whistling: "While searching through the newspaper morgues of the Carroll County Historical Society in Westminster, Md., I found this article in the August 19, 1839, issue of the Carroltonian, a now-defunct publication. The original article was credited to the Montrose, Pa., Spectator where it was published under the title "Food for the Marvelous": "Something like a year ago, there was considerable talk about a strange animal said to have been seen in the southwestern part of Bridgewater. Although the individual who described the animal persisted in declaring that he had seen it and was at first considerably frightened at it, the story was heard and looked upon more as food for the marvelous than as having any foundation in fact. He represented the animal, as we have it through a third person, as having the appearance of a child seven or eight years old although somewhat slimmer and covered entirely with hair. While picking berries he saw it walking toward him erect and whistling like a person. After recovering from his fright he is said to have pursued it, but it ran off with such speed, whistling as it went, that he could not catch it..." J. Glass, " Whistling Sasquatch." 9 January 1999. http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/articles/whistling.htm

fractures in the seal: "Here on ice patches of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the hunt looks nearly as brutal as ever. For as far as the eye can see, dozens of burly men bearing clubs roam the ice in snowmobiles and spiked boots in search of silvery young harp seals. With one or two blows to the head, they crush
the skulls, sometimes leaving the young animals in convulsions. The men drag the bodies to waiting fishing vessels or skin them on the spot, leaving a crisscross of bloody trails on the slowly melting ice. On the trawler Manon Yvon, one hunter, Jocelyn Theriault, 35, said, 'My father hunted for 45 years, so I was born with the seal.' His colleagues utter a sarcastic 'welcome aboard' as they throw the skins on their 65-foot boat. 'We do it for the money,' Mr. Theriault said, 'but it's also a tradition in our blood.'" C. Krauss, "New Demands Drive Canada's Baby Seal Hunt." The New York Times, 5 April 2004.

the limitations: N.K. Sandars, Prehistoric Art in Europe. Baltimore, MD., 1968. p.69. "Evidently, the patient was aware of discrepancies and inaccuracies in the representation of animals but could not rectify them through language. Such disruption in the patient's discursive capacities suggest that although human beings can readily 'perceive' the existence of animals, they are not always able to translate that perception into the linguistic registers that constitute human understanding. Animals seem to necessitate some form of mediation or allegorization---some initial transportation to language--before they can be absorbed into and dispersed throughout the flow of everyday psychology." A.M. Lippit, Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife. Minneapolis, MN., 2000. pp.8-9. Lippit is discussing "a rare neurological illness known as paraneoplastic encephalopathy."

only an animal: "The possibility of pogroms is decided in the moment when the gaze of a fatally-wounded animal falls on a human being. The defiance, which with he repels this gaze---'after all, it's only an animal'---reappears irresistibly in cruelties done to human beings, the perpetuators having again and again to reassure themselves that it is 'only an animal,' because they could never fully believe this even of animals." T. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections From a Damaged Life. London 1974. p.105.