It was a little chilly this weekend. Icicles hanging from the brush used to clean the water buckets in the goat yard were a good clue, in case we weren’t already huddling in our winter layers!

Parker eating pizza, courtesy of Leesa

Leesa, one of the regular Saturday volunteers, brought pizza for Parker, an elderly pig who has been getting picky with his breakfast in recent weeks. General consensus is that it’s mostly that he has learned that if he refuses his breakfast he’ll get some treats. So he’s spoiled, and why not? If anyone deserves to be spoiled in their old age, it’s these great big gentle pigs, dealing with arthritis with a remarkably happy spirit. Parker is one of the sweetest pigs at the sanctuary (I say this about a lot of pigs, I realize!), and he’s the special favorite of Leesa. So when she heard that Parker had eaten with gusto a pizza brought for him last week by one of the weekday employees, she picked up a pizza for Parker for Saturday. She waited until we were all in the pig barn before feeding it to him, lucky for us!

Nellie was being pretty goofy. She’s grown so much since she came last year – she’s almost as tall as one of the adult female dairy cows, Lily, and I don’t think she’s done growing yet! When I was emptying a bucket into the spreader, one of the pigs by the fence grunted at me. That’s pig for “Hi! I’m over here and I’d love a back rub!” So as I was scratching him through the fence, Nellie was curious to see what I was doing.

She ended walking right over the trailer hitch a few minutes later, something that I don’t think any of us have ever seen before! She checked out the pig yard through the fence, but I don’t think she figured out what had drawn me over to the fence. She and Aggie were pretty cute checking it out though.

The young deer came through the chicken yard again, but spent most of the time hanging out in the woods with a couple friends. We didn’t even see the other two deer at first – they were laying down, relaxing, and it was only when they moved their heads that we noticed they were there. It’s not often we see them so relaxed. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that we weren’t hearing guns going off? Perhaps they simply know that the humans hanging out near the chicken barn are no threat at all.

Can you see the three deer in the woods? Click to see a bigger version.

Edward

It’s that time of year when the peacocks display constantly. To anyone, and everyone, and sometimes just to leaves or blades of grass.

Up until very recently, Edward was obsessed with one of the guinea hens at the sanctuary, Angie. This had been going on for a couple years. She’s mostly indifferent to him, but his devotion has caused a lot of conflict between Edward and the male guinea, Gerald. All the guinea girls are Gerald’s domain, from Gerald’s point of view.

Edward and Irene

Well, this past weekend Edward seemed a lot more interested in Tilly and Cosette, the young turkey girls! And when Irene, a little hen, was nearby, he was happy to display for her also. I moved to a vantage point to catch some of it in pixels, and it was a bit of a comedy at that point. Irene was ignoring Edward and concentrating on looking for food in the grass, so he was coming closer and closer to us both, rattling his tail feathers.

Edward and Tilly

Meanwhile Tilly was very interested in the little Flip video camera I was using (you’ll see in the video!), so she was coming up to me and pecking at the camera. Cosette approached from my other side, pulling at my coat, pulling things out of my camera bag, and finally pulling some of my hair out of the haphazard knot I tie it in.

It was really hard not to laugh! I was trying to hold the video steady all the while this was going on.

We had another visitor to the chicken yard as well. One of the deer who was born on the sanctuary in the spring, who tends to hang around the chicken yard and will walk right into one of the barns to finish off the crumbs of the leftover chicken food, came around while we were working in the chicken barn. I love seeing these sanctuary deer. I like to think that they know they’re safe at the sanctuary. If only they were safe everywhere.

My little princess, Tempest, is 13 years old now. For the most part she is doing great, and I’m thankful for that every day.

Bright-eyed, a pretty decent weight (we’ll ignore the saggy belly), full of energy and interest in the world when she’s not napping…she still isn’t thrilled that I brought in companions for her, but overall she’s very happy and her health is good.

A few months ago I noticed a little bit of a limp. Little enough that I had to watch closely for a few weeks to be sure of what I was seeing. A little stiffness, it seemed. Given that the boys chase her, and given that she’s never been a good jumper and has always been a bit of a klutz, she has missed her target now and again, so I wasn’t sure if she was just bruised or if it was something long-term.

I started to notice how careful she was when she jumped down from things. She would jump so that she’d land with both rear feet, and sometimes she’d still stumble on landing.

I noticed her start to use her left rear leg to scratch at her ear, and stop after she’d moved her foot about halfway to her ear.

