HOLY SH*% - MONKEYPOX ! ! ! !

[southernman]

HOLY SH*% - MONKEYPOX ! ! ! !

sm
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[polokid]

Is everything ok???? Southernman, are you alright???? []
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[southernman]

hahahah yah just fine, no monkeypox here!

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[DH_tubinjoe]

hey i heard about this on the news...what exactly is it?




joe
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[lonehunter]

it's another reason why wild creatures shouldn't be turned into pets .

prarie dogs turned into pets cought a small pox type of virus from a african rat (also turned into a pet ) . the virus then was transfered to the pets owners .

when will people learn ?
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[davetclown]

excuse me, but all our pets were once wild animals, dogs, cats, birds, fish, even plants.

what was not observed was the quarenteen period of 30 to 60 days, plants even longer in some cases.

these are the reasons for out breaks.

this is a typical case of a business man making a buck with out following proceedures. (shame on him) he risked every one's helth and well being for a measly few thousand bucks.

yes the proper proceedures dose drive up the price, but them fools who whan exocit pets will pay the price.
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[lonehunter]

WOLVES , COYOTES , DINGOS , PUMAS .LEAPORDS ,TIGERS , ALIGATORS , RACOONS , KIMONO DRAGONS , RATTLE SNAKES , PRIMATES , BEARS , RATS , ECT , ECT, ECT ... THEY ALL HAVE QUALITYS THAT LIMIT THERE CAPACITY FOR DOMESTICATION . THEY REVERT TO THERE NATURAL INSTINTS , THAT IS THEY CAN GO WILD WITHOUT NOTICE , SOME CAN NEVER BE DOMESTICATED .

PEOPLE HAVE RISKED THERE LIVES AND THE LIVES OF THERE FAMILYS HAVING SUCH "PETS". UP HERE WE HEAR OF PEOPLE THAT LOOSE THE LIFE OF A NEWBORN CHILD OR HAVE THE CHILD PERMANETLY DISFIGURED AND REMOVED FROM THERE CUSTODY BECAUSE OF A RACOON THEY TRIED TO MAKE A HOUSE PET . SEVERAL FAMILYS EVERY YEAR , ALL THOES KIDS .

TRUE SOME SPECIES OF WILD ANIMALS HAVE EVOLVED INTO DOMESTIC CREATURES DURING THE EONS OF CO-DEPENDANCY . SOME ENDANDERED SPECIES WILL HAVE TO DEPEND ON MANS INTERVENTION FOR SURVIVAL OF THERE SPECIES . BUT TO OBTAIN AN "EXOTIC" SPECIES FOR A PET TO BOLSTER OUR OWN VANITY , WELL TO ME , IT JUST ISN'T RIGHT .

DOGS OR WOLVES , CATS OR LIONS , GOLDFISH OR PIRANNA , HAMSTERS OR PRARIE DOGS , CANARIES OR EAGLES , THERE IS A DIFFERENCE IN THERE EVELOTIONARY MAKE-UP . THATS WHY SOME ARE CLASSIFIED AS DOMESTIC , OTHERS ARE WILD .

EXOTIC ? THAT CLASSIFICATION IS A "LOOP-HOLE " THAT SUPPORTS POACHERS , SMUGGLERS , AND THE " I DON'T GIVE A #@&* AS LONG AS I MAKE A BUCK " BUSINESSMAN .

OUR OPPINIONS MAY DIFFER ON THIS SUBGECT , BUT I'DE RATHER CATCH A WILD GILL THAN PULL ONE OUT OF THE FISHTANK FOR DINNER .
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[lonehunter]

of course there is the positive side , the economy . Ranchers cash in on exotic game Economics, private land ownership help boost interest in foreign species



MOUNTAIN HOME -- The gavel had pounded and the auctioneer's rhythmic babble was rattling through the room, but item No. 73 was not cooperating.

In fact, he had launched a mighty rebellion. The full-grown bull wildebeest, 600 pounds of testosterone-fueled rage, had charged the moment he was released from his holding pen behind the YO Ranch auction barn. He sent several ranch hands climbing the fences for safety, then claimed the alleyway leading to the auction ring as his own. He rammed a steel gate, tore it off its hinges and was butting and kicking the walls just outside the ring as the auctioneer attempted to herald his entry.

