HONOLULU (AP) -

A Windward Oahu man has been charged with 55 counts of animal cruelty after 64 dogs were removed from his Kahaluu home last Saturday.

Hawaiian Humane Society spokeswoman Jacque Smith says James Montgomery was charged with animal cruelty for each adult dog seized.

Several newborn puppies were among the dogs seized, and two later died.

No date has been set for the arraignment.

Humane Society officials say they tried to work with Montgomery and his wife to improve living conditions for the dogs.

Smith says the animals were seized when investigators' recommendations were not followed.

Montgomery also could face child endangerment charges.

The couple's three children -- ages 9, 12, and 14 -- were removed from the Mahakea Road home on Tuesday and placed in emergency foster care.

Police say the residence was extremely unsanitary and unhealthy, and was littered with trash and animal feces.

Source: http://www.khnl.com/Global/story.asp?S=2898686

'In this corner, standing one foot, one inch tall...'

Phil Hudgins, Senior Editor, CNI Newspapers

Picture this: You're in Norman, Okla., and you're looking for something to do. You've been to the Lloyd Noble Center to hear the sweet voices of the Fifth Grade Chorus, but you want some excitement.

You spot a sign on a telephone pole: "Boxing Tonight." You check out the time and find your way there.

You buy a ticket and enter the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. The fight is about to begin. The boxing ring is a bit small, you notice, so you ask the guy next to you how old these boxers are. "Oh," he says, "'bout 6 months old, I expect."

That's when you realize, just as the fighters enter the ring, that this is no ordinary boxing match. These fighters are chicken.

Literally. They stand about a foot high, have small heads like a peacock, the bodies of a double-crested cormorant, deep eyes, long upper legs, short lower legs, wings neatly wrapped like a shell, and long, strong necks.

Cockfighting, outlawed in Oklahoma in 2002, has made a comeback.

None of this is true, of course. But it could be, if State Sen. Frank Shurden has his way.

Shurden, according to the Associated Press, wants to bring back chicken fights, but with safety measures. Instead of wearing razor-like spurs, the roosters would wear tiny boxing gloves on their feet. That way, the senator says, the chickens could fight without shedding blood.

Now, lest you think I'm making fun of Oklahoma, let me say that a push to legalize cockfighting - or dogfighting or canary fighting or possum fighting - is possible in any state where good old boys live. Where two or more GOB's are gathered, there some kind of weird activity will be also.

For example, Gainesville, Ga., where I grew up, is a sanctuary for 20,000 good old boys, give or take a few thousand, and millions of chickens. Just think what could happen if the GOB's were allowed to develop a rooster with Mike Tyson's meanness and Barry Bond's steroids. He could beat the socks off any cocky little rooster from Oklahoma.

But, back to Oklahoma, where Sen. Shurden says cockfighting with gloves could save the state's gamefowl industry, which I suppose is something you'd want to save. Removing blood from the sport, he says, eliminates the main argument animal-rights groups use against cockfighting.

So, PETA members, what do you think? Would gloves and muffs take away the cruelty? No beast gets hurt, unless there's a fight in the bleachers.

It's a stupid idea, isn't it? Sort of like putting huge pads and spring-loaded rubber bumpers on racing cars.

Forget it, Senator. Either rehabilitate those roosters or barbecue 'em.

Not bettin' on rooster boxin'

By Rebecca Bauman, Staff Writer

My Grandma Nell is a Texan, tried and true. She doesn't feel that there's much cause for change in the world, and when I ask her to stop calling the little people who run her local flower shop "midgets," she'll twitch her nose, sigh and protest: "Well, that's what they are!"

Grandma doesn't want to modernize; she wants to sustain older and rather decrepit thoughts and ideas and phrases. When she'd mention the phrase "cockfighting" I'd always snicker, and that woman would spank me blue for having a dirty mind.

I doubt, though, that even Grandma Nell could refute that there's something pretty sick about what's going on in Oklahoma.

The state's legislature outlawed the "blood sport" of cockfighting back in 2002, making Oklahoma one of the last states to hop on the pro-rooster bandwagon. However, in banning the fights, some officials claim that the state has been deprived of a business that's worth an estimated $100 million.

Thank heavens, then, for Oklahoma Sen. Frank Shurden. The man has gallantly leapt into the ring (just in time for the February legislative session) with a solution that he feels will preserve the livelihood of not only a hearty cluster of his home state's population, but the dignity and pride a cockerel feels in ripping a fellow fowl's beak off with his toes.

Shurden is now pushing for a bill that will allow gamecocks to participate in fights without bloodshed - events in which sparring roosters will wear "little boxing gloves" as well as lightweight, chicken-sized vests embroidered with electronic sensors that record hits and help keep each bird's score.

Shurden says he knows a guy in California who'll make the vests cheap, allowing his proposed Oklahoma Pari-mutuel Gamecock Boxing Act to take off like a chicken with a jet engine strapped to its tukus.

For those of you who aren't familiar with cockfights, allow me to explain what goes on at these get-togethers:

Normally, two cockerels are suited with razor blades. The blades are attached to their feet, and the roosters are then thrown into a ring, agitated and pushed to peck and slash at each other until one dies. It's a betting game - spectators put money on the bird that they think will survive.

What Shurden proposes is that fight promoters nix the razors and, instead, slip tiny boxing gloves over each rooster's natural spurs.

Now, folks, I'm a vegetarian, but even I would lay my money down to see a rooster wearing leather mittens. I'd never say that cockfighting had much class before, and I'd never want to deny some yokel the right to lose his money on a bird named "The Chubb."

However, I can't imagine Sen. Shurden being absolutely sincere in his promotion of this idea. As anyone who's ever seen a cockfight knows, it ain't about the sport - it's about the blood.

Boxing gloves on sparring cocks will work the day my Uncle Bernie goes deer hunting with a Nerf bat, the day my cousin Leon goes fishing with salad tongs, or the day my Grandpa Willard rids his house of mice by playing a Phil Collins album.

Statesmen used to get what they wanted with the use of a nice, clean filibuster. Now they suit barnyard animals with hats and gloves and strings of pearls and say:

"You want compromise? Look how much better things are when we all comprise!"

Flannel-clad, pitchfork-carrying farmers across the four-states will weep, and no one wants to see an old man cry.

Granted, I'm happy that politicians are getting creative. But it's so-called creativity that could very well be launching the lot of our Social Security into the spastic world of Wall Street. It's creativity that got Reaganomics humming through the 80's and it's hard core creativity that made Ross Perot a viable presidential candidate.

I don't think that it's best to dress up our birds before we dress down the manipulative schlock we see in modern American politics. Let me see the preserved green in Alaska's proposed oil fields before I see the red of a rooster doing his best Tyson impression. (Which, I have to admit, would probably be dead on.)

I think Grandma Nell would admit that Sen. Shurden should be tarred and feathered for wasting our time.

And then he can box with his fellow fowl.