I noticed that she wasn’t missing her mark just because of being a klutz, but that her ability to jump onto relatively low things, things she didn’t have a problem with just a few months ago, was diminished.

All little things, but the picture was pretty clear after a while – she likely was developing arthritis.

I did some research. Warm beds, steps to help her avoid the jumps that were sometimes just a tiny bit out of reach now, and thus avoid potential falls, joint supplements…

We went to the vet on Monday to make sure it really was arthritis and not something more serious. Or just something altogether different.

The vet did a very thorough physical examination of her joints and muscle tone. We watched her walk around the examination room. Her limp wasn’t noticeable – she’d been having a good weekend – but you could still see that she was stepping gingerly.

I agreed to have xrays done. These aren’t cheap, of course, and the vet had felt for tumors and thankfully found none, so there was no reason to think it was bone cancer or anything other than arthritis, but I wanted the xrays so we’d have something definitive. Also to have something to compare against in the future, if necessary. The peace of mind is worth the cost for me, though I think the physical exam would have likely been enough at this stage if the budget had been tight. (Pet Insurance might cover the cost of the xrays – I’ll submit a claim and see.)

The vet was excellent at explaining the xrays to me. I really appreciated the time she took to show them to me and walk me through everything we were seeing. We looked at Tempest’s good side (which looks really good), and then compared to her bad side. There was no joint swelling, but there were what the vet called “joint mice” in the knee joint, and the patella wasn’t as smooth as would be expected in a healthy joint. They hadn’t been able to get an xray of the hip on her bad side because they were worried about causing her pain by extending her leg to get the xray, but the vet expects that there were similar “joint mice” in her hip joint.

The “joint mice” are minor at this point, and her symptoms are relatively minor as well, so I decided not to see a specialist yet. The vet recommended joint supplements (which I expected and which I had ordered last week) and a few weeks of rest followed by some careful exercise to make sure she doesn’t lose muscle on her bad side. The supplements very handily come in treat-form, which hopefully she will like. It will take 4-6 weeks for the supplements to begin to have a positive effect, and she’ll need to be on them forevermore. They’re not medicine, they’re nutraceuticals, which is apparently somewhere between a nutrient and a drug. I’ll be keeping a close eye on her, monitoring her mobility and comfort. She’s a princess, so this is exactly the kind of attention she sees as her due.

There’s only so much that can be done about arthritis, from what I’ve read, though the vet did mention surgery if the arthritis gets bad. Surgery for an old cat is not ideal, however. I’m not sure if mild pain killers are an option for cats – it’s something I’ll research for the future. I did come across an article about cold laser treatment, which is non-invasive and apparently has great results. (And I also happened to see that my pet insurance covers it, which is nice!) Right now Tempest’s arthritis is mild, and hopefully the joint supplements and the rest followed by exercise will help keep her joints from further deteriorating, or at least keep the deterioration slow. So far she likes the heated bed and hopefully it will keep her comfortable when I’m not around her for her to nap on. She already likes the steps I got her and makes good use of them. I’ll continue to address potential problem areas in the condo to make them Tempest-friendly and Tempest-safe. I saw reference to a book on healing touch that I am going to look into also.

It’s hard to see our beloved companions getting older, but the march of time is relentless, so it’s up to us to make sure that their golden years are as bright and shiny as possible.

Here are a few articles I’ve found so far on arthritis in cats:

• Cat Arthritis (Web MD)
• Managing Arthritis in Cats (About.com Cats)
• Cats Do Suffer From Arthritis, Study Shows (Science Daily)
• The Lowdown on Dog and Cat Orthopedics (Dr. Patrick Mahaney)
• Pet Arthritis: Veterinarians Add Laser Therapy to Arthritis Treatment (ABC News)

This is the first time I’ve dealt with arthritis. Has anyone else had experience with arthritis in cats? Any advice to offer?

WordPress sent me stats about my blog for 2011 – 21 posts. Not even 2 per month!

I always have the intention of posting at least once a week. I am at the sanctuary every week, after all, and even if it’s just a picture or two, it seems it would be easy enough to accomplish.

I had 15,000 visits in 2011, which doesn’t sound like much (and really isn’t much compared to popular blogs), until you consider those visits were for my measly 21 posts. Though I think I would have had 14,000 visits even without those 21 new posts, since most of those visits were for posts written 4 or more years ago (two of the ones I wrote on Pet Insurance, and the one I wrote on Palm Oil). I don’t know what to think of that, really!

