posted on March 4, 2003 05:16:31 AM new
Fri February 28, 2003 09:22 AM ET
MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) — A pack of frenzied dogs attacked six parked cars in the Bavarian capital, leaving a trail of damaged vehicles in their wake and causing panic among residents woken by the disturbances.
Police said on Friday the pre-dawn attack on Thursday had caused extensive damage to the cars in the leafy Nymphenburg district. A spokeswoman said the dogs were still on the loose despite a police search.
Residents said they saw boxer-like dogs biting and snapping at the cars at around 4:30 a.m. Bumpers, mudflaps and number plates were all torn off by the canine onslaught. Police also found teeth marks on the body work and hubcaps of the car, which were covered in blood and saliva from the dogs.
One man said the dogs had chewed off the bumper of his wife's Volkswagen bus and also caused damage to the wheel bearing. He told the Abendzeitung newspaper the damage to his car alone had totaled some $1,100.
"It sounded like the cars were being broken into," said Guenther Sailler, 63, a local goldsmith. "It was incredible. One of them leaped again and again with unbelievable force into the side of a car and bit into it like a lunatic."
"Normally dogs aren't interested in cars," Eva Voelkl, Munich police spokeswoman, said. "But if we see any behaving in that way, we'll be sure to get them."
posted on March 4, 2003 05:19:59 AM new
And a reaction:
"It's about time the dogs told humanity how callous they are. We humans have lost touch.
The dogs were boxer types, just the type of dog likely to get run over by arrogant, rushed, oblivious or aggressive drivers. We humans forget 2, 000 or more pounds of steel hurtling along as 55 or more mph is a WEAPON, especially to an animal just looking to get home, feed their young, or to mate.
Who gave us the "right" to make death trails all over the earth? Do oh so "civilized" developers and state highway commissions give two squats about the animal communities they divide with dangerous highways of death? Do they care once fertile lands home to so many precious creatures is destroyed made into cheaply made $400,000 houses, polluting commercial parks, congested malls that no animal except maybe pigeons, rats and roaches could hope to live? Hell no. They just see profit. Animals live their lives without profit, and also without all our human #*!@, like "civilization." They don't suffer and toil at jobs everyday to feed the wealthy more wealth for a pittance because of this inanity called profit — pushed as a priority over life itself, as if the market is the dictates of gawd himself. No, the animals suffer because we have incredible power and equally incredible ignorance, shortsightedness arrogance, hubris and greed we are in denial about.
I myself cry over roadkills a lot. I send their spirits my love always. If I can stop and get out without my ass becoming roadkill too, and it is possible to even move the animal, I remove their precious broken body from the road, so it will not be squashed over and over by ignorant humans who think animals have no spirits. I drag the bodies to the grass out of respect. The animal was once a being, a unique precious being that died not for life, but died because of human self absorbed anthrocentic #*!@, stupidity and ignorance. If it's a cat I cry big time, my heart skips a beat, and I call all the feline gods and goddesses to make sure the cat is loved and protected in the next world.
Why do I do this? Because I can sense the spiritual pain in animals. I can't explain it "scientifically." Sometimes I don't bother going outdoors because the psychic pain of the animals outside is too much to bear. Go ahead, say I am nuts. But why would dogs attack cars? Are THEY nuts for attacking the weapon that killed their young, their friends or packmates? We humans get so appalled when a dog mauls one of our kind (often because a human bred the dog and taught him to attack to protect HIM and his property). We are so offended when a shark bites a leg of a swimmer, unaware all these people in the water are scaring off the food (fish) they need to live.
We destroy their homes, water/food supplies, prey, nests, kill their friends, families with reckless selfish impunity because they dare cross in the path of our work, our money, our shopping, our car/weapons we are led to think we need in this unnatural civilization that is killing us slowly and killing off the animals faster whom we forgot how to love like our own?
