• Cats, chickens serve a purpose • Please help with cemetery cleanup • Maze a real scream • Rates should fall Cats, chickens serve a purpose Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! I feel moved to chime in on the
• Cats, chickens serve a purpose • Please help with cemetery cleanup • Maze a real scream • Rates should fall
Cats, chickens serve a purpose
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! I feel moved to chime in on the chicken, feral cat, pigeon controversy. I am a clinical social worker and a vocal proponent for the benefits of pet therapies, having founded Healing Horses Kauai and teaming up with horses, dogs, cats, fish and birds of all kinds to assist me in caring for the children and adults in my practice.
All our animals have been placed on God’s green Earth for a purpose; the chickens eat bugs, centipedes, worms, cockroaches; the cats eat mice, rats, and might I add, baby chicks; the pigeons clean up after us, the humans, picking at our leftover garbage.
If these animals did not exist, I guarantee we, the humans, would be pretty unhappy with the end result.
Nonetheless, I do agree that the feral cat population has grown to the point where the cats themselves are suffering. I have watched our underfunded humane society become overwhelmed with unwanted pets, leaving them no choice but to euthanize the unadoptable. This sad reality has been exacerbated by the unfortunate attitude of landlords prohibiting pets in their rentals.
I believe that our ohana can pull together to end the feral cat problem. It is our kuleana to care for our land, and all the life that can thrive on it. Our property owners can change this tide of events by allowing one pet per rental. If our Kauai families each adopt one cat, neuter and care for it for its lifetime, our feral cat problem would be over.
Lastly, the statement that you can gauge a culture’s maturity by how they treat their animals holds true here. Horses tied on ropes, dogs living on chains or in small kennels, chickens murdered for sport and gambling purposes — all unacceptable!
Each human keeping their animals under such conditions needs to spend a week living on a chain or housed in a kennel or tied to a coop to truly experience their pet’s reality.
Please, Kauai — let’s pull together to improve the lives of our animals and guaranteed, they will improve our lives tenfold.
Karin Stoll, Lihue
Please help with cemetery cleanup
I want to thank The Garden Island for its coverage of the McBryde Sugar Plantation Cemetery cleanup this past Saturday.
Thirteen locals showed up and were helped for about an hour by three visitors. My thanks to our hardest worker, Mr. Marvin Yamauchi.
About half of an acre was cleared — leaving two more acres to be cleared.
We have another cleanup scheduled for this Saturday at 9 a.m. and will need at least four times as many volunteers to finish clearing the cemetery. Please bring chainsaws, hedge trimmers, weed eaters with thick string, sickles, gloves and a lawn chair.
It is going to take all of us working together to resurrect this historic cemetery. A&B will be providing refreshments: bottled water, sodas, sandwiches, cookies and chips.
To quote Dennis Fujimoto: “(We need to) come forward to help restore the final resting place of people who built this island with their blood, sweat and tears.”
Debrah Davis, Eleele
Maze a real scream
On behalf of our family of faith here at Kauai Christian Fellowship, we would like to thank the thousands of people who turned out to get lost in the corn maze.
It brought us great joy to see families laugh (and occasionally scream together) as they tried to navigate miles of corn to safe passage of the exit. Our staff chuckled with delight to hear the excitement of children as they reported, “a zombie became my friend.” And it was nice to know that we were able to get so many families and teens away from their “screens” for an hour or so.
This event, and the four other mazes that preceded it, was only made possible by the generosity and hard work of Grove Farms Inc. and Pioneer Seed. We feel privileged to work alongside these organizations that wanted to partner with us in bringing this unique and wholesome activity to our island.
Besides our team of staff and volunteers who have given many hours of their time during the several weeks we were open, a special thanks goes to Guy at Service Rentals, Jim Pilgrim for his technical skills and our maze creators, Rob Stouffer and Kirby Kester.
Rick Bundschuh and Dain Spore, Kauai Christian Fellowship
Rates should fall
If it costs KIUC $340,000 per year to read 3,000 meters (per TGI 10/30/13), then theoretically, it must have cost $3.4 million per year to read all 30,000 meters prior to installing the “smart” meters.
Since it now only costs $340,000 to read the 3,000 meters, I wonder what happens to the other $3,060,000 per year.
With so many PV systems going in on the island, and so many KWHs being generated by the sun, has anyone without a PV system noticed a decrease in our rates?
Larry Arruda, Lihue
