Tag archives: animals

Animal Intuition: What Lies Beyond the Bark
By Leana Orsua   |   October 29, 2024

There’s not much Caroline Martel-Miller won’t do for her dog Cashy. The French expat opened her luxury dog boutique on Coast Village Road two years ago – named in the six-year-old French bulldog’s honor. So when the pampered pooch lost the usual pep in his step and his appetite began to decline – Caroline was […]

Meerkat Memories
By Chuck Graham   |   December 26, 2023

A mob of meerkats was on my Southern African menu. Deep in the Kalahari Desert, I scanned that brilliant red earth with my binoculars from dawn until dusk. Finally, on the morning of our third day in Namibia, it was meerkat mania as 20 of them arrived just after breakfast. This was my 16th trip […]

Life at the Waterhole
By Chuck Graham   |   July 11, 2023

The spotted hyenas soaked themselves in one of the many waterholes surrounding the vast, searing white pan of Etosha National Park in northern Namibia of southwestern Africa. The two scavengers were multitasking. While cooling off in the shallow pool of water, they were also strategizing on how to drive off a healthy-looking lioness and her […]

Talking TLC with SB Humane
By Joanne A Calitri   |   April 4, 2023

This week we visited with Kerri Burns, CEO of SB Humane and her team of CFO Paige Van Tuyl, and COO Dori Villalon at the Santa Barbara location on Overpass Road. The four-acre property holds a veterinary clinic and surgery center, food, lodging and training of dogs, a cat hotel, and offers shelter during local disasters […]

Urgent Veterinary Care of Santa Barbara
By Kelly Mahan Herrick   |   February 28, 2023

Social media is already abuzz with a new business that is slated to open in early spring: Urgent Veterinary Care of Santa Barbara, the first urgent-care clinic in our area intended to bridge the gap between a general veterinary practice and an emergency hospital. The facility is the brainchild of local veterinarian Dr. Addie Crawford […]

Care for Wildlife Care Crew
By Richard Mineards   |   January 24, 2023

It was all too beastly for words when Gretchen Lieff, vice president of the board for the popular Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network, hosted a boffo bash at her La Lieff tasting room in the Funk Zone for 200 volunteers. “It’s the least we could do to show our gratitude for the many hours they […]

Lots of Hugging
By Chuck Graham   |   January 17, 2023

We hugged the crumbly west cliff face of Cuyler Harbor on San Miguel Island with no expectations from the seat of our kayaks. From afar, we couldn’t see any wildlife, but we could clearly hear first-year northern elephant seals snorting and bellowing on distant pocket beaches concealed along the rocky shoreline. I was paddling with […]

C.A.R.E.4Paws
By Steven Libowitz   |   January 17, 2023

Back in 2009 when Isabelle Gullö co-founded C.A.R.E.4Paws, she knew there was a desperate need locally for programs that reduce pet overpopulation and intervene before animals suffer and/or end up homeless among the low-income, senior, disabled, and unhoused pet family population in town. As a volunteer at the Santa Barbara County Animal Services shelter, she’d […]

Family Bonds
By Chuck Graham   |   December 27, 2022

There was no denying the six-foot-tall dorsal fin cutting through the open ocean above the Soquel Canyon State Marine Conservation Area within the teeming waters of Monterey Bay, along the Central California Coast. Black and steeple-shaped, the dorsal fin belonging to a mature, male orca glistened in the morning sun. This apex predator is known […]

Art for Endangered Animals
By Joanne A Calitri   |   December 13, 2022

The Thomas Reynolds Gallery is generously hosting a wall for the art of two local oil painters on a mission to raise awareness of endangered animals and factory farmed animals. The exhibit is titled “EYE AM ART” and is on view now through December 31. The oil painters are longtime painter, illustrator, and teacher Nancy […]

The Pelagic Food Chain
By Chuck Graham   |   November 29, 2022

The weather window was tight. It was one day, and we took advantage of it, circumnavigating the 27 coastal miles of San Miguel Island, the most northwesterly isle in the Channel Islands National Park. After several solo circumnavigations of this wave-battered, teeming islet, I was gratefully joined by four kayak guides who I work with […]

Wild Animals That Care
By Richard Mineards   |   November 22, 2022

The party animals were out in force when the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network hosted a fun fête at the venerable Santa Barbara Club with the 240 guests raising around $200,000 for the popular organization, which has an annual budget of $1.8 million. The boffo bash, A Wild Night Out, had a host of colorful […]

Island Day Spa
By Chuck Graham   |   November 22, 2022

It’s just one of so many countless hidden nooks and crannies carved out over time by volcanic upheaval, the surf, and weather along the craggy coastlines of the Channel Islands National Park. Most of these concealed, volcanic alcoves, corridors, and toothy grottos are only accessible by kayak. Going on foot or even by boat won’t […]

Feigning Injury
By Chuck Graham   |   November 8, 2022

Down on the Carpinteria State Beach, between the mouth of the Carpinteria Creek and southeast of the Tarpits, a nesting colony of western snowy plovers continues to grow on the popular summertime beach. Nesting season is March 15 to September 15, and in 2021, the first successful western snowy plover nest since 1960 saw three […]

What Is an Animal Lover?
By Robert Bernstein   |   November 1, 2022

Some topics are still taboo to discuss and this may be one. Are you an “animal lover”? What does that mean to you? If you say you don’t like dogs, people are quick to ask if you like cats. Are those the only choices? There are 10-30 million species of animals on Earth. The exact […]

Andrew Antone’s Wildlife Exhibit & Book ‘Africa’
By Joanne A Calitri   |   October 18, 2022

On honeymoon in March 2022 with his partner Patrick, photographer-musician Andrew Antone’s safari journey turned into a project to bring awareness to the natural world and wildlife he encountered through his camera lens. After pooling through 11,094 images, he selected 500 images for his book, and 32 photos for his exhibit at the Santa Barbara […]

Island Refuge
By Chuck Graham   |   October 11, 2022

The translucent, salty ocean droplets rolled off its velvety sheen feathers, glistening like crystal clear marbles as it streamed off the back of a wayward Pacific Loon. It was early summer 2022. Typically, not a time to catch a glimpse of a seabird that should’ve been well north, maybe even as far north as Alaska […]

I Finally Saw It
By Chuck Graham   |   October 4, 2022

A saw-whet owl, that is. Sometimes they keep me up at night, and gratefully so. That repetitive too-too-too sounding off two notes per second at the same pitch for up to 25 whistles in a row before taking a slight break.  Then those tiny, nocturnal saw-whets are back at it again teasing me with their […]

Gone Owls
By Chuck Graham   |   July 26, 2022

The prominent sandstone rock outcropping was riddled with gritty alcoves, clefts, lofty ledges, and shadowy caves. As I scanned with binoculars for any feathered occupants, I found five barn owls nesting in the upper reaches of this remote, sandstone cathedral. However, there was something else that caught my attention while attempting to conceal themselves 20 […]

Where It All Vegan
By Christopher Matteo Connor   |   July 19, 2022

Who remembers that cookbook How It All Vegan by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer? If you do, congrats, you’re older than you think. If you don’t, well, who can blame you? It was a vegan cookbook published in 2002. Before vegan burgers started popping up at fast food chains, before walls were packed with specialty […]