Animals

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Buttercup

MEET BUTTERCUP! This little sweetie is Buttercup! At just 1 year old , she is very affectionate, loves to play and relishes attention. Buttercup would just love to come home with you! So hurry down and meet her today — we’re sure you’ll fall in love! This friendly feline comes spayed, microchipped and up to date on all her vaccines. Kent Animal Shelter is located at 2259 River Road in Calverton. For more information on Buttercup and other adoptable pets at Kent, please call 631-727-5731 or visit www.kentanimalshelter.com.

 

Tyson. Photo courtesy of Kent Animal Shelter

MEET TYSON! Tyson has arrived! He has traveled all the way from the Bahamas in search of a loving forever home that has a heart and house big enough for him! A 7-month-old Shepherd mix, Tyson promises to give you all the kisses and all the love you’ll ever need if you adopt him. This sweetheart gets along well with other dogs, is neutered, microchipped and up to date on vaccines; so hurry down and meet him today — you’re sure to fall in love. Kent Animal Shelter is located at 2259 River Road in Calverton. For more information on Tyson and other adoptable pets at Kent, please call 631-727-5731 or visit www.kentanimalshelter.com.

Update: Tyson has been adopted!

Supervisor Ed Romaine, right, announces the kick-off of the Brew to Moo program with the Port Jeff Brewing Company. Photo from Brookhaven Town

By Alex Petroski

The next time you kick back to enjoy a Party Boat IPA or Schooner Pale Ale from the Port Jeff Brewing Company, just know you’re enjoying the suds for the greater good.

Brookhaven Town announced a partnership last week between the brewery, located in Port Jefferson, the town and Double D Bar Ranch in Manorville, a haven for abused or unwanted farm animals.

A by-product of brewing beer is literally tons of spent grains, which until now in Brookhaven would be tossed in the trash and transported via municipal garbage trucks to the landfill. A new town program, called Brew to Moo, will see regular pickups of the spent grains from the Port Jeff Brewing Company that will then be transported to the Manorville ranch, which will then be mixed into feed for the livestock on the premises. The spent grains have reduced caloric content but provide protein and fiber that can supplement corn for feed, according to a press release from the town. The Port Jeff Brewing Company is just the second brewery in Suffolk County to climb onboard with the town initiative, joining BrickHouse Brewery in Patchogue, which agreed to participate in the arrangement earlier this month.

“The fact that the beneficiary in this program is rescue animals really ices the cake for us.”

— Mike Philbrick

“When the town approached us about the Brew to Moo program we were instantly on board,” said Mike Philbrick in an email, the brewer and operator of the Port Jeff establishment. “Since our opening in 2011, we have searched for a secondary use for our spent grains. Unfortunately, we have been throwing them out most of the time with the exception of a few folks who use them as fertilizer accelerants. In other parts of the country, where agriculture and livestock is more prevalent, a brewer doesn’t have any difficulty finding a farmer to source the spent grain to. Long Island’s limited amount of livestock and Suffolk’s large amount of breweries created an anomaly not really seen elsewhere.”

Rich Devoe, the operator of Double D Bar Ranch, which is a nonprofit organization, said during a phone interview the roughly 400 animals living at the ranch never go hungry, but having a steady source of food from the two breweries will allow the organization to spend its donations and money from his own pocket elsewhere, like on barn repairs and fencing. He called the arrangement “great” and “very important.”

“The fact that the beneficiary in this program is rescue animals really ices the cake for us,” Philbrick said. “You have a product that is otherwise waste, being transported by trucks on empty routes that are already on the road, feeding animals that really need it. That’s three wins, not just two. So naturally we wanted to be a part of it and we are happy to help [Supervisor Ed Romaine] make this program a success.”

Romaine (R) said the days prior to the Brew to Moo program’s inception were a missed opportunity to carry out a personal mantra he has adopted during his years at the helm of the town.

“We’re interested in reduce, recycle, reuse,” he said in a phone interview. “This may be something that would be a model project for other towns to do. I think you’ll see in the future, we’re looking at other industries that have waste that we can reuse for allied industries. We’re looking at that every single day because we want to be on the cutting edge of waste management.”

