Written by Michelle Kretzer
When a group of bloodthirsty zombies descends on New York City, where do they head? To the Meatpacking District, of course. Because all animals are made of flesh, bones, and blood and all animals feel pain, zombies don't see a difference between eating people and eating animals.
Goth star Sharon Needles, the winner of RuPaul's Drag Race, doesn't see a difference, either. She joined the troop of undead to reveal her macabre PETA ad just in time for Halloween.
For a limited time, PETA is offering magnets featuring Sharon's ad—for $6.66! Spooky. And the Logo network, which airs Drag Race, is running a 30-second PETA public service announcement during its Halloween programming.
And now for the scariest thing that you'll see this Halloween … click here.
Like a good scare? If the same old haunted houses and rehashed slasher movies have you rolling your eyes, PETA has 10 scary spots guaranteed to make you scream like Jamie Lee Curtis. Let's start our virtual fright fest:
Anyone who has ever seen a horror flick knows that you never go into the barn. Good things do not happen there, unless you consider being mutilated a good thing. Anyway, didn't we learn anything about eating meat from Contagion?
I'd sooner spend a year trapped in Rihanna's warped "Disturbia" world than try to dodge the whips and chains in Ringling's house of horrors.
The bizarre and deadly experiments on cats that are going on behind closed doors at this school are like something out of Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory. But even Mary Shelley couldn't have dreamed up "science" this twisted.
Is there anything creepier than a clown? How about a clown with shackles, an electrified water bath, and a knife aimed at your throat?
Remember the iconic opening sequence in Saw in which two men are chained up in a restroom? They didn't last any time at all before one of them sawed off his own leg to get free. Just sayin'.
Jason Voorhees might be a knife-wielding maniac, but he's got nothing on Australian sheep farmers. Apparently, if they call it "mulesing," they can carve up their victims alive. (Shiver!)
© Patty Mark/alv.org.au
Even with Paramount's money, DreamWorks' special effects, and all the fake blood in Hollywood, Wes Craven couldn't create a gorier scene than the Canadian seal slaughter.
© Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Do you find that the worst part of haunted houses is the beginning, when your whole group is smashed into that dark, tiny room before you start the tour? If you get claustrophobic just thinking about it, imagine if that dark, tiny room lasted for two years. It's getting hard to breathe …
People who have seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre probably still shudder when they think about Leatherface. But even at his chainsaw-slinging worst, the skin-wearing psycho isn't as frightening as the slicing and dicing that goes on inside a slaughterhouse where cows are killed for their flesh and skin.
For horses made to pull carriages through New York's noisy, congested streets, every car seems like Christine—except Stephen King's horror flicks only last two hours, not nine hours a day, seven days a week.
© Barbara Grove
Getting chills yet?
Written by PETA
At Los Angeles' Comikaze Expo, attendees can mingle with the likes of Mark Hamill, Stan Lee, and Elvira; get their favorite comics, games, anime, and cult videos autographed; or even get tattooed. But one thing that is definitely off limits at the L.A. Convention Center this weekend? Fur.
Comikaze will have thrills and chills aplenty, but the real-life horror of animals who were beaten, electrocuted, and skinned alive to be turned into jackets is too cruel for even the most seasoned scream queens. When the folks who created and starred in Halloween, Saw, and Friday the 13th are welcome but fur is too scary to let in the door, you know fur production is a truly terrifying business.
Halloween is over, but you can still share PETA's very real horror movie—featuring undercover footage shot on rabbit fur farms in France and China—with your Facebook friends and ask them to support only killing sprees of the celluloid variety.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
It's almost time for Halloween, and while some folks are being sweeter than candy to animals, some are making us wish that we were only watching a scary movie.
Kisses to Los Angeles' Ghost Ship. The country's only haunted sailing vessel promises its victims a 75-minute voyage of horror, but only if they aren't wearing the victims of the horrifying fur industry. Even ax-wielding maniacs know that fur is cruel.
Kisses to The Office for showing the very real danger of leaving a dog in a hot car in very memorable Office style.
Hisses to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for talking out of both sides of its mouth about the foods that people put into theirs—pushing people to eat vegetables but granting huge subsidies to the meat industry.
Kisses to women's clothing store Dress Barn for proudly displaying "Fab Faux Fur" in its windows.
Hisses to the U.S. Air Force for considering turning animals into fuel for planes. With all the biofuel options available, even Fred Flintstone would think that this cruel fuel is archaic.
Kisses to Tom Wargo of Lilburn, Georgia, and to 13-year-old Victoria O'Connell of Rapid City, South Dakota, for realizing that companion animals also suffer in a recession and starting animal food banks. Wargo gets an extra smooch for requiring owners to obtain low-cost spay-and-neuter services.
Today was a lucky day for black cats: PETA's mobile Spay and Neuter Immediately, Please (SNIP) clinic got into the spirit of Halloween and "fixed" 44 of the black beauties for free. What a way to wrap up Cat Week!
If there's one thing scarier than armies of the undead, it's the animal overpopulation crisis. Every year, millions of unwanted kittens are left at crowded animal shelters, where many of them must be euthanized for lack of suitable homes. Others are casually passed around from one temporary home to the next or are dumped on the roadside.
Just one unaltered female cat can lead to 370,000 feline descendants in only seven years; an unneutered male cat can help create limitless litters of kittens. PETA's mobile clinics have sterilized more than 75,000 animals since the program's inception in 2001, preventing the births of hundreds of thousands of unwanted kittens and puppies.
