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Sit, Stay, READ!
October 4, 2011
Halloween is a favorite holiday of mine - there's candy, costumes, ghost stories, candy, great decorations, and, of course, candy. Animals also play a big part in adding a scary, wild touch to the holiday - but when we look at the animals most closely related to Halloween are they really scary? They actually tend to be exceptionally beneficial to humans and the environment . . . but, that being said, I don't know that the campaign to make the Grizzly Bear the new face of Halloween is going to catch on. Let the parade of cats, bats, owls and wolves continue to send shivers up our collective spine!
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Halloween Animal Origins – Cats, Bats, Owls, and Wolves
(and why you shouldn’t be afraid of them!)
Halloween, All-Hallows Eve, Samhain – the holiday that marks the onset of Autumn, the point when the veil between living and dead is at its thinnest. Nights are getting longer and colder, and leaves are turning to red and gold. It is the time for carving pumpkins and dressing as something terrifying to scare away the ghosts and ghouls. Symbols, instantly recognizable 
for their part in the celebration, can be seen everywhere at this time of year – the black cat with its overly arched back, the bat flapping its papery wings and bared fangs, the owl’s huge unblinking eyes and haunting screech, and, of course, the wolf’s eerie howl against the backdrop of a full moon. Animals play a major role in the scary holiday, but consider which animals we’ve chosen as the touchstones of the season. They really aren’t scary, and they certainly aren’t dangerous – in fact, they are necessary to keep other, some arguably much more harmful, creatures in check. So why don’t we use more terrifying animals, say the rattlesnake, the crocodile or even the grizzly bear? All of these are potentially more damaging to our health than any of the critters traditionally associated with Halloween. The answer is rooted in mythology, cultural legacy and history.
Arguably the most used and most associated animal symbol of Halloween is the black cat. Our history with cats has been a bit of a rollercoaster. We’ve worshiped them as gods, and we’ve persecuted them as demons. For almost 10,000 years we’ve had a relationship with cats, but only the black cat has become a mythological figure representing evil. What is it about black cats that ties them to Halloween? Going back to the year 1232 when Pope Gregory IX explained in a papal bull around 1232, titled Vox in Rama, the use of cats in pagan rituals. The cat’s natural propensity for independence and nocturnal hunting helped fuel people’s fear and this information became twisted around until the prevailing view of cats was that they were evil and in league with the devil. Black cats in particular were singled out as being more satanic due to their ability to blend with the night. Additionally, in Europe the prevailing white equals good and black equals bad mentality has been around for a very long time – so taking a hysterical fear of evil and compounding it with superstition and an official religious decree that related cats to pagan rituals, it is easy to see how black cats drew more blame in a species already rife with accusation.
For the next one hundred years killing cats became a common occurrence in the line of good fighting bad. In an ironic twist of fate, it was the slaughtering of cats that allowed the bubonic plague to rage across Europe from 1346 to 1353, killing almost half the population. The bubonic plague, or black death, came to Europe from Asian merchant ships carrying rats infested with infected fleas. Once the rats arrived, carrying their disease laden pests, there were not enough cats to keep the vermin population from exploding. To make matters worse, people viewed the plague as God’s punishment for man’s sinfulness, and in an effort to please God and get rid of the disease they began killing cats in earnest. This continued depopulation of cats allowed to the plague to flare up again and again for the next five centuries. It was only in the 19th century that Europe was free from the plague.
Coinciding with plague-induced cat killing were witch hunts and trials. In the 15th century, these had reached a frenzied pitch, and single, older women who lived with a cat were the first to become the object of blame for any disaster, large or small, that befell a community. The women and their cats were tried as witches and instruments of the devil. The trials were mere formalities before committing the “witch” and her “familiar” to death by fire. Unknown numbers, although some estimates put it in the millions, of cats were slaughtered and burned alive over five hundred years to satiate an insane desire of a group of people to rid themselves of wickedness.
There is a recent myth that has caused shelters to change their adoption policies regarding black cats in the month of October - all to help keep them from being part of a satanic ritual (that was so ridiculous it was difficult to type). The HSUS has attempted to counter with a 
report that there is no evidence to support that black cats came to more harm in October than any other month. However, in an over-reactive move, several shelters have stated that they chose to euthanize their black cats during this “perilous period” rather than let them be sacrificed in a ritual killing. If that isn’t depressing enough, there are two more aspects to black cat adoptions that are discouraging: 1) black cats, like black dogs, tend not to get adopted. They are the least popular color among shelter animals, and statistically more frequently left behind when others go home with their new families. 2) There is a slight spike in black cat adoptions who are later returned shortly after Halloween. The supposition is that the cat was probably adopted strictly to be a holiday prop, and once it served its purpose it was given a return ride back to the shelter.
Unlike the middle-ages, we have no shortage of cats, black or otherwise. That doesn’t mean that we don’t owe it to our feline friends to act responsibly on their behalf. Adopt and spay/neuter. If the cat you rescue happens to be black, all the better.