Romaine added the town plans to reach out to more breweries and ranches to gauge interest and try to get others to participate in the sustainably sound project.

Deer hunting via long bow has been a controversial topic in Huntington Town since first permitted in September 2015. Stock photo

By Sara-Megan Walsh

Deer hunters may need to memorize a new set of regulations in the Town of Huntington before the start of the 2017 hunting season.

Huntington Town Board has scheduled a public hearing for its Sept. 19 meeting on a series of proposed changes affecting the use of longbows for deer hunting.

“Over the past few years we’ve learned some things that have gone on during deer hunting season and want to make it safer for our residents,” Councilwoman Tracey Edwards (D) said.

The proposed changes take aim at restricting the use of a longbow under the town’s firearms regulations, not directly regulating deer hunting which falls under the oversight of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Edwards, sponsor of the legislation, said the changes include requiring all hunters to provide written notification to the Town’s Department of Public Safety and the police department prior to hunting and expanding the definition of what’s considered a dwelling.

“If [hunters] are going to use the longbow we want to ensure that there’s written notification to the police department as we’ve had instances of people walking around the neighborhood, armed, and no one knows who they are,” Edwards said.

The proposed code changes will also expand the definition of a “dwelling”  to include “farm building or farm structures actually occupied or used, school building, school playground, public structure, or occupied factory or church” to prevent hunters from firing at deer within 150 feet of these buildings unless they are the property owner.

“Hunting is already regulated by the DEC so the town … is outside of their scope.”

— Michael Tessitore

If the proposed amendments are passed, anyone violating the regulations would face up to a $500 fine per day and prosecution by the town attorney’s office.

The  public hearing is set to take place mere days before the start of the 2017 deer hunting season, which runs from Oct. 1 to Jan. 31 under NYSDEC regulations. Town spokesman A.J. Carter said the town board will have the option to immediately enact the proposed code changes Sept. 19 if there are no substantial objections.

The board’s decision to permit bow hunting in September 2015 remains a contentious issue among local residents, particularly in the areas of Eatons Neck and Asharoken, which routinely deal with deer overpopulation.

“We’ve been having big issues with hunting with it since it began in Asharoken and Eatons Neck,” said Nadine Dumser, an Asharoken Village resident.

Dumser, who also owns property in Eatons Neck, said she has dealt with hunters who did not properly notify her as a homeowner they were active in the area but also entered her yard without permission.

“We would call police and complain about hunters being on our property,” she said. “When they finally do come, they are pretty powerless to do anything.”

Others believe that the Town’s efforts to further regulate longbow use oversteps its legal authority.

Michael Tessitore, founder of the nonprofit  Hunters for Deer, said the more than 85 hunters who are members of his organization will continue to follow the DEC regulations.

“Hunting is already regulated by the DEC so the town, by taking these extra steps to regulate hunting, is outside of their scope,” Tessitore said. “I believe they are going to open themselves up to litigation.”

Tessitore, who is a licensed nuisance wildlife control operator, said he helps manage more than 100 private properties including areas in Eatons Neck, Fort Salonga, and Smithtown to make agreements between hunters and homeowners who support hunting as a form a deer population management. He’s also worked with  Southampton Town to design a deer population management plan.

“I support deer hunting as a management tool,” Tessitore said. “It’s the only proven effective management tool for the overpopulation of deer.”

Artist Thomas Doncourt restores flamingo mud nests in the Marine Museum’s Hall of Fishes.
Creating an undersea mural, conserving flamingos

Small photos of a vintage, 8-by-10-foot painting of the ocean floor are taped to Sean Murtha’s easel. He glances at the photos, dips his brush onto his palette and applies paint to a stand of tall sea grass. He is creating a new version of the faded, original 1924 painting — lying nearby on the marble floor of the Hall of Fishes on the first floor of the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum’s Marine Museum in Centerport.

Just steps away from Murtha, Thomas Doncourt, a foreground artist, lies inside a small exhibition case on a slender platform he built. The device allows him to work in the diorama that contains a group of preserved tropical shore birds without damaging the surrounding foliage and other objects. Using steel mesh, plaster, sand and paint, he is reconstructing a section of beach that, after nearly a century, has crumbled, leaving a hole in the scene.

