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In This Issue

• Students Wrestle for Squid God
• Summer Job Pays to Choke Chickens
• Dolphins: Not Just for Sex Anymore
• Letters to the Feditrix
• The Confessions of a Burgeoning, Fecund Fury
• Suicides Are Fun for Those Who Don't Participate
• Military + Animals = Hours of Deadly Fun
• When Will Columbia Girls Go Not Ugly?
• You Wouldn't Know Hot Ass Even If You Bit Mine
• Necrophilia: Hey, It's Not Like They Mind
• Columbia Hipsters Leave Brooklyn to Strut Stuff
• Want Me!!!!
• I'm Still Drunk After All These Years
• He's Like Larry Flint, but Super Gay
• At Least the Fed Thinks I'm Cool...
• An End to the Planet
• Steve and Cornelius Are Now Chicks, Like to Play with Own Va-Jay-Jays
• Building a Bomb to Put in the Fed's Open Arms
• Oedipus Family Circus
• The Staff of 18.9
• THEY WATCH

Ethan Heitner

August, 1971: Local boys make New York proud displaying their dead gook.

This photo is not in any way doctored. The Fed would like to think the kitty survived, but it probably didn't. Way to go, Limey.

Lately, you may have been hearing about the wonders of dolphins. Dolphins, who are oh so smart and lovable, are bravely serving their country detecting underwater mines in Iraq. That's great and all, but what about all the other animals who risk their lives in military service? "The human animals?" you ask. Nooo. I'm talking about the bats, cats, pigeons, elephants, and chickens.

Lots of animals have valiantly risked their lives in military service throughout history, many of them without a word of acknowledgement. Horses, at least, have frequently gotten to appear in statues, albeit with some dude sitting on them and no mention of their name on the plaque. And everyone knows about Hannibal's elephants. But what about Charlemagne's elephant? That's right. A Muslim caliph sent Charlemagne an elephant named Abu l-Abbas as a token of his esteem. Brave Abu died serving his king in a war against the Danes.

While some people realize that elephants have played a part in military combat, few have acknowledged history's valiant combat kittens. Cats were heading into battle for humans as long as 2,500 years ago, when the Persians sent them to their front lines against the Egyptians. The Egyptians wouldn't attack because they considered cats sacred. Human shields almost never work that well. In 1535, a German army used cats to spread poison gases. They strapped bottles of poison gas to their backs, openings pointing toward their tails, and did something to freak them out so they ran toward the enemy in a panic. One can imagine the glorious scene. As the opposing forces stand ready for battle, a battalion of kitties comes charging over a hill, gas streaming out behind them, calling out their battle cry: ROOOWR! The enemy soldiers stand for a moment in bewilderment, then start dropping like flies. Brilliant. One cat who did get some praise for his service was Mourka, a Soviet kitty who was used to carry messages across a street in 1942 during the siege of Stalingrad. The London Times said of him, "he has shown himself worthy of Stalingrad, and whether for cat or man there can be no higher praise." Yet in spite of all this, have you ever heard of a cat winning the Medal of Honor?

Some pigeons, though, have received military honors for their service. American World War I carrier pigeon, Cher Ami, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, after being shot through the breast and still managing to deliver his message, saving the lives of 194 American soldiers. Now that is one badass pigeon. Maybe you thought carrier pigeons were a thing of the distant past, but that just shows that you are a product of a human-centric, human-written history. If you think radio communication is more efficient, tell it to GI Joe, a World War II pigeon who, when radios failed, flew twenty miles in twenty minutes to stop an Allied bombing of an Italian town that had just been taken by the British, saving thousands of lives.

While pigeons get some credit, we, of course, carefully avoid assigning any valor to birds that we like to eat. While we are constantly updated on human casualties, little mention has been made of the chickens who have lost their lives in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Before the war even began, forty-three chickens were sent to Iraq to be used as chemical and biological weapons detectors. The way this works is, if there are chemical or biological weapons around, the chickens get sick or die. Then the soldiers know to put on their gas masks. However, of this unfortunate force of fowl, only one survived the first week in the adverse Iraqi climate. Some suspect they had the flu. Yet where has this tragedy been commemorated?

By now you must see how much more attention and praise our many service-animals deserve. Just because the dolphins can do impressive jumps for publicity shots doesn't mean the other animals can be overlooked. To conclude, I leave you with this stirring yet largely untold tale: In World War II, the United States planned a secret weapon to be used against Japan. This weapon was the bat. That's right, little flying cave-dwelling rodents. The plan was to attach incendiary bombs to bats and let them loose over Japanese cities. They would fly into the nooks and crannies of buildings, go to sleep, and a little while later, blow up. The cities would be set ablaze and forced to surrender. In this way, kamikaze bats would defeat kamikaze pilots, without any humans - err, American men - actually having to die. The bats were tested in New Mexico, but the plan was abandoned when the US discovered the A-bomb and decided to try that instead. But boy, it would have been a sight to see.