Like nocturnal and secretive feline, bats have become symbols of a terror-filled holiday night. And like the black cat, the bat has gotten an undeserved bad reputation. Bats are hard for us to understand – they fly like birds, but they are furry like squirrels; they sleep upside down; they live their lives at night and use a type of sonar (echolocation) to navigate. We’re afraid of them (women, especially, have the misguided fear that they will get tangled up in long hair), but then coo over photos of their incredibly adorable faces (and they are beautiful!). When researching bats, I found the term “mysterious” and “enigmatic” was used over and over. There is one of Aesop’s fables that recounts how the birds and beasts were about to have a fierce battle. On the way to the battlegrounds the birds spotted the bat and said, “Come with us,” but the bat answered, “I am a beast.” When the beasts marched by and saw the bat, they called out, “Come with us,” and he replied, “I am a bird.” Just as the fighting was to commence, a truce was made. The birds flew by the bat and ignored his pleas to join them. Then the bat went to the beasts, who all viciously turned on him and he had to fly away to save himself. The moral of the story is that one must be one thing or another or have no allies – and considering that it is very human nature to fear what we don’t understand, it is easy to see why the bat has become a staple of Halloween festivities.
Around the end of the middle ages demons began to be depicted with wings that held a passing resemblance to bats (although that was about the only similarity). The association between the two did not go unnoticed, and like our friend the black cat, bats were vilified as 
demonic. But more than any other, the event that solidified the bat’s place as a Halloween fixture was the discovery of the vampire bat. Vampire bats don’t live outside of the temperate climates of Central and South America. Vampire bats are real, and they do survive on a diet of blood (called hematophagy). There are three species of vampire bats – the common vampire bat, the hairy-legged vampire bat and the white-winged vampire bat. Of these three, only the common vampire bat feeds on mammals (including humans, if they can find one); the other two make their meals from birds. In the later part of the 18th century, naturalists visited South America and found these exotic bats. It was also during this time when gothic literature was on the rise and the stories of undead creatures that fed on the blood of the living had captured the imagination. When the little blood feeding bats were brought back to Europe, the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon examined them and declared their name to be “vampire bats.” In 1897, Bram Stoker wrote his best known novel, “Dracula”, a fictional character based loosely on the traits of Vlad III Dracula, also known as Vlad the Impaler who supposedly killed between 40,000 and 100,000 men, his preferred method of killing was impaling his victims, as well as allegedly feeding on both the flesh and the blood of those he killed. Stoker wrote his Dracula character as sensual and mysterious – and one who turned into a vampire bat that flew away to feed at night.
Halloween wouldn’t be the same without rubber bats being slingshot at visitors to the local haunted house, but bats are animals we shouldn’t fear. In fact, a world without them is much more terrifying because if we didn’t have bats we would be overrun by insects. Their favorite snack is the mosquito (talk about blood sucking monsters!!), and one bat can eat over 600 of the nasty pests in an hour. Even the blood-feeding vampire bats have been helpful to humans. By researching them, scientists discovered a protein in their saliva that acts as an anti-coagulant – called Draculin – which they’ve been able to adapt and synthesize for heart patients. There is a common misconception that bats are rabid; the reality is that very few bats are rabid (less than 0.5 %), but every once in a while a human will come in contact with a sickly, rabid bat and be bitten, which then makes the news and it seems much more common that it really it is. Although rabies in bats is rare, there are two species, the eastern small-footed and northern long-eared bats, whose population is under a much more serious health threat to the point of being listed as threatened/endangered – the source of depopulation for these species, as well as the little brown bat, big brown bat, tri-colored bat (eastern pipistrelle), cave myotis and southeastern myotis, is a disease called White Nose Syndrome, which has killed more than 1 million cave-hibernating bats since its discovery in 2006. US Fish and Wildlife Department considers White Nose Syndrome to be the most devastating wildlife health crisis in record. There is currently no cure, but there is hope that the spread can be slowed or stopped by keeping cave-goers, a suspected point of introduction of the fungal ailment. If you wish to help support bat conservation, observe and respect cave closures and help foster a positive bat environment in your area with bat “condos.”