There are times when I have seen the shape of a cat's body, alongside the road and I stop. I have tears dripping everywhere. I haven't seen what the cat's body looks like yet but often somewhere near the corpse, as I get out of the car, and walk towards it I see what looks like a live cat, watching me walk over. As I approach the corpse I notice the live looking cat, and the corpse on the road are IDENTICAL cats. Sometimes I have asked the live-looking cat to come, because I want to comfort him, and he takes a step or two forward and the image of the live looking cat fades ... literally before my eyes. The first time I saw this I thought it was a hallucination. But It has happened too many times to think this now. And others have seen it too. As I pick up the body and as I move it to safety, I send my love to the cat's spirit. We have elaborate ceremonies for our dead, and so do Animals. Some dogs will howl with despair if a pack mate or other species of friend dies. Lions sometimes gingerly and affectionately clean the faces of the animals they have eaten for food their way of respect. Cats sometimes get depressed and won't eat when their fellows die. Some tear in their eyes and will not be comforted. They are obviously grieving.
To me I see cars as profit-making tools made into a "need." They are necessary because Civilization has made the land denuded of life. Our comminutes are isolative, our relatives move apart from each other in search of jobs or affordable rent, land is privatized and over-developed, and the natural sources of wild food are destroyed or only available in supermarkets for money.
Cars are artificially MADE necessary by the way we let ourselves be told how to live. And we live the way we do because of suburban sprawl, wage slavery, consumerism, overblown privatization and a lack of investment in public transportation by the wealthy we kowtow to way too much . So we believe must drive and assume we must obey the boss(lord and master) demands or else because we are not respecting life we stress out and do not watch what our car-weapons trample over. (Maybe to the German dogs we are like 2-year-old kids running with scissors). The lack of respect humans have for non-human species and the human species (manifest destiny) has deafened us to the wisdom in otherness. Our exclusively human pursuits like work, profit, power and beliefs has made us as a species overweening, competitive brats.
We forgot we are SHARING a planet with animal roommates with an intelligence we are too stupid or insecure to fathom is real. But it IS real. We are so full of self-righteous hubris we #*!@ ourselves about the damage we do to animal comminutes, the way we ruin their lives and relationships because we forgot how to relate to THEM as equals in an intricate system of relationships. We will go on, recklessly I fear, until the animals say no more exploitation, death, and use their teeth, hooves, claws and numbers to hit us where it hurts us most ... in our cars, our lazy asses, our arrogant "manifest destiny" beliefs and our wallets. And I must say as a species we deserve it. It is us who make animals extinct more than tornadoes. We have done so much damage.
What does it take to make tyrants in the world and the ignorant ones enabling them to listen, feel and care about the welfare of their supposed lessers? We can take a wise lesson from these magnificent dogs. One we should apply in our own lives.
I applaud the pack of wise dogs in Germany. They didn't attack living people, they simply disarmed their weapons of mass destruction.
I would hope that all animals learn this tactic, and stop us from destroying this world we cannot stop from destroying by ourselves — a world we all are supposed to share as equals. These dogs in my mind are heroes, saving us from our own destruction, and saving the world from us as well. Call me nuts all you want. Time will tell If I am nuts or if "civilized" humanity has gone crazy.
The Animals know things and if you listen without hubris you will see too."
posted on March 4, 2003 11:15:10 AM new
The story is fascinating and in earlier times such inexplicable behavior by animals would have most certainly been interpreted as an omen. But even if we set aside the somewhat more mystical, or what we perceive to be mystical, aspects of the commentary, the analogies to the inherent symbiotic dangers of the decimation of our natural resources is a practical warning.
I remember many years ago encountering a related analogy which I've thought about quite a bit lately. In describing a particular type of human behavior the author compared it to dogs chasing cars with the accompanying rhetorical question, "What would a dog do with a car if he ever caught it?" We may have an answer here. If we can distinguish which meaning of the word mad best relates to the dogs' behavior.
Which brings to mind the lyrics to Mad Dogs and Englishmen but that's an analogy for another day.
posted on March 5, 2003 02:30:15 PM new
what's happening in too many parts of the world is that human irresponsibility is translating into very strange behavior on the parts of animals.
Locally, it's not uncommon for deer to come into fairly densely settled neighborhoods and eat their way through several thousand dollars' worth of landscaping in a night. According to the local wildlife experts, all kinds of wildlife are becoming "urbanized" - they don't shy away from people because if they did, there would be nowhere for them to go.
We also have a serious problem with packs of feral cats, presumably bred from housepets whose owners were too lackadaisacal about getting them spayed. The cat population is starting to have a serious impact on the number of songbirds and wading birds we see in our area. As much as I value personal freedom, I'm coming to favor laws that at the least strongly encourage people to sterilize their pets.
posted on March 5, 2003 03:33:11 PM new
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it."