These two accomplished artists, along with Stephanie Gress, the Vanderbilt’s director of curatorial affairs, and her staff, are engaged in the Marine Collections Conservation Project.

Artist Sean Murtha creates a new undersea background painting for a fish exhibition case.

Funded by a $135,000 grant from The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, the project has been underway for two years. The latest phase of work began last winter, when five flamingos and a dozen fish from the Marine Museum spent the winter in New Jersey at the studio of taxidermist George Dante. Dante and his colleagues at Wildlife Preservations cleaned decades of dust from the specimens, touched up fins and feathers, and returned them recently to their home at the Vanderbilt.

During the spring and summer, Murtha and Doncourt completed weeks of crucial repair and restoration on the background paintings and vegetation in the exhibition and diorama cases where the creatures live.

In the flamingo diorama, Doncourt repaired and repainted the birds’ pedestal-shaped mud nests after Murtha had finished the cleaning and spot restoration of the curved background painting that depicts the birds’ homes in inlets along the coast of Cuba.

Sean Murtha place fish on completed mural.

The painting was created in the early 1920s by William Belanske. Later, William K. Vanderbilt II hired Belanske, who had been working for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), to be his artist on the 1931-1932 global ocean journey of his ship, the Alva. Belanske later became the resident artist and first curator of the Vanderbilt Museum.

Murtha, Doncourt and Dante, like Belanske, are former members of the American Museum of Natural History staff, and the latest generation of the century-long Vanderbilt-AMNH collaboration. Over the past few years, the three also completed extensive work on the wild-animal dioramas in the museum’s Stoll Wing, funded by significant grants from the Roy M. Speer Foundation. That tradition began with Belanske in the early 1920s and continued with the artists and scientists Vanderbilt hired in the late 1920s to create his nine-diorama Habitat Room that depicts animal life from several continents. The centerpiece of the room is a 32-foot whale shark, the world’s largest taxidermied fish, caught off Fire Island in 1935.

The tradition resumed in the late 20th century, when AMNH artists were hired to restore the deteriorating habitat, which had been closed from 1996 to 2009. The project was made possible by a federal Save America’s Treasures grant, through the National Parks Service.

The finished project.

Murtha restored the flamingo diorama painting by carefully painting over the numerous water streaks. “The case is located on a wall of the building,” he said. “The painting was created on the surface of the plaster wall itself. The heat and outside moisture leached through the wall from the outside, then through the surface of the painting, which caused streaking over the decades.”

Murtha’s work makes the nearly century-old painting look bright and vibrant. “Now, with the streaks covered, there is no distraction from the birds and the marsh,” he said. “Plus, the flamingos, which are now re-installed, cover most of the streaks I was unable to paint over.”

Murtha also created a new version of the 8-by-10-foot, 1924 canvas background painting in the exhibit case titled “Fish from the Atlantic Ocean, the Madeira Islands and Bermuda.” The case contains about six dozen fish and nearly three dozen examples of coral lying on the sand of the “ocean floor” at the bottom of the case. The fish and coral were removed temporarily for cleaning and repairs, and their locations marked on the new canvas before Murtha began painting.

Doncourt also restored tropical foliage and rebuilt the crumbling beach in the diorama “Shore Group — Man O’War Birds and Pelicans (Lesser Sandpipers).” “The beach was originally created by placing a layer of sand over nongalvanized steel screen, which has rusted over the years and crumbled,” Doncourt said. “I rebuilt it with galvanized steel lath, which won’t rust.”

After removing the sand and other nearby materials, he cut heavier galvanized mesh to repair the hole. “I covered the mesh with a plaster bandage, painted it a base color, and then covered it with the sand and other foreground materials,” he said.

When the birds were back in place, Doncourt repaired the foreground and repainted it in two tones. “I went in with a brush on a long stick to add a third, darker color,” he said. “I have an extendable ‘claw’ like grandma used to get cans off a high shelf, and used it to place dried leaves and twigs on the ground around the birds.”

Another expert who worked to conserve the flamingos was Marco Antonio Olcha, a skilled taxidermist and conservator from Cuba and a consultant to Dante. Olcha, who works for the National Center for Conservation, Restoration and Museology in Havana, said he gently vacuumed the flamingo feathers to remove decades of dust.