Maybe he didn't like crowds. For most of the day he had been in close proximity to more than 1,100 other animals comprising 49 species, all destined for auction at the YO's 15th annual Spring Exotic Game Sale.

Some of his companions -- his cousins the antelope, the elk, the zebras and one lone camel -- were familiar, if foreign, figures. Far less common were the numerous, magnificently horned creatures with such colorful names as blesbok, gemsbok, greater kudu and Kafue lechwe.

All have one thing in common. They are part of the 230,000 or more exotic animals that now live in this state, creatures whose sheer numbers have made Texas home to more "exotics" than any other place in North America.

It's a phenomenon driven by several factors: economics (because a calf can bring a few hundred dollars in a depressed cattle market and a trophy elk can bring $4,500); private ownership of land, because, despite its size, Texas is almost entirely in the hands of individuals; and increasing land fragmentation, the division of rural land into smaller parcels that remain in rural use.

Alien creatures have been here for centuries. Since the early 1500s, when conquistadors rode their horses across the Rio Grande, man has been importing foreign species to Texas. The U.S. Army followed in 1856 with camels in Kerr County. In the past 20 years, however, Texans have accumulated so many animals -- 124 different species -- that biologists have begun referring to them as "Texotics," a group that now constitutes its own industry.

Within that group, eight primarily Asian species dominate. Axis, sika and fallow deer, blackbuck, nilgai, mouflon sheep, aoudad and wild boar make up more than 90 percent of the "Texotic" population. No one knows precisely how large that population is because about a third or more are loose, having escaped the confines of 7 1/2-foot game fences, and Texas Parks and Wildlife reports that exotics now outnumber native white-tailed deer in some Texas counties.

The Exotic Wildlife Association (EWA) in Kerrville, the trade group for the game ranchers, estimates that 208,000 exotic animals are concentrated in the Hill Country of the Edwards Plateau, the birthplace of exotic ranching in Texas. They can be found throughout the state, however. Texas Parks and Wildlife figures show more than 600 ranches in 194 of Texas' 254 counties have one or more exotic species.

They're expensive. A bongo, a large, spiral-horned African antelope with vertical white stripes marking its chestnut body, can bring $10,000 or more; a bull kudu, with its massive, wavy horns, sells for $6,000; a Pere David (a rare Chinese deer with giant antlers) can go as high as $4,000; zebras, $3,500; and the more common axis deer can sell for as much as $200 each.

The EWA estimates that exotics account for about a $130 million segment of the state's agriculture industry and that only about 10 percent of the industry is devoted to trophy hunting. The rest, they say, are on venison farms, where they are kept in lots and fed, or serve as decorative livestock in someone's pasture.

They've also spawned at least two cottage industries, both in Ingram. Woodbury's, one of the nation's largest taxidermy services, covers an entire city block and mounts about 2,500 exotics each year between November and January. Broken Arrow Ranch, the biggest U.S.-based supplier of venison in the country, sits less than 50 yards away, where it processes and ships venison all over the United States.

Supporters say it's an industry that puts lean meat on the table, provides game for hunters and subjects for photographers, keeps several endangered species extant and makes a hardscrabble ranch show a profit when the cattle market takes one of its periodic dips.

It has its dark side, however. Some biologists worry that the exotic industry, with its imports and exports, farming operations and animals kept in close quarters, can produce breeding grounds for diseases, such as brucellosis or -- worse -- the incurable chronic wasting disease that kills deer and elk.

Others wonder whether the imports, often more efficient grazers and more prolific than Texas white-tailed deer, could eventually grow to outnumber native species.

Finally, animal rights activists, often called "humaniacs" by game ranchers, contend that many exotic livestock are simply fodder for "canned hunts," in which semi-tame prey are imprisoned behind a game fence with no chance of escape.

The wildebeest didn't intend to remain imprisoned by anything. Having taken over the alley, he butted his way into the auction ring and backed YO Ranch game manager Eric White into a corner. White prudently dropped his stainless-steel shield and scaled the 10-foot fence that surrounded the enclosure.

The animal then circled the ring, periodically testing the welded steel mesh with his horns. He looked defiantly up at White, at the auctioneer and at the several hundred potential buyers who were seated a few feet outside the ring.

