In One Ear: Annotated animals

Published 6:00 am Thursday, July 24, 2025

From The Daily Astorian, July 27, 1883: 

• M. J. Kinney, of the Astoria Packing Company, has a young bear, which was sent to him from Chilcat, Alaska, and arrived in good trim on the Idaho. It will probably furnish us with another, and longer item, as soon as it gets big enough to chew up a small boy.

Note: Marshall J. Kinney, descended from an Oregon pioneer family, was president of the Astoria Packing Company which, by 1881, was often thought to be the largest cannery in the world. His second wife, Narcissa, a dedicated member of the Temperance movement, was fond of “Christianizing” members of her husband’s large corps of fishermen.

From The Daily Morning Astorian, July 24, 1885:

• Correspondence still comes in about the intolerable cow nuisance … An ordinance requiring people in the city owning cows to leave the bells off, would be thankfully received by a good many people who have to work, and who are deprived of needed sleep by this present nuisance. 

… One of the cruelest punishments ever devised is to keep a condemned culprit from sleeping. A good many of us in this city who never did anything to merit condemnation are made to suffer such punishment. Is it fair?