Introducing Miss July

If I had to be reincarnated as an animal, I am pretty sure that I would want to be a goat.  I can't put my finger on what it is, but I find them irresistible in spirit and joie de vivre.  Nowhere is this more evident than in July.  However, this wasn't always the case.

July arrived at the Farm in questionable condition.  She takes her name from the month in which she was rescued from a horrible fate of neglect prior to an even more horrible fate of being eaten.  With all the work to be done at the Farm, I have to admit that I didn't take much notice of July or her pygmy goat friends who arrived with her at first.  In fact, it wasn't until something was obviously wrong with July that I began to spend one-on-one time with her.  Since no one knew her exact history, the fact that she started to have difficulty walking presented a bit of a mystery.  Over time, it became apparent that her issues went beyond arthritis and were probably neurological due to the nature of her gait.  Soon, she couldn't even stand anymore and it was time for urgent action.  I will always remember trying to visit with her the day before her trip to UC Davis.  She was in the north stall of the Turkey Barn and as I entered she tried to get up.  Her attempts became frantic and my heart went out to this little creature who seemed to be losing her will to live.

When she arrived at UC Davis they began treatment for an abscess near her spine, but the outlook was cautious.  While it seemed that this was likely the cause of her rear leg lameness, it was unknown whether the damage could be reversed or whether it was permanent.  She stayed at UC Davis for monitoring for several days before she came back to us.  Every day I checked the medical update board for any news, but none of it was particularly good.

After returning, July was moved to live with the geriatric sheep in the hopes that they would keep her company.  She began a regimen of physical therapy involving both assisted walking and range of motion, but as time passed, it seemed like her quality of life was declining.  She would roll onto her right side and not be able to right herself and she wasn't showing any signs of improved strength in her rear legs.  A decision on what was best for her was looming and her demeanor did not bode well.

It was on the afternoon of Friday, July 29th that I was able to make a joyful entry in July's physical therapy log.  While I was walking her around with her rear legs held up, I could feel that she was trying to move them.  The movement was devoid of coordination, but it was movement and a positive change in her condition.  Suddenly things began to change dramatically.  By the end of the weekend, more care givers were reporting the same experience.  July had not given up on herself and we were going to be in it to win it.

In the days and weeks to come the PT log is filled with entries detailing her remarkable progress.  The writers' happiness practically jumps of the page and there are several instances of emoticons and smiley faces.  Soon July was standing on her own for brief periods, showing the ability to hold her weight.  We set about converting a cart for her in order to allow her to get around on her own.  I joked with fellow care givers that as soon as I finished with it, she probably wouldn't need it anymore - and I was right.  She only used it in its finished form once for a test fitting.  After that, she proved not to need it anymore.  As much as I liked the cart (Including the bumper sticker which seemed perfect for a goat with horns), for once I was glad to have my work be in vain. 

She still needed help to get up, but once she was standing, she could take some tentative steps.  By now I was spending my free time at lunch and on breaks with her and started bringing treats such as grapes.  I used these to entice her to walk forward and found that she was able to make more progress.  My time combined with the countless hours spent by the other care givers and interns was showing remarkable results. 

This was an amazing time for me.  My first connection at Farm Sanctuary had been with Coco the goat who went through a rough recuperation.  I had marvelled at the dedication of the organization to her recovery.  I had visited her along the way and marked her progress, but I had not really been involved in making the miracle happen.  Here, with July, I was really part of the team that was doing it.

It was a few weeks ago when it happened.  I was cleaning July's bed in her stall when I caught a glimpse of something in the doorway.  It was immediately familiar as July's face.  Although I had left her on her bed outside after her PT, she had evidently gotten up on her own and come to visit me in the barn.  My emotions felt electric and when Leanne showed up at the other door, I was so excited to tell her.  As I did so, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I had what could only be referred to as a deja vu

I have not mentioned this before because I do not want in anyway to overshadow the tireless efforts of the human care givers who worked so hard on July's recovery.  Without this, she probably wouldn't be with us today.  However, whenever I hear people refer to July as the "Miracle Goat", I feel the need to give thanks and to acknowledge that I believe that the nickname couldn't be more accurate.

July's miracle is still playing out and she continues to set new personal milestones.  She is able to get around all by herself and she can even play the classic goat game of "head-butting".  Perhaps most importantly, she has shown that she can smile and that makes it all worth it!

Meet Madeline

In my opinion, there are very few things in the world that could match the cuteness of a baby goat.  They are the perfect combination of size, curiosity, and vivacity.  Madeline was my first experience with a kid (baby goat) and she will always be special to me.

She arrived on the Farm the first month that I was working there and for a long time I found myself spending every break and every lunch sitting with her.  With her curled up in my lap sleeping or frolicking around me, or on some days climbing me, nothing else mattered.  No worldly care could crack through that shell of bliss.  I didn't even mind when she was going through her "hair nibbling" phase. 