“I also used a brush, and finally a special conservator’s paper, moistened with a water-based soap solution, to complete the gentle process of cleaning the feathers,” Olcha said. “Then I repainted the flamingos’ beaks, legs, and feet.”

The earlier phases of the Marine Collections Conservation Project involved extensive conservation and preservation work by Vanderbilt curators on nearly 1,500 of the museum’s fluid-preserved ocean specimens.

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum is located at 180 Little Neck Road, Centerport. Through Sept. 3, the museum will be open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. The Marine Museum is currently closed for further renovations but the Habitat Room and all other exhibits are open. For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

All photos courtesy of Vanderbilt Museum

By Matthew Kearns, DVM

Marijuana has now become much more of a mainstay in the United States. Starting in 1937 marijuana was illegal throughout the United States. This lasted until the Compassionate Use Act was passed in California in 1996. There are now eight states (and the District of Columbia) that legally allow the use of recreational marijuana and 20 states that allow the use of medical marijuana.

There are also advertisements on the internet that sell a variety of cannabis products for pets that include capsules, oils, butters, tinctures, infused chews and dog treats. Now, before you start asking your veterinarian to become Dr. “Cheech and Chong” or Dr. “Method Man,” I must print this disclaimer: The law does not approve the use of medical marijuana for pets in any of these 50 United States or the District of Columbia.

The chemical substances derived from marijuana products are called cannabinoids. There are actually over 80 cannabinoids derived from the Cannabis plant but, only two are of real importance for our purposes: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). THC is found in the marijuana plant, while CBD is found in hemp. THC has a psychotropic effect (what gets people “high”) but CBD is the nonpsychotropic compound found primarily in hemp.

What, historically, are the uses of marijuana and hemp? Human studies have shown that marijuana helps with glaucoma, nausea related to chemotherapy, neuropathy (nerve associated pain) and spasticity. There are also anecdotal studies that marijuana products can help with seizures. Both THC-based and CBD-based cannabinoids have an effect on cognition, immunity, inflammation, preventing cell death and cancer, pain, emotional memory, nausea and appetite stimulation. There are studies that state that cannabinoids have potent antibacterial effects against MERSA.

There are (as mentioned above) a large number of these products available without a prescription (many of them hemp based). In order to ship these products without a prescription, they have to contain less than 1 percent of CBD and 0.3 percent of THC. Unfortunately, this has opened the door to some unscrupulous entrepreneurs. Many of the hemp-based products sold on the internet are derived from industrial-grade hemp and only used for fiber.

If one remembers from previous articles on supplements that the supplement industry was able to get Congress to pass the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act in 1994. This act, in a nutshell, stated that no supplement (human or veterinary) can claim to diagnose, prevent, mitigate, treat or cure a particular disease. However, general claims that link a particular supplement to the prevention of particular diseases are allowed.

There are many benefits to the use of cannabis products. Unfortunately, medical marijuana is unavailable for pets, and “let the buyer beware” when choosing cannabis products. I’ll keep you updated to any changes as I find out.

Dr. Kearns practices veterinary medicine from his Port Jefferson office and is pictured with his son Matthew and his dog Jasmine.

MEET YARMOUTH!

Say hello to Yarmouth, a handsome 8-month-old Shepherd mix who hails from the Bahamas. Sure the weather was nice, but he would much rather have a loving home of his own. Yarmouth is sweet, playful and very affectionate. So hurry down and meet him today! Yarmouth comes neutered, microchipped and up to date on all his vaccines. Kent Animal Shelter is located at 2259 River Road in Calverton. For more information on Yarmouth and other adoptable pets at Kent, please call 631-727-5731 or visit www.kentanimalshelter.com.

Update: Yarmouth has been adopted!

The Grateful Paw Cat Shelter is located on Deposit Road in East Northport. File photo by Victoria Espinoza

By Sara-Megan Walsh

More than a dozen Grateful Paw Cat Shelter volunteers and residents attended the Huntington Town Board meeting Aug. 15 to demand action: Now that the IRS has reinstated its 501(c)(3) charitable status, renew the organization’s contract to care for homeless cats.

