North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["loneroc" <loneroc@mwt.net>]

Hi all,

I find that my best keeping apples start to soften excessively by March.
(They aren't very good for eating now.) Although I try to open the
refrigerators that they're stored in daily, or more often, to prevent
ethylene build-up this doesn't seem sufficient.  Any ideas on removal of
ethylene from the fridge?  I was thinking maybe a couple pounds of activated
carbon/charcoal baked every few weeks to drive off collected gas.  Worth a
try or no?  Is there anything that works?

Steve Herje Lone Rock, WI


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lucky Pittman" <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>
To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 8:41 AM
Subject: [NAFEX] barn cats(long)


> There's been a discussion on barn cats on the small ruminant
> practitioners e-list that dovetails to some degree with the one
> that's been going on here on the NAFEX list.  Received this response
> over the weekend - thought it might be of interest to some of you
NAFEXers.
> Lucky
>
> >Again, I will apologize that this is a long post, as behavior and
> >domestication are special interests of mine.
> >
> >I would like to comment on the outdoor cats issue as well.  I
> >recognize that cats are predators and do at times take birds and at
> >times those birds are from struggling populations.  However, in my
> >experience, few people have the knowledge or desire to make an
> >indoor environment as enriched as a cat needs for optimum mental
> >health.  It is much like the zoos of yester-year, when wild cat
> >species were kept on boring, sterile cages.  Sure they lived longer
> >than their wild counterparts, but what kind of lives did they lead?
> >However now zoos undergo considerable design to provide more
> >enriched environments (decades back, prior to vet school, I worked a
> >summer with Hal Markowitz at the Portland zoo, who was an pioneer in
> >cognitive enrichment in the zoo setting). But the average cat owner
> >hasn't a clue how to evaluate and design an indoor environment for the
> >behavioral needs of a cat.
> >
> >I think we also need to examine the issue of the prey that cats are
> >hunting and why humans domesticated cats in the first place.  In the
> >late 1990s, I lived for two years in Japan and got an English
> >language newspaper.  There I was reading about the serious crop
> >failure that was occurring in Vietnam, which was so severe that it
> >was feared it would cause widespread famine. The situation all came
> >back, it turns out, to cats.  What happened was the
> >economy improved over the border in China, causing a proliferation
> >of specialty "Little Tiger Restaurants" in the border cities
> >surrounding Vietnam and in Saigon.  As the name implies, these
> >restaurants served up cooked domestic cat, which was considered a
> >delicacy.  This caused an economic draw for getting cats to supply
> >the restaurants, and a number of people started poaching the cats
> >from farm villages in Vietnam.  As the cats
> >disappeared, the rat population exploded, moving out into the farms
> >fields and consuming all the staple crops.  I don't remember the
> >exact numbers, but it was billions of tons of human food being
> >lost.  I remember reading one story about a man who used a car
> >battery to electrify his rice paddy every night to kill thousands of
> >rats--woe to anyone else who accidentally stumbled off the path.  At
> >the time I left Japan and was no longer getting newspapers that ran
> >the story, the government had closed down all the Little Tiger
> >restaurants and were actively campaigning to the farmers to protect
> >their cats as a way of protecting their fields and food supply.
> >
> >The reason why humans, in this case the ancient Egyptians,
> >domesticated cats to begin with was because of their  hunting
> >prowess and their ability to protect our food supply from rodents
> >and pest species of small birds.  The domestication of the dog occurred
while
> >humans were still primarily hunter-gatherers.  Domestication of cats
> >followed the domestication of grains and plant agriculture and
> >storage and cats proved their value as small, effective predators
> >that could live on the edges of human civilization. Cats then
> >followed humanity everywhere we went, were of value to us because of
> >their hunting prowess.  They accompanied humans on sailing ships,
> >keeping our stores of food safe from rodents. Wherever there is
> >human agriculture, there cats have proved their value.  I think that
> >the current anti-cat movement fails to recognize the historical
> >perspective and fails to recognize that the value we humans  derive
> >from cats' hunting skills continues today.  We in our comfortable
> >domesticity haven't experienced the horseman of the Apocalypse that
> >was Pestilence.  But what if those millions of wildlife (mainly
> >rodents) killed now by outdoor and feral cats were instead allowed
> >to live and, as rodent populations are able to do, explosively
> >reproduce?  We are still creating and maintaining the habitats in
> >which rodents will flourish.  After all, if the feral cats didn't
> >have those rodents to hunt, there would not be a feral cat
> >population to begin with...the few people feeding these populations