With all baby animals with unknown histories, there is always a risk of getting attached to them.  In Madeline's case, her incoming prognosis had been pretty bleak indeed.  When I first saw her, I was expecting a pathetic little animal that had given up based on what we had heard, but that was never the case with her.  While Madeline undoubtedly benefited from the medication that she was provided during her recovery, I have to believe that she benefited from the love she received as well; not just from me, but from everyone who ever met her.  With that love in her corner, she became indomitable.  The memories of those hours spent with her will never leave me.  They served to reaffirm that I had made the right decision in coming here and put any lingering doubts to rest for good.

It has been almost exactly five months since I first met Madeline and I am happy to say that she is doing well with little evidence of her early struggles.  Her little horn buds have blossomed into real horns that she unfortunately seems to love sharpening.  She loves her strawberries and grapes and gets feisty sometimes if you scratch her butt.  When the mood hits her, she likes to rear up and headbutt my hand, but her tail wagging belies her tough girl swagger.  She will always be my "baby goat" even as she pulls away and finds that she had more in common with her small herd of Noel and Justin with whom she is spending time before being introduced to the other goats.  I will miss both her excited bleats when she sees me and her sad bleats when I have to leave, but it will be a testament to the hard work of the staff when she has this opportunity to grow up (And someday soon she may grow into those ears of hers).

A Lesson from Linus

Since my last post was about pig barn cleaning, I figured it would be appropriate to share a related tale here, this time about a recent experience I had with Linus, another one of Farm Sanctuary's fine pig gentlemen.

Having finished cleaning the Rescue Barn, I was driving the tractor to the Pig Barn for the daily cleaning.  Since the pigs understand that the sound of the tractor in the morning is the prelude to the wake-up call, it is not uncommon to see a couple pigs heading down to the pond of their own accord (This is a beautiful sight when you see it because it means less effort to clear the barn).  On this day, however, Linus was making a march from the pond to the barn.  I called out to him that he was going the wrong way, but he would not be dissuaded.  He seemed to be a pig on a mission.

When I got to the Pig Barn, I dismounted the tractor and walked inside.  Linus walked right over to me and brushed against me as I was arranging my cleaning implements.  The sudden cold I felt on my side and legs informed me that I was suddenly quite muddy from our encounter.  I didn't really need to look down to confirm this, but I did just as Linus was walking away and heading back out of the barn.

I will never know what Linus's objective was, but this seemed to be a deliberate act.  Faced with the need to interpret it, I have chosen to believe the following.  Since I spend a lot of time with the pigs making them do things that they would prefer not to do, like leaving the barn so I can clean, I try to give them treats and spend time with them to make up for it and keep our relationships in balance.  The previous day, I had shared a banana with Linus by the pond in the afternoon.  I like to believe that Linus was doing some sharing in return, using the only commodity he had which was the mud he had been rolling in and which he clearly liked.  Viewed that way, it was a kind gesture.

Everyday, if not every hour, we are faced with a world which bombards us with similar messages where we may not always know the motives.  Faced with the choice, it is all to easy to assign negative intonations to them and assume that the world and its inhabitants are crueler than they actually are.  A whole other world opens up to us if we choose to view these ambiguous situations in a different light and assume the best rather than the worse.  I had actually been studying this concept and it was great to see my mind starting to apply it.  I know it makes me feel better and more at one with things.  How about you?

An Unstoppable Force and an Immovable Object

Since my last several posts have been more about philosophical things, I feel like it is time to kick off a series of animal related posts since I suspect that that is what anyone who visits this is looking for.  I also love to write them, but I want to make sure to share the character of my animal friends as I do so and this takes time to learn.

Meet Cesak.  He is a wonderful pig and over the past few months has become one of my favorites. 

He lives with 12 other pigs in the Pig Barn and I find him to be quite exceptional.  He has this wonderful curly hair which makes him easy to spot and really beautiful eyes.  His eyes are particularly striking and I would challenge anyone to gaze into them and try to tell me that there is nothing going on behind them.

So, what does any of this have to do with the title of this post?  Well, I am getting to that.  One of my frequent jobs at Farm Sanctuary is to clean the Pig Barn.  This is actually part of the daily ritual and in order to do it, there can't be any pigs inside.  In my experience, there are three things that pigs love more than anything in the world: 1) Food, 2) Sleep, and 3) A nice warm nest in which to do #2 (Sleep, that is, they prefer to do their "dirty business" outside).  When you consider that none of the above preferences involve a morning wake-up call and a march down to the pond, you can begin to imagine what fun it can be to be the deliverer of said wake-up call.  The procedure for escorting the pigs down to the pond generally involves some loud talking and the use of "pig boards" (Red plastic boards that are used to guide the pigs and as a barrier between them and you).  The walk from the barn to the pond gate is about thirty yards, give or take.

