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Thursday, July 11, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com NEWS
In early June, the Humane
Society
of
Huron
Valley
noticed “strange” behavior
starting to occur frequently
among
the
raccoons
and
skunks of Washtenaw County.
The group said they received
numerous calls from con-
cerned residents and docu-
mented a 45 percent increase
in sick wildlife being treated
by their facilities since the
beginning of the year.
On June 6, HSHV pub-
lished a press release to notify
the public. In the release,
HSHV CEO Tanya Hilgendorf
was quoted in the press release
saying there was a presumed
outbreak of distemper and
parvovirus in the community.
“We don’t want to cause
alarm, but this gives rise to
an important reminder to
keep your pets up to date on
vaccines and be very careful
where you go with puppies
who haven’t yet been fully vac-
cinated and older animals with
weaker immune systems,” Hil-
gendorf said.
Distemper and parvovi-
rus are not a threat to human
immune systems, but can be
fatal for unvaccinated, very
young or very old animals.
Though more common in
dogs, other house pets such
as cats may contract either
virus through contact with the
infected animals, resulting in
serious gastrointestinal and
neurological problems.
HSHV
communications
director Wendy Welch said
the release was issued just
as a reminder for pet owners
to vaccinate their compan-
ion animals as the diseases in
question are easily prevent-
able.
“All of our services are to
keep people with their com-
panion animals and serve the
animals and people in our
community,” Welch said.
Since the release, Welch
said there has been a decrease
in calls from concerned resi-
dents and an uptick in pet vac-
cinations.
Welch said she has not
worked on anything similar
recently, but she and Molly
Tamulevich, Michigan State
director for the Humane Soci-
ety of the United States, both
said they are not uncommon.
“These outbreaks pop up
time to time … and sometimes
there’s an increase in report-
ing, especially with areas
with a really high population
density, where you might just
have an increase in reports,”
Tamulevich said.
Tamulevich, an Ann Arbor
native, attributes this out-
break and others like it to the
increase of “urban wildlife,”
animals who adapt to the city
infrastructure built around
them.
“As
our
communities
sometimes encroach into hab-
itats, we sometimes displace
wildlife, and that wildlife can
either thrive alongside human
beings or not thrive alongside
human beings,” Tamulevich
said. “Some species — rac-
coons, possums, sometimes
even coyotes — they do well
because human beings often
provide them with intention-
al or unintentional sources of
food. Wildlife has been exist-
ing in human settlements for
thousands of years, but in a
city like Ann Arbor, you have
healthy populations of squir-
rels, rabbits, raccoons, pos-
sums, and they live alongside
us and within dense human
centers.”
Welch agreed and said resi-
dents’ have a responsibility
to respect the animals living
among them.
“There’s a whole ‘phenom-
enon’ of urban wildlife, and
as we develop as humans and
live closer and closer to wild-
life spaces, we encroach on
animals,” Welch said. “It’s
definitely affecting them, and
we need to take into account
where they live and how we
want to live.”
Welch said raccoons and
skunks are commonly the
“victims” of diseases, such as
this spring’s outbreaks of dis-
temper and parvovirus. Addi-
tionally, Welch said spring,
which is birthing season for
these animals, is the time of
the year most susceptible to
such an outbreak.
Tamulevich advised con-
cerned pet owners to engage
in
“common-sense”
prac-
tices which prevent animal
encroachment on their prop-
erty. This “preventative main-
tenance”
includes
feeding
animals inside and clearing
brush.
Rackham student Rima
Fadlallah and U-M Dear-
born alum Yasmeen Kadouh,
both Dearborn natives, cre-
ated the podcast “Dearborn
Girl” to challenge stereo-
types about themselves and
women in the community
they call home.
Fadlallah and Kadouh said
they heard people express
concern about both leaving
and staying within their city.
Some attributed this to a lack
of spaces for women to speak
freely among each other and
nearly everyone they have
talked to said they shared the
stereotype of the “Dearborn
girl.”
“For many in and outside
Dearborn, the term means
that the girl is uncivilized,
loud and obnoxious, some-
one who doesn’t experience
Arab culture outside of Dear-
born,” Fadlallah said.
In December, with the
purpose of capturing these
exchanges, Kadouh and Fad-
lallah filed into the Detroit
Foundation Hotel in Dear-
born to record a pilot podcast
episode. The hotel offered
their audio equipment free of
cost for a two-hour time slot
every week. After learning
how to use the complimen-
tary audio equipment and
recording their tester, they
decided to embark on the
journey of creating a com-
munity driven podcast — an
attempt to create a space
for women in Dearborn to
address their life experienc-
es while reclaiming the term.
What started as a podcast
idea has turned into a much
larger project. “Dearborn
Girl” expanded to videogra-
phy and has 2,656 followers
on Instagram after only one
season of production. Malak
Wazne, Dearborn filmmak-
er and Henry Ford College
sophomore, caught wind of
their project and immedi-
ately wanted to join their
mission.
“I have always been pas-
sionate about storytelling.
After Rima and Yasmeen
interviewed me on the pod-
cast about my film and photo
career, I knew this project
was something I wanted to
be a part of,” Wazne said.
“Shortly after putting our
skills and passion together,
it became more evident that
‘Dearborn Girl’ was much
larger than any one individ-
ual.”
After a few recording ses-
sions, Fadlallah and Kadouh
realized they had enough
audio to produce a full sea-
son of 10 episodes with extra
to spill into a second season.
On May 22, an audience of
150 attended the Arab Amer-
ican National Museum to
listen to their debut episode,
titled #proudlyaDG.
In the first episode, Har-
vard graduate Mariam Jal-
loul spoke of her transition
from the Ivy League back to
Dearborn. In 2016, she gave
the commencement speech
for her graduating class at
Harvard, and, while it was
a significant moment for her
and her family, she said she
returned to the Dearborn
community to typical ques-
tions.
‘U’ student
makes podcast
about living
in Dearborn
Creators say stereotypes about city,
women prompted need for show
DESIGN BY KATHRYN HALVERSON
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