Those buyers had come from as far away as New Jersey and the West Coast, drawn by the country's most prestigious exotic auction in the motherland of exotic ranching. Just as the Hill Country is the seat of the exotics industry, the YO is its Mecca.

Sprawling over 60 square miles, the historic ranch has been home for half a century to the country's largest registered herd of Longhorns. Concurrently, it has housed scores of exotic species, including giraffes, camels, ostrich and more blackbuck antelope than can be found in that animal's native India.

The late Charles Schreiner III, the third in a succession of Schreiners to run the YO, took his cue from other Hill Country ranchers and the King Ranch in South Texas, where nilgai antelope were introduced in the 1930s.

And, while he may not have been the first, he took exotic ranching to a grander scale.

"My father liked to start things," said Charles Schreiner IV. Schreiner's father amassed the world's largest collection of handguns owned by Texas Rangers. He created summer camps and resort areas on his ranch and he made the name "YO" synonymous with exotics.

Straddling a bench in one of the rustic, cavernous ranch lodges built by his father, Schreiner sat framed by the dozens of mounted, horned heads that adorn the walls. Called simply "Four" by YO employees, he has recently assumed management of the ranch after the deaths of his father and brother, Louis, within the past two years.

"Dad was an only child. He had the money to indulge his interests and he loved being an entrepreneur," Schreiner said. "Course, once he started it and had it running, it became mundane and he went on to something else.

"But the introduction of the exotics to the YO was caused primarily by necessity. It was caused by the drought of the 1950s. We went seven years without rain and my father realized we were going to have to do something other than raise standard commercial cattle."

The Schreiners began with blackbuck (now so scarce in India that it is a protected species there), began offering commercial hunting and soon expanded to more than a dozen species.

By the 1960s other Hill Country ranchers had followed the YO's example by stocking exotics and allowing hunters to shoot them for a price. That practice took a leap in the 1980s until, today, more than 100 Texas ranches offer hunting.

At the same time, Texas was being fragmented. There are more than 144 million rural acres in Texas, but combined studies by state agencies and the Texas A&M Real Estate Center show those acres are rapidly being divided into smaller parcels among more owners.

Figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that 80 percent of Texas' farms and ranches are smaller than 500 acres and rest in the hands of absentee owners, too small for a self-sustaining commercial cattle or goat operation.

Most of the exotic ranches are larger, averaging close to 5,000 acres and most are concentrated in the Hill Country, where the rocky soil accommodates sheep and goats far better than cattle.

And exotics are worth far more than sheep or goats.

That's because hunters will pay to shoot them. Exotics also offer a hunting operation a distinct advantage over white-tail deer that can only be shot in season. Most of the exotics are both trophy animals and "livestock." The Texas Parks and Wildlife has authority over all native game, but none over exotics, on which open season runs year-round.

"No kill, no pay" proclaim the ads for dozens of hunting ranches in Texas. The phrase means the hunter pays only for what is shot, and it carries with it the assurance of success.

Not that it will be a cheap trip if the hunter misses. Some more expensive ranches charge as much as $1,500 for a weekend stay. Add to that the cost of the animal (as much as $5,000 for an exceptionally large elk) and the outing can easily rival an unlucky weekend in Las Vegas.

Most of that hunting is driven by the quest for trophies. The EWA bestows its own awards through a wholly owned subsidiary, Trophy Game Records of the World. TGR is one of the five major associations that bestow game trophies and it hands out hundreds of awards yearly.

Those awards paint a graphic picture of the burgeoning hunting industry here. Of the last five record-breaking water buffalo (an Indonesian native), one was shot in New Zealand and four came from Texas.

TGR differs from its closest and older counterpart, the Boone and Crockett club, in two major respects: Boone and Crockett, started by President Theodore Roosevelt, offers no trophies for animals not native to North America and none for any animal killed in an enclosure. TGR awards trophies for 89 different species, including native and exotics, and places no restrictions on where the trophy animal was killed, or, for that matter, how it was acquired.

All of which raises the ire of animal rights groups. Foremost among those groups in its opposition to Texas game ranches are the Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals, the group started by writer Cleveland Amory in 1967.

Both take issue with the "fair chase" concept promoted by the TGR and other hunting groups. The animal rights groups contend that nothing less than 1,000 acres in which the animal can escape is "fair." In addition, the fund lists Texas near the top of its "top 10 list" of states that offer what the fund calls the "cruelest canned hunting facilities in the U.S."