One of the newest arrivals to the sanctuary is a 4-month old calf, named Aggie. She’s very cute, and very sweet, though a little wary of people. She’s happy to approach to see if we have treats, and will lick our hands whether we have treats or not, but she isn’t comfortable with anything other than her nose being touched.

Here’s Terry’s intro to Aggie:

Aggie, our newest rescue, is a young Red short horn calf. She most likely escaped from the livestock auction, because she appeared at a home about a mile from the auction on sale day, as a tiny one month old calf. It seems she followed the railroad tracks to a farm where luckily a kind woman made the efforts to find her a sanctuary home. The local sheriff’s dept. and animal control wanted to take her and sell her for slaughter, but the woman kept her safe for several months until she was tame enough to lead onto a trailer. We picked her up yesterday, and she is very friendly and sweet, she loves to lick people. We can’t wait to introduce her to the other rescued cows, and here she will be able to spend the rest of her life in peace and happiness.

She spent a few days in quarantine, and once she had a clean bill of health she was introduced to the other cows. Cows being cows, it was very low drama. They were curious for a few minutes, and then it was business as usual, and that quickly Aggie was part of their community.

So far I have weekly pictures of hands in her mouth. Ah, as long as I’m entertained by the pictures I am taking, right?

Going back in time one week, I spent Christmas Day at the sanctuary, as usual. As usual there were a lot of volunteers helping out, so it’s a bit of a party, and then we have a little potluck after. The animals all get special treats as well, and below is a video of the goats and sheep getting some popcorn:

Spending the day at the sanctuary is certainly the best possible way to celebrate the day. Every day, in fact.

Really, that’s why I am there every Saturday: to celebrate the lives of these amazing beings.

Tilly and Cosette, drinking directly from the hose!

This past Saturday was the annual Thanksgiving WITH The Turkeys even at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary. Terry estimates that about 800 people came, based on the number of cars. Seriously, the worlds largest vegan potluck.

Tilly and Cosette were big hits, as expected. Victor, old man that he is, was having a great time, strutting his stuff and displaying for the crowd. He knew in the morning that it was this special day. I don’t know how they know, but they always seem to!

Victor and Gertrude, awaiting the festivities

We were pretty lucky again this year with the weather. Sunny and in the 50′s…not as nice as last year, when it got up to 70, but compared to the years when it’s been windy and in the 30′s, it’s hard to complain about sunny and 50′s!

We had help spreading hay in the pig barn...

Will Tuttle, author of the World Peace Diet, came to talk this year. We don’t usually have a speaker at this event, and it’s not really set up as a speaker event, but from my station in the chicken yard I could hear his voice so I’m sure the people at the tables and in line for the food could hear him. He seemed to have people coming up to him to talk to him after his talk, so hopefully it was a good event for him too.

Tilly and Cosette showing off to the crowd while Terry talked

At the end of the event a couple guys in the gift shop raved about him – they’re long-time fans of Will Tuttle, went vegan because of him, and were in his first class to get certified as…instructors? I wasn’t aware that there was such a thing as instructors of the World Peace Diet! I haven’t read the book yet, so I’m only vaguely aware of what it’s about. They encouraged me to visit his website, though – does anyone else feel this way? – I don’t necessarily want to spend my time reading go-vegan books since I already *am* vegan. There are a lot of other books on topics I need to be exposed to and learn more on, and I don’t have time to read everything on my list as it is! However, it’s also important to know what go-vegan books are out there and what they say, so when it comes to recommending books for people, you are recommending the “right” ones for the individual.

There's always some table dancing early on...

A friend, Valerie, had come up from the Harrisonburg area with her family, and a friend and their family. There were about five young kids between them, and when I finally found Valerie at their table, I mentioned to the kids that they should come down to the chicken yard after they were done eating and I could make sure they’d be able to meet some of the chickens and turkeys. They took me up on that, and for a while there was a small crowd of at least 8 kids wanting to ask questions, and pet the chickens and turkeys. Kids are always so curious – what does the beak feel like? What does that stuff on their head (pointing to the comb if a chicken, the wattle if a turkey) feel like? And I always tell them to feel it for themselves.

One boy was petting Alvin, a sweet rooster, while I held him, and when he felt Alvin’s wing, he asked what it was. “That’s his wing,” I told him, and the boy recoiled a little. It puzzled me for a while – why would he act like I’d said a dirty word, or tricked him into doing something, when I told him he’d just touched a chicken’s wing? The look he gave me was one I’d interpret as betrayal. I turned it over and over in my head, and finally I concluded that he made the connection for the first time between the “wings” that people eat, and the wing of a bird. I think he really did feel betrayed.

