The Birds and the Beasts

Note: This post is dedicated to Steve Irwin..RIP...,
whose spirit will hopefully enter me to prevent my
hesitation with snakes in the future.

I saw "Catwoman" on HBO the other night. Man, Halle
Berry in that leather suit was the most woman I've
seen....by far....since I got to India a month ago.

Well, I am here for the animals after all, so let's
talk about the real ones in my life now. The first
day I got to the office, which is about 30 km from the
shelter, this cute ass dog with 3 legs comes barking
at me. My first thought was "Man, I'm working for an
animal shelter and every animal there is going to be
missing something." Turns out that about half or more
of the 75 dogs who live there permanently have some
kind of deformity or disease which prevent them from
being released into their old hood after being
spayed/neutered like most the dogs we take in.

Little Roo the 3 legged dog is an amazing little guy.
He has taught me a lot. I personally have never had a
close friend who was handicapped. But now, when I see
Roo, the only time I notice or even think how he's
missing a leg is when I pet him and run into his
stump. I imagine it would be the same with people. I
KNOW it is with race, trust me. I have faced that
everyday for most of the past 7 years. Once the
gawkers take a second to get to know me, I am no
longer an American or foreigner. I'm just a regular
fellow. Actually with most people it only takes one
meeting or two. But the two giggly girls my boss just
hired are having a little more difficulty getting used
to me. Anyway, they're probably already on the
"trading block" anyway. Please don't confuse this
if you are a non-sports fan reading this.
The term "trading block" is NOT a thing about slavery.
When a team wants to trade a player they say he's on
the trading block. Just to clear it up...

Back to the animals. My first visit to the shelter
went like this...You go in the gate and there's dogs
running all around. Pretty cool stuff. Our main
project with the dogs is to control the stray
population. We take in about 30 a day to get
vaccinated, sterilized, and released back where we got
them from. So I watched a dog get castrated. I
change the channel as soon as I can when I
accidentally hit the Discovery Health channel, too,
but this was pretty cool. Since then, I've seen a few
more castrations and a load of females gut cut and
tied, too. The doctors sit there and chat with me
while they snip away.

We've also got a cat house and started a snip, inject,
release program with them, too. We've also got some
600 cattle. The sacred cow is illegel to kill here,
so they are rescued from slaughter or inhumane
transportation conditions. Oh! and then we have some
monkeys. I don't think they know how to take care of
them properly- they feed them rice with yogurt- so I'm
doing some casual research and hope to consult them.

Then, we've got endangered star tortoises- saved from
poachers- and a bunch of birds gotten various ways.
Oh, cool bird story. One day we went around to pet
shops giving them the laws about selling puppies and
birds. While they were yapping in Telugu with the pet
shop manager, I peeped these birds laying on the
bottom of the cage kind of crawling around. I pointed
it out and we took them all back to the shelter.
Turns out some of the birds had had their legs chewed
up by rats.

Last story and I'm off to see Apocalypto- it's English
movie 'de semain' now but would never see it back
home. So the other day they seized a cobra from some
snakecharmers (which is illegal now in India). They
showed it to me in the pillow case they took it back
in. Just a little 6 footer, not a king cobra. They
asked if if I wanted to go and help them release it.
HELL YA! But then I saw we were going there on a
motorbike. If you know me, you know I ain't that
comfy on motorbikes. Add to that the manic Indian
traffic, and I almost forgot the cobra that would be
in my lap. Well, maybe next time. Peace out for now