In every group, there has to be a challenge and in the past couple months, Cesak has stepped up to fill the role.  He does not want to get up, or leave the barn, or walk to the pond and he loudly protests for the entire duration of the mandatory process.  Add to that the fact that Cesak is probably in the five-hundred pound range (I am guessing on this, but being conservative) and you can easily start to see the visual of the "immovable object". 

Part of my job is to be the "unstoppable force".  As I previously mentioned, I think the world of Cesak but in our daily struggle it is imperative that I win every time.  Pigs are very smart and if I let him stay in his bed one day or try to lure him down to the pond with a treat, he will expect this everyday and the wake-up call will be more difficult for me and each of my co-workers.  While my victory is important, I also try to look at this from Cesak's perspective.  In his mind, I expect that I am violating two of the most basic laws of pig behavior: 1) The loudest pigs generally gets his/her way and 2) If that fails, the biggest strongest pig always wins.  Cesak is much louder, bigger, and stronger than me, and yet I fail to yield.  This must be quite perplexing. 

To an unseasoned observer, I am sure that this exercise would look quite amusing as our battle of wills plays out everyday.  It may even seem scary to someone who is not accustomed to the sounds that pigs make when they are not getting their way (To say that they are vocal would be a huge understatement) and hears the squeals, growls, and bellows for the first time.  What is especially notable is that Cesak never tries to hurt me.  I am positive that Cesak knows that he could do so.  He has the edge on me in many areas, but it never becomes that type of battle.  I like to believe that he understands at some level what this is all about, but that it is a game that we play.  We both want to win, but only the unstoppable force can. 

Every day as I watch Cesak walk through the pond gate, I congratulate him everyday on his game play and let him know that I look forward to tomorrow's match.  At this point, we are still friends and I give him a hug or a good back scratch.  See you tomorrow Cesak, same time, same place!



Lies My Cellphone Told Me

I consider myself to be a reluctant user of technology.  I have to admit that I have a computer, an iPod, and various other electronic implements, but as a whole I do not see that these things serve to make our lives better.  In more ways than I can count, I feel that they make our lives worse by creating an artificiality to our relationships and substituting quantity for quality.  I think that the reason why I love many old TV shows (Yes, I know TV is technology) is the fact that they paint a picture of a world that predates all of this digital insanity.  Until yesterday, however, I had seen the technology as a rather passive part of this.  Now that has changed.

Last week my watch battery died.  Having given up my collection of Legos and Transformers, watches with dead batteries are about the last thing that I seem to accumulate.  Since I hadn't felt inclined to go to the store, I have been using my cellphone as a "pocket watch".  I was accustomed to that from my past life and it seemed like a good temporary solution.  I started to question this the very first day.

As I used my phone to tell time, I was alarmed to find that my phone would occasionally be in the middle of a call when I would flip it open.  Sometimes the call would have been going on for a few minutes, sometimes for almost an hour.  I couldn't tell if my phone was originating the call or whether it was automatically answering an incoming call, but it always involved a "Restricted" number.  As someone who despises these calls since they are generally from telemarketers, I was already distressed but in the past I had always been required to answer the phone. 

With the recent news about "phone hacking", I wondered if that was what was going on here.  While I am a nobody, there is always the chance that my phone number had once belonged to a somebody or that the caller misdialed, albeit consistently.  Was someone trying to access my phone?  Was someone activating my phone and listening in on my conversations?  Having watched far too many movies about surveillance and having no trust for the entity we call "government", I had to wonder about this.

I looked for information about this on-line and found nothing (Which is an odd feeling).  I called Verizon twice and was told that without a second phone to continue the discussion from, there was little that they could do except to recommend removing and replacing the battery.  In fairness, I must say that Verizon customer service was prompt, friendly, didn't give me the run around, and had mastery of the English language (Hmm, maybe that should have made me suspicious too).

Anyway, I tried the battery removal trip and had some hope that this would be the fix based on how much straw was in the battery compartment.  Unfortunately, this did little to fix the problem - If anything it was getting worse.  By Saturday, I was ready to throw the phone away because of its misbehavior.  Before I did so, I thought that I would give one last search through the menu options to see if there was anything that may be causing this.  I searched through everything I could before stumbling across an option that required me to scroll down.  The option was called "Fake Call".  I have included a picture of it below.

After opening this option, I discovered that this option was on by default and that it was activated by pressing the speaker phone button and holding it.  This is what was happening in my pocket as I leaned against things and the button, which is on the side of the phone, was depressed.  It all made sense and I had no issues for the rest of the day after disabling this "feature".

My sense of triumph over my situation was short-lived.  I quickly began to lament the fact that we live in a world where something like this would exist.  Creating technology with inherent dishonesty as a means of enabling ourselves to be deceptive sure seems like it should be a sign of the apocalypse.  Furthermore, the creation of such a thing clearly implies a significant demand for it.  I believe that we should all be ashamed that there is an aspiration to make lying easier.  At least it will give you something to think about the next time a "friend", date, or co-worker interrupts a conversation for an emergency call.