Valerie’s oldest – maybe 8 years old now? – has been vegan her entire life, and she’s a very vocal advocate for veganism, despite that (or because?) she lives in an area where they don’t know any other vegans, or at least no other ethical vegans. Valerie told her daughter that everyone at the sanctuary for the Thanksgiving event was vegan, or aspiring vegan. This awed her daughter, who then tested the theory by asking everyone she saw if they were vegan. Everyone she asked was!

I also got to hang out with Shannon of Vegan Burnout and her husband. We walked up to the pig area together, and I showed them Izzy, who is one of the smaller pigs, though huge compared to the little bundle of cuteness who joined the festivities two years ago. But Izzy is still Izzy, so even though he was busy with his pumpkin eating, he grunted his greeting as I called his name.

The pigs enjoying their pumpkins

Then it was time for the clean-up. It was pretty comical toward the end, we were gathering the clean chairs and leave the dirty ones to be wiped down the next day, except that we really couldn’t see anything. Out in the country, when the sun goes down it is *dark*! One of the staff put on her headlamp, and checked out the chairs for us. It felt like it was 9pm by the time we finished what we could, but it was only about 6pm.

Sunset...we were just getting started on the tables and chairs!

There was a guy videoing for…some show that I (naturally!) can’t remember the name of. He took a lot of footage of us cutting up the tofu and grapes and kale and bananas and melon for the turkeys’ table, and then a bunch of footage of the birds enjoying their table. He did an interview with Terry also, and maybe Will Tuttle as well? It will be online at some point, and I’ll be interested to see what he does with it!

Reading some of the comments people posted on the PSAS FB wall is really gratifying. This is the easiest event for us to put on, but it’s clear the impact is large. I think the overwhelming amount of vegan food is part of that – it’s hard to wonder what vegans eat, or feel like there’s any deprivation involved, when you’re staring table after overloaded table at a potluck for 800. One of the comments indicated that the experience “changed her life.” And so an aspiring vegan was born.

Tilly is about six months old, and she was brought to the sanctuary a few weeks ago along with Cosette after they were rescued from a home where they were neglected.

They are both extremely friendly and sweet, and they even like to be picked up and held! They love anything shiny, which means if you wear rings or watches with shiny bits, you will be very popular with these two. When I was taking Tilly’s picture, she was very very curious about the camera, and kept coming closer to examine that great big shiny piece of glass pointing at her.

As we head toward Thanksgiving, here are some posts that are well-worth reading:

• Animal Person: To My Friends at Thanksgiving
• Animal Person: On Individuals and Thanksgiving
• Animal Person: A Muscovy Thanksgiving Tale

And now that Mary has you thinking and (if you’re like me) crying a little, here’s one post (of many, many out there) with a whole bunch of delicious vegan thanksgiving recipes with scrumptious pictures.

There are also many celebrations around the country that celebrate the animals instead of killing them. (Here’s a list of quite a few: http://vegansaurus.com/post/12297993961.) If you are lucky enough to live near a sanctuary, you’ll be able to join them for a celebration WITH the turkeys. Poplar Spring has a giant potluck (quite likely the World’s Largest Vegan Potluck EVER) on the Saturday before Thanksgiving (November 19 this year), so you get to eat a huge variety of really awesome vegan food and you also get to spend some quality with the turkeys (and chickens and guineas and peacocks).

Thanksgiving’s celebrations shouldn’t be about death. Our traditions shouldn’t be about death. Mary says this about traditions: “Traditions are decided upon. They are consciously, intentionally repeated. And new ones can be created at any moment.”

Our traditions should be about love and compassion. Thankfully, we can make it so. All we have to do is decide.

The Open House weekend is the biggest weekend of the year – the biggest fundraiser at the sanctuary as well as the one that draws the biggest crowd. This year they guestimated over 1,000 people showed up. It seems to grow each year, which is definitely a positive thing!

This year Colleen Patrick-Goudreau was the speaker. I was really excited about this – the majority of the supporters of the sanctuary, and thus the majority of the visitors at the Open House, are not vegan. Many are not even vegetarian. Colleen has a great message and delivery for that kind of crowd. And her recent book, 30 Day Vegan Challenge, was really the perfect thing to be pushing at the sanctuary, at this event, at this crowd.

