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Page 4, News, Tuesday, May 8, 1990 Editorial The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Tuesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, 13 Simcoe Plaza, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT-2W0 Tel.: (807)-825-3747 Fax (807)-825-9233. Second class mailing permit 2264. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Assn. and the Canadian Community Newspaper Assn. Fel 2 825-3 147 seeeetesmmnies Single copies 40 a Publisher............. A. 'Sandy' Harbinson ubscription rates: pe . ; year / senofs $10 (local) Office Managet.............Gayle Fournier _ -- $27 per year (out of 40 mile News Editor................. Angie Saunders radius); $36 in U.S. Advertising Rep.......... Sheryl A. Knighi rd Is it safe to drive at night? I was reading a Thunder Bay paper last Friday, when I noticed that yet another woman has been found dead. Vivian Bremner, a Guelph resident, was found 5 kilometers from her home in a wooded area. She had been reported missing Monday, April 30th, after she failed to show up to watch a football game Sunday. Timothy Harpur, the man charged with the first degree murder of Bremner, was arrested near Kakabeka Falls Tuesday after a short chase by OPP. This hits a little too close to home. Kakabeka Falls isn't that far from here. Bremner was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What are the chances of this happening to someone in Schreiber or Terrace Bay? The odds are greater because the two communities are on Highway 17. It's only logical that any potentially dangerous person would choose this route to get to their destination. It has probably happened before. Are women safe driving alone, especially at night? It would be ludicrous to live in the constant fear, that you might be attacked by an escaped criminal if you happen to break down on the side of the highway. But it doesn't hurt to be cautious. If a woman is travelling alone and she does break down, she should ask anyone coming to her aid, to call a policeman, and then stay in the car until help arrives. I would not take a ride from any good samaritan, no matter how nice the person seems. As far as encountering danger while driving alone at night...Women should not leave their home thinking,"It will never happen to me." Chances are it won't, but does anyone really want to take that chance? Angie Saunders How ABOUY THE GieanricBcvoot fox / --- AN! ON JOP OF JHAT, THERE'S THE GST / ~ Letter to the Editor ~ Dear Editor; Re: Peterson's government closing of Temagami. Years of announcement after announcements by the Peterson government favored radical tac- tics over environmental planning in the Temagami debate. The fact that the Temagami forest residents have maintained a beautiful multiple-use forest for nearly a century was, in fact, a liability. The forest was sold to urbanites as a pristine wilderness through slick marketing strategies by radical environmental groups. The government trashed years of planning, management and community values when it put a lock on the Temagami sawmill door. Sustainable development in the Temagami forest was destroyed to stall heated tactics and harassment of the Premier. How will Canadians achieve responsible land use when the Peterson government will squash Canadian families, communities and values in favor of radical tac- tics? Judy Skidmore Executive Vice President Northcare I've been reading a book called The Eco Wars by a Canadian writer, David Day. Mostly, the book describes the stupid things we've done to tear up Terra Firma -- deforestation, desertification, nuclear proliferation and like that. But there's one chapter devoted to what may be mankind's favorite pastime -- war. And more particularly, our efforts to get animals to fight our wars for us. Consider the humble pigeon. A self-effacing bird whose idea of a good time is a few kernels of corn and the opportunity to carpet bomb a bronze statue or two. Little enough to ask of life. We repay them with a good neighbor policy that approaches genocide. Did you know that 20,000 homing pigeons were killed during World Wars One and Two? And not in the name of drumsticks, either. Those birds were acting as couriers for the Allied Forces -- beating their little wings off, dodging flak and shrapnel and snipers' bullets to carry messages wrapped military command. post to another. The homing pigeons tragic flaw was being too good at its job. Military boffins were so impressed by the pigeon's willingness to put it's tail feathers on the line that they investigated the military potential of larger flying suicide squads. Crows, ducks, geese -- even turkey vultures were sent to boot camp to imbibe the rudiments of the courier business. Actually, the jumbo avians were fairly quick learners, but the idea of using bigger birds for battle communications never really caught on. Somehow the image of battle plans flying clutched in the talons of a vulture failed to captivate the military mind... Fortunately, the fumbled torch of Feathered Forces concept was snatched by Doctor Louis Feiser. Dr. Feiser is destined to live forever in the annals of military obscenity as the inventor of napalm, but that wasn't his only contribution. He also gave us the Bat Bomb. In theory, it worked like this: Doctor Feiser and a crack squadron of medical seamstresses suture incendiary devices (i.e. tiny bombs) to the furry chests of a whole bunch of bats. Said bats are then dropped Arthur Black from an airplane over an enemy city. They flutter down and seek out attics, eaves and other dark, combustible crannies where they hang out for the night. But first, being fastidious, they gnaw the Making animals fight our wars sutures of their body packs. This activates a delayed-action fuse and poof! Suddenly an enemy city has hundreds, perhaps thousands of fires to contend with. That was the theory. What happened was the bats got impatient and gnawed their sutures well ahead of schedule, burning down a $2 million US aircraft hanger. But Great Moments in Animal Warfare don't play national favorites. ihe Russians tried strapping grenades to dogs trained to run under tanks. When an antenna on the dogs back touched the underside of the tank...KA- BLAM! No more tank. (Or dog.) Alas, the Russkies forgot to teach the dogs how to read. As often as not the tanks they chose to belly under had a hammer and sickle on the side. Then there were the Killer Dolphins, trained by U.S. Forces in Vietnam to hunt underwater saboteurs and jab them with large hypodermic needles strapped to their beaks. Did that work? Well, sort of. An unofficial count has it that approximately 60 South Vietnamese (Guilty? Innocent? Only Neptune knows) were assassinated by armed dolphins, along with two drunken American soldiers who went for an unauthorized swim in classified waters. And who can forget the Kamikaze Cat? Back in the 40's, British Intelligence tried dropping cats attached to bombs on enemy ships at sea. The theory was that a cat's hatred of water would make it steer the bomb towards the target ship. Didn't work too Well. Cats slung out of speeding airplanes several thousand feet in the air lack the detachment necessary to guide missiles reliably. "Animals" wrote George Eliot, "are such agreeable friends -- they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms." George was right -- and more's the pity. Animals would fare a lot better in this world if they possessed the capacity to ask a few pertinent questions or tear a strip off their human handlers once in a while.