Alcohol Ban Tough on Animals and the Old

When Cyril Ramaphosa banned alcohol sales last week, was he or his Covid Commandos not thinking about the animals? I mean, had not one in that motley crew of meat-headed officials ever listened to The Carpenters…..”bless the beasts and the children/ for in this world they have no voice/ they have no choice… “

The “beasts” – I prefer animals – are in for a torrid time now that alcohol has once again been declared undesirable for reasons only the government and their fellow prohibitionist tyrants, such as Dr Charles “Get me a Job at WHO” Parry can explain. For it might not be a well-known fact, but animals, too, find certain benefits in the imbibing of alcohol.

Take Babi, the ginger Tom cat who arrived at a Free State veterinary clinic last week with the Dark Angel looming above his feline head, ready to take him to the great cattery in the sky. For Babi had taken it upon himself to lick on some anti-freeze, that stuff car-engines need to thaw on cold nights. Why the cat had even ventured towards mistaking anti-freeze for cream or fish-blood, I would not know. Thing is, this poisonous stuff was putting Babi under.

The vets knew that this kind of intoxication could only be neutralised by dosing the cat with ethanol. And with no ethanol around, a bottle of Romanoff vodka was procured. After a dose of one-part vodka to three-parts saline water, the poison was rendered harmless, and Babi was back on his feet looking for the next female (feline) to ravish or a rare South African creature of the feathered kind to maul to death.

Now, I ask Ramaphosa and his Covid-cockeyes, if this were to happen again and these vets were prohibited from obtaining vodka, how would you feel about the death of Badi through painful anti-freeze poisoning? Yes, there will be blood and cat hair on your hands. Many of you comrades are already pussy-whipped, but this will be a bitter pill to swallow.

Other creatures are known to find exposure to alcohol beneficial to their health. The late Gerald Morkel, one-time Premier of the Western Cape, was a keen pigeon-racer who kept his flock in rude health thanks to Cape brandy.

He personally told me how brandy was an elixir with myriad health benefits, especially for his pigeons, who often displayed signs of mental and physical exhaustion after long training flights. “You’d get to a bird lying on the floor of its cage, tired and listless with a dead glaze over his eyes, its wings tremouring and feathers dull,” said Morkel.

“Then I’d go to the food cupboard where I kept a special pigeon-revival muti: maize kernels that had been soaked in brandy. Man, I’d pop one or two kernels in the beak of the tired pigeon, whose eyes lightened up upon smelling the uniquely scented grain. He’d eat the brandy-laced corn, jump to his feet and give me a loud squawk, an indication of him being ready to fly. And then he’d be out of the cage like a bat-out-of-hell, fit as a fiddle. Okay, the first few loops he flew would be a bit wonky, but then he’d chart his course and rip through the air like a comet – probably thinking that when he comes home, he’d get another dop.”

While I am on the topic, also note the enormously positive effect brandy has on the aged. I once contacted the legendary medical journalist Dr Jan van Elfen, who has also passed to greener pastures, about the health benefits of brandy. Upon which he immediately said he’d saved many old lives with a tot of the Cape’s finest spirit.

And no, not through the concocting of a special dosage. “When sipped, the true medicinal benefits of brandy take forever to reach the tired organs of an old person,” Dr Van Elfen told me. “So, when doing my rounds at the old-aged homes and coming across a person weak of body and gloomy of mind due to thoughts of death and such, I’d take out a syringe. Pop a teaspoon of brandy and a bit of water in and needle the brandy straight into the veins. That was guaranteed to kick-start the old body, jolting him or her into action and leaving them all fired up and looking at life with a new sense of being. It was quite emotional, had me in tears sometimes. But nothing a good drink couldn’t sort out, via glass and bottle this time.”