWT’s Medical College, the Park Hospital for the Afflicted and Infirm, and the Extinction Anxiety Clinic underscored the need for a plan of action to help those born to domestication survivors.
“When more than half of these Animals end up with some kind of anxiety disorder, some of them with debilitating ones, we cannot afford to look the other way. We must recognize the gravity of the situation,” said Inez Gallina, president of Home to Roost.
The 2017 Archons are expected to announce funding for a Barkettes museum before the end of this month, a source close to the governing body has told The Mammalian Daily.
According to the source, Chief Archon Klarissa Kuttu put the project to a vote last week and it was unanimously passed. Funding for the museum is expected to be spread out over time and allocated in the next five budgets. Thisbe and the Barkettes were not consulted by the Archons, but they were made aware of the impending vote.
In October of 2015, the Canine Music Association teamed up with the Park Historical Society to push for a museum to honour the beloved group, who just this month donated a new song to the cause of enforced domestication awareness. CMA president R.F. Aarrf and Park Historical Society president Clark Cascanueces called it a “travesty” that the Barkettes had not been honoured properly in The Park.
“The Barkettes broke the species barrier when it came to music and they paved the way for the success of all other Park musicians. We are long overdue in honouring them by keeping their accomplishments alive for the next generations,” Cascanueces said when he and Aarrf launched a petition to pressure the Archons to establish the museum.
Currently, the Barkettes retain possession of most of their memorabilia, but in April of 2015, they donated the original sheet music and some early drafts of the lyrics of “Stuffed Dogs Don’t Shed” to The Park Museum.
Life may be about to change dramatically for Animals who call The Park their home.
According to a confidential report obtained by The Mammalian Daily, there is a plan afoot to alter the public behaviour of resident Animals.
According to the report, the Archons are considering a plan to change some of The Park’s core laws, namely those that pertain to public comportment and guarantee Animals the right to “behave as they do naturally, according to their own species and land of origin.”
The plan, which goes by the code name, ParkPerfect, lists 15 laws that, in the language of the report’s authors, “require modernization to bring them in line with current belief systems and ways of life.”
In addition to modifying Animals’ bathing behaviour, the Archons are considering enacting or modifying laws that pertain to public acts of self-expression and food gathering and consumption.
No time frame for the changes was mentioned in the report.
In their continuing effort to foster interspecial harmony in The Park, the 2013 Archons have instituted a series of public gatherings that will take place every Sunday at the Ancient, Open-Air Theatre.
“Stereotype Sundays,” as they will be called, are the latest in a long list of administrative efforts to promote the kind of peaceful coexistence among species that Jor hoped to achieve when he established modern zoocracy in The Park 31 years ago.
But, as the Archons admitted this morning when they announced this latest venture, “almost every success in this area has been hard-won. Worthwhile…and a major step forward, but hard-won.”
This new idea, which was unanimously approved by the Archons in April, differs in its approach in that it is meant “to encourage Animals to be open about what they think and how they feel,” said Chief Archon Dewi Rhinoceros this morning.
“Free is the operative word,” she emphasized.
“We want all Animals to feel free to bring something to these gatherings. And by that, I mean, to bring their beliefs, their ideas about other species. We want to hear what they think, what their ancestors taught them. We are going to try not to judge, but to educate…to illuminate. After all, we are a community of thousands of different species…there is bound to be an abundance of misinformation,” she said.
The gatherings will begin on Sunday, June 23. For the first event, the Archons have requested that those attending bring a “stereotype” of their own species to the forum.
“An idea, a picture, a quotation…anything…as long as it will spark discussion. That is all we need,” said the Rhinoceros.
The 5 Ws of it all:
Who: All Park Animals, including citizens, residents, regular visitors, and their friends and families
What: “Stereotype Sundays”
When: Every Sunday, 1:00 pm until 6:00 pm
Where: Ancient, Open-Air Theatre
Why: To foster harmony among all the species that live in The Park by dispelling myths and understanding others’ beliefs
The gossip site headsNtales says it plans to publish a set of photos of 2017 Archon Nakato Bonobo that show her in a compromising position with Humans.
