And not just Mertasari - it’s an Islandwide Epidemic.......
She got the news in the middle of a jewellery show in the
Presidential Suite of the Ritz Carlton, Hong Kong. “WHAT?!”,
she yelled. The tai tais dropped the jewellery into their
teacups and gaped in astonishment. “Your cat’s
dead” said the caller baldly, “poisoned”.
That’s how my wife first learned of the death of her
beloved Siamese. By the time we were back in Bali we had the
autopsy report and the story of what had happened. Krystal
had gone out in to the garden at 9.00 am and returned to the
house at 11.00 am. Half an hour later she was found dead in
our bath tub having foamed at the mouth and fouled herself.
Her stomach was full of bones from a fish head. Rat poison
the vet said.
Two days later another dead cat in exactly the same state
was found in the bath in our guest house. We’d noticed
this cat before, a handsome tabby, usually about 100 yards
or so down the road. We marched off to the café a couple
of properties away, figuring that they were putting down poison
to get rid of marauding cats. But no, the owner was a cat
lover and had lost his own cat a few days earlier. It had
been poisoned, he said. His next door neighbours chimed in
to say that their 2 dogs had recently died of poisoning and
so had a Labrador and another pedigree dog belonging to foreigners
in Jalan Pengembak around the corner. The French consul bicycling
past stopped on seeing us to say hello. We were now a small
group of almost a dozen sharing and speculating on what was
going on. The Consul told us that he too had had his dog poisoned.
He’d been out walking the dog off his leash in some
cleared land nearby. Looking back for his dog he’d seen
it on the ground spasming and foaming at the mouth. Fortunately
his pembantu was with him and knew what to do. They fed the
dog large quantities of coconut oil and it pulled through.
A Cynophobic Psychopath strikes.....
Meanwhile back in Hong Kong, before our departure, a serial
killer had struck, claiming his (no one thinks it could be
a woman) 36th victim in a reign of canine terror spanning
15 years. There was now a US$30,000 reward out for the apprehension
of, or information leading to, the arrest of the notorious
“Bowen Road Dog Killer”. Bowen Road is a bosky
pedestrian lane half way up the mountain on Hong Kong-side.
It is ideal for a quiet walk if you aren’t run down
by an oafish jogger and, of course, ideal for exercising dogs.
What on earth motivates a serial dog killer, people asked?
In the case of the Bowen Road Dog Killer, had he been bitten
by a dog as an infant and never gotten over it? Had he stepped
in dog poo once too often and snapped? Was he trying to get
back at Foreign Devils, supposing only they loved and owned
dogs as pets? Hardly, since most of the dog owners were Chinese
and would cheerfully disembowel the monster for doing in their
pooches. And how did he do it? What fiendish cunning had allowed
him to escape detection for so long, despite the best efforts
of Hong Kong’s finest, a hefty reward and the Bowen
Road vigilantes? Nobody knew...
Bali’s different.....
None of the above reasons seem to apply to what appears to
be a much larger and much more widespread activity in Bali,
as I was to find as I started looking into the phenomena.
First off, in Bali it’s clearly not the work of a single
cynophobic psychopath as in the case of the Bowen Road killer.
Some of our instant roadside group of the pet-bereaved had
heard that it was the the developers of several large properties
nearby that had been cleared recently for villas and a hotel
that had been laying poison, because they didn’t want
packs of semi-feral dogs roaming their land. Others speculated
that it was Javanese workers encamped in the area, who didn’t
like having dogs around them because their culture and religion
regards dogs as unclean. Some even thought that the banjars
periodically did it to keep the number of wild dogs down.
Then of course many of us felt it had to do with people eating
dog satay. “Who’d want to eat poisoned dog meat?”,
some of us said. The others looked at us pityingly, “it’s
not them who eat it“, they said.
In the days to come I mentioned what was going on to various
people. Few were surprised, though the feeling was that dog
poisoning came in geographical waves. One long term Sanur
resident said, “It’s cultural. You can’t
change it. Don’t you believe though that the Balinese
don’t eat dog. Several Balinese friends tell me how
as kids they looked forward to a weekend treat of roasted
dog”. Mr Fixit, Phil Wilson, was round our place the
other day fixing a minor but irritating electrical problem
in a jiffy, which had plagued us for years (Deo gratias! Et
fixit...), and shared an experience he and his brother had
witnessed. Closing up the old premises of the “Cat &
Fiddle” late one night they were sitting in the dark
enjoying a nightcap. A dog convulsed and died in the road
outside, clearly from poison. Having checked it was dead,
something prompted them to leave the dog by the side of the
road and watch. In another 30 minutes a pickup van had driven
up with two men in it. One got out, slung the carcass in the
back and drove off.
Sinister news from Upcountry.....
More sinister news came from Ubud. Noticing an advertisement
in Bali Advertiser asking people who had had dogs poisoned
to contact an organisation called Bali Street Dogs and having
read an earlier article in Bali Advertiser about it, I called
a friend, whom I know does truly great work in this field
with a group of other dedicated women.
The problem is big. She and some friends had just come from
releasing over 50 dogs crated in appalling conditions (six
inch nails sticking into the crates) an hour North of Ubud.
The men doing it had cut up quite nasty. My friend has sufficient
standing and length of Bali tenure to tell then to get stuffed.
Others of the group had to pay them “compensation”.
Compensation for what? I asked. It appears there are groups
of people licensed to round up street dogs. They then ship
them off in bulk to Java to be sold as meat or thrown to pit
bulls for sport, I was told. There is no law about the treatment
of dogs apparently. Nor any oversight as to what purpose these
dogs are put to by these “licensed” gangs, obviously.
What’s the difference?
I don’t eat meat. I don’t like eating other sentient
beings, by which I mean my fellow mammals. On the other hand
I am not on a mission to compel other people not to do it.
It’s a personal choice and that, I reckon, is how it
should be. If you eat a cow or a pig why not a dog or a cat?
People can and do have them as pets and their respective levels
of consciousness are not markedIy different, if at all. I
also recognise there are cultural aspects to all this. But
then again it wasn’t so long ago that it was culturally
OK to be a slave owner.
It still goes on, but I don’t think anyone seriously
maintains it’s OK.
I adore cats and I like most dogs. I help them whenever I
can.... if it’s convenient. And that’s the thing.
It takes very special people to take it on and they deserve
the active support of anyone who claims to care about animals.
One woman I know, who loves animals big time has actually
chosen the job of going round slaughter houses in an effort
to encourage more humane killing. I’m in awe of such
people.