The event this year was very different for me than in the past. Usually I spend my day in the chicken yard, which I love even though talking to people all day long is exhausting for this poor little introvert. This year Terry asked me to give Colleen a tour of the sanctuary before her talk, and I’m so glad Terry had Colleen get there early – she was busy signing and selling books from the moment her talk ended until she left to go to the airport! If she hadn’t gotten there early, she would not have had a chance to meet any of the animals, and she loves sanctuaries, loves the animals and their stories.

I managed to get her around the sanctuary to see most of the animals (the cows and horses and mules were off in the woods somewhere) within the allotted time. I had expected that I’d give the tour and skedaddle to the chicken yard, coming back up for Colleen’s talk, but in retrospect it was probably unlikely for that to have happened because having given her the sanctuary tour, I naturally fell into the role of doing whatever was needed to help Colleen, which means this was the first year I was able to listen to the speaker and see what goes on during the rest of the event!

And her talk was even more awesome than I had anticipated. If you’ve heard her talk – at an AR conference, another speaking event, or her podcasts – you know the warmth she brings to these talks. She talked of compassion, and of herself as a child, and of experiences with sanctuary animals in California. She talked quite a bit about the importance of sanctuaries and the impact that getting to know the individual animals can have in awakening our compassion – very different than learning statistics that can be hard to relate to. She also recited her “Prayer for Humans on Behalf of Animals,” which is powerful always, and brought tears to my eyes to hear it recited at the sanctuary.

The overall tone and message is essentially that she is like all of us – a caring, compassionate person. And that she knows that we can all be vegan, and she’s going to help us get there.

I know that many people came to the event specifically because Colleen was there. (I heard several people mention it while talking to her during the book signing.) Whether while signing books or simply while walking around the event, people were constantly stopping to tell her that she had changed their lives, that they listened to her podcasts and went vegan. It was very inspiring to hear this, to see how much of an impact she has on so many lives.

But there were also many people there who had never heard Colleen talk or even necessarily heard of her and her books, and it seemed that several of the conversations during the book signing indicated that people had been inspired right then to go vegan. One guy turned to his girlfriend and said, “will you take the 30 day vegan challenge with me?”

It was a really wonderful day, and luckily my friends who normally find me down at the chicken yard found me even though I wasn’t where I expected to be! Also, the world’s cutest 5-year-old gave me a gingerbread man that she helped make herself. You just can’t beat that!

And at the end of the day, there was cake from Brunie‘s, a vegan bakery in Baltimore. Delicious!

Goal for future events: PHOTOS! I tend to take almost zero pictures during events, and I generally regret it. This year’s open house is no exception! Colleen has some great photos from during our tour, though, so check out her Poplar Spring album on Facebook!

There are discounts available by using coupon codes. These codes change each month, so I’ll just link in the link to the page where they post their coupon codes: http://www.lulu.com/current_specials?cid=eng_advent_specials_112210

The calendar can be found here: http://www.lulu.com/product/calendar/poplar-spring-animal-sanctuary-2012/18498094

If you follow the link, you can see a full preview. It’s a 13-month calendar (Jan 2012 – Jan 2013), and the first 12 months have portraits of Poplar Spring residents with their names and stories. The 13th month has information about Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary itself.

The cover isn’t repeated in the calendar, so I’ll tell their names and stories in this post. The black bunny is Allison. She’s the oldest bunny at the sanctuary right now, and she was found as a stray in New Jersey. The white bunny is Twinkle, one of two bunnies dropped off at the sanctuary by someone who had them as pets, and decided that he didn’t want to deal with them anymore. He said that if the sanctuary didn’t take them he was going to release them into the woods.

And as awful as that sounds, at least he gave them a chance by (rudely) showing up at the sanctuary to dump them. It sort of gives you an idea of how many bunnies likely are just dumped when Easter is long-past and the kids are bored with them.

I have been meaning to post about the Open House for the past three weeks, I am very excited about how it went, and hearing Colleen talk, etc etc, but I haven’t had time to get a post up because I’ve been working on the 2012 PSAS calendar.

I am surprised every year at how much time it takes. I know, logically, that it will take hours and hours, because I’ve done it before, and yet…it never seems like it should. Or that it will. And yet it does.

And though it’s still just mid-October and you might think I was ahead of the game by getting it done now, I’m actually behind! I use Lulu (a print-on-demand service), and so after I get the draft finalized, I have to order a copy…and wait for it to print and ship…and then I have to make whatever necessary adjustments, order another copy, and only then are we ready to make the big order, which we want in time for the Thanksgiving For The Turkeys event…which is November 19th this year.