In April, the town served the cat shelter, run by the League of Animal Protection of Huntington, with a 90-day notice to evacuate its Deposit Road establishment after learning the organization had lost its not-for-profit status in 2015 but never notified the town. Huntington Attorney Cindy Mangano said the town became aware of this breach of contractual agreement when drawing up a new document, as the previous agreement expired in December 2016.

“You were angry with us, but waiting doesn’t hurt us…it hurts our cats and any future cats we take in.”

— Linda Waslin

At the June 13 town board meeting, members voted to give LAP an extension until Nov. 30 to regain its not-for-profit status.

“I’d like to point out to you that this was not intentional as was insinuated by a few. It was a total mistake. It was an oversight,” said LAP volunteer Donna Fitzhugh. “The bottom line is it was not intentional,and the IRS actions proved it. We never lied to you and to be treated in the manner our organization was, was pretty coldhearted.”

Debbie Larkin, president of LAP, said she was thankful for the actions of the organization’s attorney and accountant in getting the not-for-profit status reinstated within five weeks and retroactively applied to the date it was lost.

“With the assistance of any incoming donations, our volunteers continue to take care of the dumps, the owner turn-ins, the bottle babies, free [trap-and-neuter] certificates and the adopt-out animals in our care,” she said.

Larkin and several other LAP members called on the town board to immediately approve an executive order on the contractual agreement previously drawn up this spring, which would extend the organization’s operation of the cat shelter past Nov. 30.

“You were angry with us, but waiting doesn’t hurt us,” said Linda Waslin, a long-time volunteer of the shelter. “It hurts our cats and any future cats we take in.”

Supervisor Frank Petrone (D) said the Town of Huntington cannot renew the nonprofit’s contract as it previously issued a Request For Proposals in the spring, which allowed other organizations to submit proposals to run the shelter. The town board is legally bound to continue the process that’s already in motion or it fears it could run the risk of another interested party taking them into court over the matter, according town spokesperson A.J. Carter.

“With the assistance of any incoming donations, our volunteers continue to take care of the dumps, the owner turn-ins, the bottle babies, free [trap-and-neuter] certificates and the adopt-out animals in our care.”

— Debbie Larkin

The Huntington town attorney’s office is currently reviewing the previous RFP, according to Petrone, and a new one should be issued in October. Petrone encouraged LAP to submit its proposal.

“If you put forth a proposal, and others put forth proposals, whatever’s the best proposal for the residents of Huntington will be selected. If you have all this experience, you will do that,” Petrone said.

Little Animal Shelter was among those who had previously submitted a proposal to take over the town’s cat shelter earlier this spring, according to Dawn Lam.

All proposals received on an RFP will be evaluated by a committee and the town attorney’s office. Unlike bids, which must be awarded to the lowest bidder, Carter said, the committee which reviews the bids can consider subjective criteria such as an organization’s experience. LAP will need to make the case for why it should continue to operate Grateful Paw.

Huntington Town officials said the new contract that is being offered to run the cat shelter wouldn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2018. Should LAP feel that it is unable or unwilling to run the shelter past the Nov. 30 extension, the town has already stated it is willing to step in and temporarily provide services to ensure the safety and best interests of the cats, Carter said.

Above, a portrait of Leonard A. Zierden, age 4, March 1900, with his Jack Russell Terrier (Star Studio, Johnsonburg, PA) will be on view at The LIM through Dec. 31.

By Jill Webb

As the dog days of summer are brought in with the August heat, The Long Island Museum in Stony Brook will also put dogs in the spotlight. Starting Aug. 11, the Art Museum on the hill will feature an exhibit titled Dog Days: Portraits of Man’s Best Friend. The exhibit’s collection will focus on works from the 1840s to the 1960s featuring dogs.

Ernest BJ Zierden, age 7, March 1900, with his Jack Russell Terrier (JYL Photo Studio, Johnsonburg, PA)

“This gallery tends to be devoted to changing exhibits drawn from our permanent collection,” Assistant Curator Jonathan Olly said of the room currently preparing for the Dog Days exhibit. The exhibit will open tomorrow, Aug. 11, and run through Dec. 31.

