In April, the Berkeley city council passed a law banning the sale of fur clothing. The city council says this law is just symbolic because they claim: “there are no stores in Berkeley that sell fur clothing”. However, that isn’t true! There are lots of stores in Berkeley that sell fur clothing, especially shoe stores. I have been wearing sheepskin moccasin bedroom slippers for years. They sell them at a number of stores in Berkeley. Mine are wool lined inside, like most moccasins. It is now illegal to sell moccasins like these in Berkeley unless you scrape the wool off the sheepskin first, which nobody is going to do. Besides, what the difference? Whether the wool is attached to the sheepskin or not, the sheep it came from is just as dead either way.
Rabbit Foot Keyrings. This is one fur product that has always been a mystery to me. I do not understand the appeal of this product. I sometimes see rabbit foot key rings for sale in stores. Do people really believe that carrying a dead rabbit’s foot in your pocket will bring you good luck? Yes! I once saw a man playing blackjack in Las Vegas, holding a rabbit’s foot in his left hand. When he won a big bet, he kissed the rabbit’s foot! As I left, I wondered: ‘Why would anyone imagine that a rabbit’s foot will bring you good luck?’ Obviously, cutting the feet off a rabbit didn’t bring the rabbit good luck! Well – did it?
CALIFORNIA SEA OTTERS. Some good news
In the late 1800s, sea otters in many places around the world were hunted to extinction for their soft luxurious fur. At the time of the California Gold Rush, it is estimated that there were 20,000 California sea otters, but by 1900, they were all gone. There were no sightings of sea otters in California for decades. They were believed to be extinct. Then in 1938, a small colony of California sea otters was sighted in a remote cove near Big Sur. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife immediately (and wisely) imposed a complete ban on capturing, killing, or harassing sea otters – and enforcing it with patrols. Today, there are several thousand California sea otters along the central and northern coast of the state. Frankly, I am a sucker for sea otters. I can watch sea otters for hours without getting bored. I sometimes see them near Seal Rocks in San Francisco. You can hear sea otters at some distance when they are eating oysters. It is fascinating how they do this. A sea otter will pick up an oyster with one paw and a rock with the other paw and then come to the surface. The otter then rolls over onto his back, places the rock on his stomach and then hits the oyster on the rock until he breaks the shell. It is amazing to me that sea otters figured out how to use rocks as tools to eat oysters. Here is a You Tube video showing a sea otter near Santa Cruz eating clams this way: Sea Otter Eating Clams.