The Cyberactivist

Guess what? Remember the poor little dog that was dumped on us back in January that we have been trying to find a home for? His picture is on the photo page, along with the other two we are trying to find homes for. Anyway, he went to a new home yesterday!

I want to thank everyone that spread the word and tried to find this little guy a good home. With your help we spread the word far and wide. Ultimately, though, we found a home for him locally. He went to a couple that Laura's mother knows that have taken in rescues before. They don't live very far away, so we will be able to visit him if we want to. We were so excited when they said they would take him because it has gotten increasingly hard to keep him safe from the big Newfoundland that wanted to kill him. In fact we got him off of him just yesterday. He had learned to climb the fence, so I was working on it to try to make it more secure when the guy showed up.

We know that he will be much happier where he is going than being in that little pen, anyway. We were so glad to get him out of there.

Also, you may notice that I put up a couple of new pictures on the photo page. I took them for a website that it soon to be up and running that features me. They wanted a picture of me with a chicken, so I got a few of those this week.

The chicken featured is one of five that we were given the responsibility of raising, since the hen was trying to peck them to death when they were cute little fuzzy babies. So, since it was still cold, we fixed them up a nice hay-lined box and brought them inside with us to start them off until they were old enough and the nights warm enough to put them outside. Of course, they have been out there for a while now. They are just about grown now, as you can tell.

I can't tell you how much we enjoyed taking care of these babies. We just spoiled them rotten, always finding them tasty goodies to add to their regular food. We went out and got them fresh grass when it started going to seed. They love to eat the seeds. But, their favorite seeds were from the chickweed growing in the yard! Funny, huh? We thought so, then wondered if that's how it got its name. Anyone know? Whether or not it is so, it is still funny that out of all things they prefer chickweed. They eat the whole plant, but prefer the seeds.

It was so much nicer to love and care for chickens rather than killing them. I had never raised baby chickens myself before. Mother hens always did that. I don't know why the hen they were with was being so mean to them, but she was, so we raised them ourselves. As a result they are very tame and love to be stroked and given lots of attention.

They also love to eat ticks, which is great! Anything that eats ticks is my friend! We would pick them off of ourselves and put them on our finger to take over to them. As soon as they could see it crawling on our finger, they would very carefully - but also very quickly! - pluck it right off our fingers, barely touching us.

They have been a lot of fun to raise. They are smart, curious, and have wonderful personalities. We really enjoyed doing this. I can't tell you how rewarding it was for me, especially.

We have been doing a lot of animal care lately. A lot better thing to do with animals than killing them. It's been absolutely wonderful.

One day when the babies were little and fuzzy Laura was standing there looking at them, watching them eat and talk to each other. She got a really troubled look on her face and asked me how the people that worked at hatcheries could do what they did. How could they look at those cute little fuzzy baby faces and kill the males and slice the beaks off the others? I tried to explain to her that you have to look at them as "product," as "logs being made into lumber," or something like that to do it. You just couldn't think of them as babies.

She frowned, looked at the babies again for a while, then turned back to me and said that she just couldn't understand it. That she could never kill babies for a living and that she just could not wrap her mind around the idea that anyone could. This is a big thing for her to say because usually she is pretty good at putting herself in the shoes of another to try to understand how and why they do the things they do and feel the way they do.

Killing cute, fuzzy baby chicks was not something she could wrap her mind around and understand.

That's a big part of why I love her so much. That and the fact that she has helped me to start caring like that again, too. I hope that one day everyone in the world looks at it the way she does and can't conceive of killing babies.

Caring is so much better than killing...