So, I’m behind. The first draft should be arriving on Tuesday, and I’m (as always) nervous and excited. I hope (as always) that I don’t hate it, because I kind of don’t have time to do much about it if I do.

The majority of the work on it is done, though, so you can expect a post about the Open House soon. And then I’ll be back to the regular program of irregularly unscheduled posts about the sanctuary.

As soon as I got to the sanctuary on Saturday one of the other volunteers came over to show me a gorgeous box turtle he’d rescued from the road. He’d decided to bring the turtle along with him to the sanctuary instead of just helping him across the road. There’s a little stream near the chicken barn, and that’s where the turtle, named Ben after his rescuer, was released. Don’t they look happy? Well, I would guess Ben the turtle was even happier when he had his feet on the ground near the stream in the woods!

The long-awaited and gorgeous new sheep barn has been in place for about a month, but it was only last week that it was ready to be used. So Saturday was the first time we got to see the sheep hanging out in their new barn. It was so cute, they didn’t seem to know what to do with all that space! And no goats to pester them!

It’s interesting to watch them become accustomed to new routines and places/buildings. We’re all creatures of habit, and this certainly makes it easier to care for animals (especially herds of animals!), but adjustments do take time. Watching those adjustments is seeing critical mass in action.

I’m reminded of my cats. I feed each of them in a different room – Jake in the kitchen, Tempest in the living room, and Tristan in the bedroom. Tristan practically dances in impatience as I put the other food bowls down, and he always lunges for Jake’s food bowl at first, before catching himself and remembering that his food will be elsewhere. Then he runs ahead to where I put Tempest’s bowl down, and finally he runs to the bedroom to wait for me, crying the whole time.

All of the animals at the sanctuary are, in various ways, so much like my cats. Those who get medication know that it’s coming, and they’ll sometimes remind Terry and Dave if there’s a delay. The pigs will be sleeping peacefully in the barn, but when they hear the sounds of the food bins being opened, they race out of the barn and into the yard where they know the food will soon appear. The sheep and goats and chickens know their routines, know which stalls are theirs, and it’s a bit like a dance.

To top it off, each caretaker has their own variations on the routines, and the animals not only know the general routine, they know what to expect of each individual. Confusion ensues if, for instance, Dave tries to do things in the exact same way that the farm manager does. The animals know better!

They even know days of the week. There was a volunteer who came on Sundays, and who would bring treats for the goats and sheep. On weeks when she wasn’t able to come, the goats and sheep would be complaining starting mid-morning that Sunday, wanting their treats! But only on Sundays…

After all the rains last week we were expecting the pig yard to be a mud pit. It wasn’t actually too bad!

But the mud puddle was quite healthy, and making the pigs very happy.

That cutie on the left? That’s Harley! I don’t end up with many pictures of him, since he always seems to be off in the far pasture, so I was happy to see his cute little black-nosed floppy-eared mug.

When we were leaving the horse barn, two of the other volunteers noticed a very small snake who seemed to be doing not so great. We think he was stepped on. Terry brought him outside to the side of the barn, and we watched him a bit. He was holding his head funny, and kept opening his mouth really wide, and then closing it. He also had what looked like a cut on his side, but it might have been more an abrasion than a cut. Eventually he started moving a bit faster, and keeping his mouth closed, but flicking his tongue. Acting more normal, though he did still hold his head kind of funny. Terry says that sometimes when they are injured they are in a sort of shock, but they’ll perk up after a few minutes. That’s exactly what seemed to be happening with this little guy, so we left him alone to recover.

A couple weeks ago a half-grown orphan goose, raised by a local wildlife rehabber, Second Chance, was released at the sanctuary. She was younger than the other orphans Second Chance was raising, and she ended up imprinting a little on humans. So she followed us as we did our chores last week. She seemed to like Ben the best, and followed him around, running when she needed to catch up.

Poplar Spring is a wildlife sanctuary as well as a farmed animal sanctuary, and they often work with Second Chance. Especially for geese like Isa, who are a little imprinted on humans, the sanctuary is the perfect half-way home. There are wild geese in abundance, but there are also the unflighted canadian geese and domestic geese who are permanent residences. Isa will get to choose. She will learn what she needs to know about being a goose from the visiting geese, and if she decides to stay, she’ll have a safe place where people will look out for her.