Black cats are often the target of cruel people who torture or kill them around Halloween. Keeping cats inside is the best way to keep them safe, and if you have an unaltered cat of any color, make an appointment today to get him or her sterilized. In addition to preventing unwanted litters, spay and neuter surgeries eliminate the risk of certain cancers of the reproductive system. It is the best treat that you can give your cat—any time of year.
If you've already "fixed" your cat, you can make a donation to help others do the same and to help keep our SNIP clinic going.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
I read Dracula when I was 8 or 9 (yes, I was one of those kids), which didn't exactly help get rid of my fear of the bats who lived in our attic and occasionally needed to be guided out a window. As it turns out, the bats created by horror writers and children's imaginations aren't nearly as interesting as real bats are:
To learn more about bats, help control insects, and provide a home for these fascinating animals, consider putting up a bat house. You can prevent bats from finding their way into your house by sealing up holes near the roof after any existing colony has left for winter hibernation.
Tired of going through racks of Halloween costumes and seeing the same old hockey masks and sexy nurse uniforms? Here are six scary DIY costumes guaranteed to make the most fearless revelers do a double-take—and then think twice about eating meat, wearing fur, or going to the circus.
Steal an idea from PETA Vice President Dan Mathews and go as KFC's purveyor of live-chicken scalding, Colonel Sanders.
Instantly transform into bunny butcher Donna Karan by carrying some plush rabbits drenched in red paint. To complete the ensemble, lie all night about how you don't really use fur even while you're holding the evidence.
Clowns are scary to a lot of people, and Ronald McDonald is one of the scariest of all. Follow in Andy Dick's footsteps and wave around a bloody knife as you illustrate how a chicken becomes a McNugget. (Hint: It's a lot more cruel than it has to be because McDonald's refuses to implement a less cruel slaughter method for chickens.)
If you want the theme to your outfit to be "cold as ice," be a Canadian seal clubber. A plush seal, a club, and a red-stained shirt will have anyone with a heartbeat running and screaming for points south of the Great White North.
If splashy is more your style, don a top hat and tails or a tight Lycra jumpsuit and you can be a Ringling Bros. animal trainer abuser. It works best if accessorized with a bullhook and paired with a partner dressed as a helpless baby elephant.
For women who want to show that fur is a bad asset, pair a Sasquatch suit with two strategically placed pillows and a diva attitude to become Jennifer Lopez. Be sure to brag about how you burn through animals like you burn through husbands.
For this week's 10% Wool comic caption contest, we are on the lookout to find the best user-submitted caption that complements the strip below!
Here's how it works: Submit your caption for this week's comic in the comment section below. We'll choose three user-submitted captions that best complement the strip and let YOU, the readers, vote on them to let us know who you think should be crowned victor. Our winner will walk away with a Stainless Steel PETA Logo Water Bottle.
Don't forget to check out the archive of past 10% Wool comic strips and get more information on the series and the writer. Join the flock and become a fan of Jeff's nationally syndicated comic strip, DeFlocked.
The entry round ends at 12 noon on October 25, 2011, and voting will start on October 27, 2011. Voting will end on November 1, 2011, and we'll announce the winner and showcase the winning caption in a blog post on November 3, 2011. Be sure to read our privacy policy and terms and conditions, as you're agreeing to both by commenting. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited by law. Good luck!
Letting our animal companions wander the mean streets is careless and dangerous at any time of year, but that's especially true around Halloween, and even more so if the animal is a black cat. But some people seem to be in extreme denial about the perils that Halloween poses for ebony-colored felines.
Take the Sowards family of Florida. According to a newspaper article, the family let their black cat, Jinxy Boo, outdoors in the late afternoon on Halloween. The next morning, Jinxy Boo showed up on their patio with injuries so severe that she had to be euthanized. A veterinarian suspects that someone may have placed a firecracker in Jinxy Boo's rectum and exploded it.
That's appalling, but get this: According to the article, Jinxy Boo is the third cat the Sowards have lost around Halloween. The third cat! Apparently, the family got her to replace their previous black cat who disappeared on Halloween.
There is no excuse for abusing animals, and anyone who does so is probably a serial killer in training, but if we let our cats or dogs outdoors alone, we are effectively handing our companions over to animal torturers with a sign around their neck that says, "I'm all yours!" Let's promise not to let our beloved animals end up like Jinxy Boo: allow them outdoors only on closely supervised excursions.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
Although it made countless compassionate fans wrinkle their noses (and made Eminem remark that it stank, and made Ellen DeGeneres back away), Lady Gaga's dress made from slabs of animal flesh is likely to be a popular Halloween costume this year. So PETA has an animal-friendly idea for vegan fans who want to dress up like Gaga without making people gag-a. How about a faux-meat frock, made from cotton instead of chopped steak?
Grab some fabric paints and plain white fabric—a couple of old, oversized T-shirts or even a sheet will serve nicely. Shape your dress with scissors, safety pins, and twine, and paint it with a rainbow of rotting flesh colors—red, brown, and a dab of purple, here and there. Of course, you'll want to leave some white visible to represent the marbled fat. (Gag!) We found instructions and this video tutorial online.
Or how about fashioning a phony-bologna bikini or a Tofurky tunic? The most important accessory is a visible label to indicate that no animals suffered to make the outfit. Print out this ready-made sign to show that your costume is cruelty-free:
With a Tim Gunn–style "make it work" attitude, it should be a cinch for you to create a killer Halloween costume that no animals had to die for.
Send us photos of your creation, and we might feature it in an upcoming blog post!
Written by Karin Bennett
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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