If you’ve never heard an owl call out in the middle of the night you can’t really know how deep-down bone chilling the sound is. A few weeks ago, I stepped out onto the deck to let the dogs out for their last trip to do what they needed to do. It was a dark night, there was no moon visible, and the weather was beginning to turn chilly. I was noticing how dark it was when I heard a single “WHOO” loud and clear and just about jumped out of my skin. Those dogs were hustled back inside in record time. It was the first time I’d heard an owl hoot and now I get why owls have become a fixture in Halloween decorations and themes. Dating back to the middle-ages, people feared the owl – particularly the screech owl, whose call sounds like a woman shrieking – because they thought it was a witch who’d turned herself into an owl. In Africa, the hoot of an owl was thought to be an omen of imminent death. There were American Indian tribes that believed that when evil people died they were reborn as owls. Beyond their eerie call, the owl – like the bat and the cat – is a nocturnal hunter whose huge eyes that sit forward facing unlike other birds of prey function best in low light conditions and provide much better depth perception. They have specially adapted feathers that allow them to fly almost silently, so it seems as though they appear from nowhere. Imagine being in a dark forest and not knowing an owl has flown overhead until it lands in front of you – very startling and very spooky. Owls have an amazing sense of 
hearing, purportedly able to hear a mouse squeak up to a half mile away, due to the shape of their faces, which is much like an inverted dishes that lends to their odd appearance (all other birds of prey have eyes on either side of their heads). This allows the sound of potential prey, let’s say a mouse burrowing in leaves, to be channeled almost like a sonar dish. Of course, the creepiest part of actually seeing an owl is watching it turn its head almost completely around. The owl’s eyes are incapable of moving (they are in a fixed position) and because of this nature provided them the ability to tilt and turn their heads up to 270 degrees.
Fortunately, the owl – another great rodent hunter and natural pest controller – is not on the threatened or endangered list (with the exception of the Northern Spotted Owl) in the United States. Deforestation and habitat destruction is a threat to their continued survival; however, the real issue is use of mouse and rat poison that is “generational” – meaning that the poison is passed along up the food chain (mouse eats poison, owl eats mouse, owl is poisoned too). In Canada, the barn owl is already on the endangered list because of these generational “super-toxic” poisons. There are some communities in California that are banning the use of “super-toxic” rodent poisons and instead erecting owl boxes that encourage owls to roost and hunt. I love this idea of going non-toxic and putting up owl boxes to help with rid your property of mice. I know that the ideal isn’t always practical – so if you must use poisons to deal with your rodent pests, make sure you are putting out one that isn’t “super-toxic” and won’t continue to kill way beyond the original target.
A staple sound effect in older horror films is the lone wolf’s howl. It was the auditory omen that monsters were near and things were about to get a lot more scary – fast. We associate the baying wolf with a dark night, full moon and a creepy castle complete with evil laboratory. The other image that comes to mind is the werewolf – the creature who is part-time gentle man, part-time vicious and uncontrollable killer wearing a wolf’s coat. One bite from a werewolf and the victim was doomed to walk a dualist path, always in fear of his hidden wild side. The werewolf doesn’t exist – although there is a physical condition called hypertrichosis that causes hair to grow all over one’s body and face and, yes, those who have it do resemble the movie werewolves; it is informally called werewolf syndrome.
Instead of a maniacal and evil monster bent on killing everything in its path, we have the wolf that we have fearfully and aggressively hunted because of attacks on livestock since 1630 – 300 years later, by 1930, we had depleted the wolf population to the point where ranchers no longer believed the wolf posed a threat to their livestock. In recent years, a controversial push has been made restore wolf numbers and get them off the endangered list (in the US only is this status applicable – in Canada, the wolf is in excellent biological standing). The areas in which the wolf has made a comeback is also some of the same areas where ranchers have large herds of cattle. Montana, Wyoming, Washington and Idaho have been the states where wolves have rebounded most successfully. Wolves are opportunistic hunters and will take advantage of available prey, which means that if they come in contact with livestock, or even domesticated dogs, they will kill. When they encounter livestock, an unnaturally healthy herd, the only weaklings are the babies and pregnant cattle – this makes the case for wolf conservation that much more difficult. Conversely, the argument for supporting and encouraging the wolf population numbers is that they help keep a natural balance and are a key figure in the ecosystem. After wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, biologists reported that the biodiversity along waterways improved: willows, which are vital to prevent erosion and help clean waterways, began to grow back after years of overstripping from elk; beavers recolonized the rivers where the willows had regrown; beaver dams created wetland areas where flora and fauna were allowed to thrive. When wolves are allowed to hunt, they keep large, hooved animals (deer, elk, bison and, unfortunately, cattle) from over-grazing. This is called a trophic cascade when a higher species indirectly affects a lower species on the food chain – and, in the case of Yellowstone, it was a positive effect caused by the reintroduction the wolf. While it is important for ranchers to be able to protect their herd, it is equally important to maintain a natural balance. Hopefully, the two interests can be reconciled with a solution in which everyone wins.
We are no different than people who lived hundreds of years ago – we fear the unknown and, to an extent, get a kick out of the adrenaline rush that goes with a good jolt of the willies. Now we have Hollywood to help perpetuate the myths of our Halloween animals and provide the terrifying visuals we crave during this time of the year. It’s fun to be afraid of something we know is never going to harm us in the safe environment of a theater or our living rooms. When the lights come back up, remember that these animals – the cat, the bat, the owl and the wolf – are all beneficial to us and what is truly terrifying is a world where they don’t exist to help keep the balance of nature in check.