The practices those groups decry involve keeping game animals in small pastures, feeding them as domestic livestock and then allowing clients to shoot them in areas where they can't escape.

"They can call it `fair chase' if they choose, but there's nothing fair about shooting a half-tamed animal that can't get past a fence," said Heidi Prescott, national director of the fund.

That stance has created some strange bedfellows. The fund and humane society both promoted the Captive Exotic Animal Protection Act, legislation introduced by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., last year to prevent transport of exotics for hunting.

That bill did not pass. The animal rights groups were successful, however, in fostering legislation to end fenced game farming in Montana in 2000. Ironically, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, a hunters association in the Northwest, was their ally in that effort.

The elk foundation bases its opposition to exotics on fear of disease, primarily chronic wasting disease, commonly called CWD. That neurological disorder, similar and related to mad cow disease and scrapie (found in sheep), is always fatal. There is no cure and, to date, no "live" test for CWD, meaning only a dead animal can be tested.

CWD was first found more than 20 years ago and was long thought to be limited to wild deer and elk in northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming and southwestern Nebraska. Recently, however, it has been found in new areas of Colorado and Nebraska, as well as in wild deer in Illinois, New Mexico, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Saskatchewan.

No humans have contracted the disease and no animals on any game enclosures in Texas have had it. Still, not enough is known about its transmission, said Dr. Gary Wolfe, a Montana researcher who has spent years studying CWD.

Texas instituted a temporary ban on importation of deer and elk in March 2002. The agriculture commission lifted that ban last September, but requires that any imported animal come from a herd that has been monitored at least three years.

"Since you've had no cases, that's probably an appropriate measure," Wolfe said.

Whether the imports eventually will squeeze out native Texas deer is another question. A study by Texas Parks and Wildlife in 1982 determined that "axis, sika and fallow deer are severe competitors with white-tailed deer in the Edwards Plateau. They present a very real threat to ... this native species."

That threat has not thus far materialized, however. Other biologists, such as Dr. Elizabeth Cary Mungall, co-author of Exotics on the Range, the most extensive work on exotics in Texas, while not discounting that threat, don't necessarily dread it.

"It might shift the sort of species that dominates, but it hasn't yet," she said.

As for "fair chase" and sizes of enclosures, Mungall thinks size is relative.

"Most of the Texas pastures are anywhere from 100 to 1,000 acres," she said. "When I went to India a few years ago and saw the blackbuck in its native habitat, none of the pastures were anywhere near that large."

Charlie Seale, director of EWA, and others defend the hunting ranches, though they agree there are abuses, such as procuring animals specifically for a reserved hunt, then feeding them at the same location and same time repeatedly to ensure their presence.

"We've kicked people out for violations of the rules," Seale said. "Does it happen? Sure. And it will probably continue to happen, but we don't think you can legislate morality."

Mark Watson, a member of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission and owner of a hunting ranch, said a telltale sign can be seen in ads that promise too many species.

"When they list 15 or more, that's more than they could be keeping," said Watson. "It shows they're going to go out and buy it when a hunter makes a reservation."

The wildebeest's disposition appeared to make him a prime candidate for just such a "hunt." As he menacingly eyed White atop the fence, an intrepid ranch hand slipped through the ring, out of eyesight, and opened the doors leading to the alley.

As the animal turned and dashed out of the enclosure, the bidding already had begun: "$1,000, $1,200, $1,500, $2,000."

Finally, he sold for $2,200 -- not to a hunting lodge and not as a trophy, but to a breeding operation where he would be worth more as a sire for more wildebeests.

"The fact is, everything's driven by economics," Seale said.

"I don't want to make anybody hunt. I don't even want to encourage anybody to hunt if they don't want to. But part of the value of these animals derives from the fact that they're hunted.

"We like to point out the fact that we've kept some species from becoming extinct, like the blackbuck from India and the scimitar-horned oryx that's all but gone in its native Africa.

"And we have accomplished that. They even shipped blackbuck from the YO to India to replenish the herds.

"But, if they didn't have some value -- as a trophy animal, meat animal, or something -- they wouldn't be here. Without that, they're gone."
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