> >are not maintaining them--the rodent population living in the
> >habitats we people have created is what is maintaining the feral cat
> >population.
> >
> >Cats have gone, hand in paw, along with human agriculture for
> >thousands of years, which is why many farmers tolerate, even
> >encourage, semi-feral populations of barn cats.
> >
> >I choose to have several outdoor cats in my barn because I prefer
> >that to trapping and poisoning rodents.  A decade ago we had a woman
> >killed by Hantavirus in my community, so I know that this is in my
> >resident deer mouse population. Trapping rodents puts me at
> >increased risk and poisoning them puts raptors at risk.  Leaving
> >them to reproduce and run amok in my barn and pastures is not a good
> >sustainable agricultural practice. There are snakes in my pastures,
> >but being cold blooded, they aren't much help in the winter and
> >don't consume prey species as much as a warm blooded species with
> >higher energy demands.  I have, on occasions had skunks also living
> >in the barn, also eating the rodent population.  But I prefer the
> >cats to the skunks because the skunks kill my laying hens and the
> >cats do not.  My cats do kill the occasional bird--but in keeping
> >with the adage that common things happen commonly, the birds killed
> >are generally species that are in overabundance like starlings.  I
> >*don't* put out a bird feeder, which I think may be a
> >detriment to wild bird populations by creating static, abnormally
> >concentrated wild bird feeding locations that brings birds into
> >close proximity and puts them at a higher risk of  social stress,
> >disease transmission and predatory risk (from more than just
> >cats).   (I wonder how many of the people who damn the cats also
> >create these abnormal feeding stations without questioning whether
> >they are potentially creating risk for the bird populations)?
> >
> >Most of the prey that are killed by cats are not any more "wild"
> >than the cats themselves.  They are species of animals who have
> >either invaded into new territories because of their ability to
> >exploit the niches we create (like the Norway rat), were
> >deliberately introduced (like the starling, which is no more native
> >than the cats) or are  native populations that are living at higher
> >densities because of the habitat we have created (like the deer mouse).
> >
> >Rare populations are also impacted by the hunting skills of the
> >cats, but not to the degree that these potentially damaging pest
> >species are impacted. I think we need to find another way to protect
> >the rare species from all the things that are challenging them (like
> >habitat destruction, competition from pest species, loss of nesting
> >habitat, pollution and pesticides) and leave the cats doing what the
> >cats have been doing the last 5 centuries....using their spectacular
> >hunting prowess to protect our food supply.  And for those of us who
> >also make our living from agriculture, we need to recognize that the
> >health of the outdoor cat population is related to the health and
> >sustainability of agriculture and extend our hand at keeping them
> >healthy and able to do their jobs (an example would be on-farm
> >vaccination and worming when we are there seeing to the
> >ruminants).  Part of our jobs when we go on a farm, could be to see
> >what the farmer needs to keep his outdoor cat population stable and
> >healthy.  As the Toxo case pointed out, a rapidly turning over
> >population with a lot of kittens and influx of new cats is not as
> >beneficial as a stable population.  We could teach farmers how to
> >better care for their barn cats. That is a niche we could explore.
> >
> >I think that those of us in agriculture need to appreciate what cats
> >do for agriculture and add our perspective to the outdoor cat debate.
> >
> >I also don't think you can always buy the argument that outdoor cats
> >necessarily live short, miserable lives.  They do certainly have
> >more challenges to their safety, like coyotes and cars.  But I have
> >a 20 year old retired barn cat who started living in my house a
> >while back, after having been born and raised and spending over a
> >decade as my primary barn cat.  She is mearowing to be fed, so I'd
> >better stop writing now.......
> >
> >Again I apologize for the length of this post.  It is a topic about
> >which I have given a lot of thought and I don't see this perspective
> >addressed much in the debates about this.
> >
> >Janice
> >
> >Janice Willard, DVM, MS
> >Moscow, ID
> >
> >
> >>Peri;
> >>Well said; you make some good points, and I'm sure we all value
wildlife.
> >>I have no doubt that in certain situations, especially where habitat
loss
> >>has already threatened certain populations, cats may have an impact. It
> >>behooves us all to try to minimze our ecologic footprint and manage our
> >>own habitat responsibly. We do see plenty of what our cats kill and
bring
> >>home (or barf up), and birds are a very small part. The cats do a lot to
> >>keep mice, squirrels and chipmunks out of the houses as well as the
barns.
> >>I stand corrected on the issue of older cats potentially shedding toxo,
as
> >>well, but still a resident adult population is likely to be healthier
than
> >>a transient one.
>
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