In a post dated today, the site claimed to have in its possession fourteen photos of Bonobo sleeping in a bed between two adult Humans. Co-founder Hortencia Guacamayo said she believes the incident in the photos took place in late April in a home outside The Park.
While the site has not yet identified the Humans in the photos, Guacamayo says there is no doubt about who is sleeping between them.
“It was completely by accident that we were able to get these photos and the reason we waited so long to disclose them is that we didn’t believe it, ourselves, at first. But there is no doubt in our minds that the Animal sleeping between these two Humans is, in fact, 2017 Archon Nakato Bonobo,” Guacamayo told The Mammalian Daily.
Guacamayo said that she’d contacted Bonobo about the photos, but had received no reply. headsNtales intends to publish the photos this month.
If the photos are of Bonobo, it would be particularly embarrassing for her if they were published in June. Bonobo has been an outspoken supporter of Enforced Domestication Awareness Month (EDAM) and a vocal champion of the many refugee organizations in The Park. She has even been called “anti-Human,” which she has said she regards as a compliment.
As of the publication of this article, there has been no reaction from Chief Archon Klarissa Kuttu or any of Bonobo’s colleagues in the 2017 government.
Who would have thought we’d ever see the “softer side” of The Cynics?
Not this critic, who has followed the group’s career for the better part of a decade.
But, last night, at their third ever pop-up event (which the group prefers to call a “pouncer”), the four Canines displayed their unique brand of emotion and sincerity and it literally stunned the already surprised audience.
The short concert, which was held in front of The Park’s new gastropub, The Pound (of which The Cynics are part-owners), included a few of their hits, such as “walk don’t walk,” “eat your food,” and “S.I.T.” Once those were out of the way, Luther “Droop” Dachshund, the group’s founder and lead singer, took the microphone to speak.
“We’ve been fighting enforced domestication for years, but there hasn’t been much movement on the issue until recently,” he said. “We want to do as much as we can to further awareness of domestication’s harsh reality and, to that end, we are donating all proceeds from our newest song to the cause of enforced domestication awareness.”
The reaction was predictably loud and after the cheers had died down, Dachshund introduced the last item on the day’s song list, a beautiful piece with a haunting melody and the saddest lyrics the Cynics have ever sung.
“Diamond in the Ruff” tells a familiar story: a Dog who’s lost his way and finds himself the chattel of a Human family, shuttled from Dog show to Dog show, wearing a diamond in his ruff. Fortunately, the Cynics have added a bit of hope at the end, in the form of an open door. We are left to assume the song’s main character runs for his life and, hopefully, finds a better one, perhaps in The Park.
As the concert ended, Dachshund confirmed the song’s official release date (June 28th) and thanked the crowd. With that, the group exited the scene, leaving a trail of tears and some hope for the future.
DEVELOPING STORY
Park Police have been called in to search for the nest of Alvin Tinamou.
The publisher of The Avian Messenger and organizer of May’s annual Month Without Metaphor reported the nest missing early this afternoon.
“He said he walked off for a few minutes and when he returned, the nest and its eggs were gone,” said a spokesAnimal for the police.
Tinamou positioned the nest close to the offices of The Avian Messenger, a friend told The Mammalian Daily. The three blue eggs inside belonged to his last mate, Adela, who left about a week ago. Park Police said they intend to question her but she is not a suspect at the moment.
According to his friend, Tinamou is “distraught” and blames himself.
“This was the last thing he ever thought would happen. He’s questioning himself and his abilities as a mate. And he doesn’t know if Adela will ever speak to him again,” the friend said.
According to the police report, the nest went missing at approximately one o’clock this afternoon. Any Animal who was in the vicinity or who saw anything suspicious should call police immediately.