Beneath the gallery resides the vault storing the museum’s art collection. “It’s kind of a continuing challenge of coming up with new ways to look at the collection and put together themes,” Olly said.

Olly got the idea to draw together works highlighting dogs after gaining inspiration from a cat-centric exhibit at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. Realizing the fact that Long Islanders love their dogs led him to curate the Dog Days exhibit. “When most people were living on a farm, farms had dogs because they were pets but they’re also practical. They could catch pests, they could guard the homestead from intruders,” he said.

There are about 20 major works in the gallery, from watercolor and oil painting to photographs. There will also be a display case featuring smaller objects such as dog show tags, ribbons from the North Shore Kennel Club in St. James, postcards that have advertising containing dogs, ornaments that were pinned on horse wagons leather straps and even a pair of slippers with dog’s faces embroidered on them.

William Sidney Mount’s Esqimaux Dog, 1859

Famous artists William Sidney Mount and William Moore Davis have pieces on display. Mount was a 19th-century genre and portrait painter who lived in Setauket and Stony Brook. The museum has the largest collection of his works. Davis, a friend of Mount’s, resided in Port Jefferson and is known for his landscape paintings.

“They are the two artists that are most strongly represented in the show. That’s because they were local people and they both depicted scenes of regular people on Long Island at work, at play, at rest — and often dogs were part of the scene,” Olly said.

The interesting part of the gallery is that in most of the works the dogs are not the most prominent part of the piece. Often, they were just another component in the scene, which draws a comparison to how they were (and are) just another part of Long Islander’s lives.

“A lot of the things that we’re working with in here tend to be things that have come into the collection not because they’re dog-related, but the fact they have dogs is almost accidental,” Olly said.

This is the case in Alexander Kruse’s 1969 painting “Bicycle Parking Fire Island,” which is the most current piece in the exhibit. “He didn’t paint it because of the dog, but he just happened to include a dog,” Olly said.

One of the most interesting pieces featured, according to Olly, is a painting illustrating a scene of the Meadow Brook Hounds. Fox hunting was a popular sport for Long Island’s elite in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There were three main fox hunting organizations on Long Island during this time: The Meadow Brook Hounds (1881-1971), Suffolk Hounds (1902-1942) and Smithtown Hunt (1900-present).

The painting of the Meadow Brook Hounds is particularly interesting because it’s one of the few where the dogs are a major part of the scene. The painting is accompanied by a label that not only names important figures portrayed in the piece, like Theodore Roosevelt, but also credits the dog’s names. “The dogs are actually getting equal billing with the people,” Olly said.

In conjunction with the Dog Days exhibition, The Long Island Museum will present its third Summer Thursday event on Aug. 17 from 6 to 8 p.m. with a concert by the Cuomo Family Band. Visitors are encouraged to pack a picnic dinner and bring chairs or blankets. Admission to the grounds and exhibit is free.

Shelter dogs from Last Chance Animal Rescue will be available for adoption and The Middle Country Public Library’s Mutt Club, which partners with animal rescue organizations, will be collecting donations for shelter pets including pet food, toys, treats, collars, cat litter, toys, cleaning supplies and peanut butter.

Dog Days: Portraits of Man’s Best Friend is a chance for North Shore residents to see the beloved pets in an artistic light. Stop by the gallery to see just how man’s best friend has been captured over the past centuries on Long Island.

The Long Island Museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate, is located at 1200 Route 25A in Stony Brook. Regular museum hours are Thursday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. For more information, call 631-751-0066 or visit www.longislandmuseum.org.

Bruce. Photo courtesy of Kent Animal Shelter

MEET BRUCE! Big Bruce is the man! This handsome guy knows it all … he can sit, lay down and even roll over! A 3-year-old Shepherd mix who made it here all the way from the Cayman Islands, he is now at Kent Animal Shelter ready to find his forever home. Could that be with you? Bruce comes neutered, microchipped and up to date on all his vaccines. Kent Animal Shelter is located at 2259 River Road in Calverton. For more information on Bruce and other adoptable pets at Kent, please call 631-727-5731 or visit www.kentanimalshelter.com.