Ballot Initiative Events in SoCal

Five upcoming info sessions for the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act ballot initiative:

Santa Monica
Mon., November 5
Westside Pavilion Mall, Community Room B
10800 West Pico Blvd. #312
Los Angeles, CA 90064
6:00-9:00 p.m.

Ventura
Wed., November 7
Century Downtown Theatre
555 East Main Street
Ventura, CA 93001
6:00-9:00 p.m.

Marina Del Rey
Fri., November 9
6:30-9:30 p.m.
RSVP to director@humanecalifornia.org for the address and directions to this event.

Pomona/Claremont
Sat., November 10
Western University
309 E. Second Street
Pomona, CA 91766
11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.

Mission Viejo
Sun., November 11
9:30 and 11:30 a.m. services
Tapestry Unitarian Universalist Congregation
25801 Obrero Drive
Mission Viejo, CA 92691

In other news, the fire that burned 38,300 acres and 15 homes in the Santa Clarita area, damaged the home of the Gentle Barn founders, and forced the evacuation of 60+ animals, some of whom are disabled and blind, was set by a kid playing with matches.

Every Monday-Friday after-school and Saturday/Sunday activity spent caring for these animals, starting yesterday and until you turn 21, seems an appropriate mandatory minimum.

Are We There Yet?

Traveling with kids is not for the weak-willed. They wake you up at the butt-crack of dawn, the want stuff every time you pull over for gas, they won’t go to sleep, then they pee on you when you finally get to go to sleep.

God bless Annette Fisher and her Happy Trails Farm Sanctuary crew for hauling 10 hogs from OH to CA, through a tornado, blowing rain, lightening, hail, wildfires, and snow, all the way to their new home. You have to read this whole Pigs Across America travelogue, it’s amazing!

Here’s Annette beside another trailer, parked at the truck plaza on I-80 near Reno, where the Happy Trails gang had stopped to rest their own precious cargo. If you don’t look at any other postcards from the road or read any other updates from the adventure, just read this one and remember it because it’s Memorial Day weekend.

Dear Montel, Rusty, Chloe, Pearl, baby Anastasia, Milton, Mario, Sergai, Morris, and Kinko,

Tribe of Heart: PK3

Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home
Spring 2007

Watch a clip from the upcoming release and donate to support Tribe of Heart productions. You’ll meet new friends Cheri Ezell-Vandersluis and her husband Jim, former dairy goat farmers, on the The Journey Home. Today they are the directors of Maple Farm Sanctuary in Mendon, MA. In the meantime, here’s something from Paul Westerberg, backed up by The Memphis Horns, called “Can’t Hardly Wait.”

Audio clip: The Replacements: Can’t Hardly Wait

All He Needs is Pickles

Relish, the little pig from Deer Hollow Farm in Los Altos Hills, has arrived at Healing Hearts Animal Sanctuary in Wilcox, Arizona.

Relish left Deer Hollow for Healing Hearts on Valentine’s Day and will live out his life in peace and comfort. His sister Pickles, pictured below on the left, remains at Deer Hollow where she awaits an uncertain future.

James Teixeira, recreation manager for the City of Mountain View which owns and operates Deer Hollow Farm, said giving up Pickles depends on being able to replace her and “this time of year, the breeder we’re working with has a couple of groups ahead of us.” Hmmm…

There are literally hundreds of pigs like Relish and Pickles, from infants to adults, in shelters and sanctuaries all over the country waiting for permanent, caring homes in those geographic areas where they are permitted and can be comfortably accommodated, provided with good food and clean water, appropriate housing, and quality veterinary care. Replacing Pickles for the “outdoor environmental education program” in which she participates shouldn’t require a breeder’s involvement at all, should it?

But reputable shelters and sanctuaries won’t place needy animals with facilities where they are in danger of being discarded, for profit or otherwise, once their “educational value” has decreased in proportion relative to their increase age and size.

Is it actually Pickles who faces becoming a loving mother only to experience her own babies taken away and sold at a livestock auction, like her brother would certainly have been?

Is it Pickles who will be used to perpetuate the cycle of teaching children that getting rid of healthy animals for a price, who never asked to be born in the first place, is the right thing to do? We don’t know. But somebody in the Mountain View Department of Recreation does.

Contact Deer Hollow Farm by placing a call to John Marchant at 650-903-6618. Ask them to reunite Pickles with her brother at Heavenly Hearts as soon as possible and not to contribute further to the fallacy of intentional animal breeding for intentional animal death as educational, environmentally responsible, sustainable, or justifiable.

Donate to Healing Hearts Animal Sanctuary for Relish’s future and his lifelong role as a teacher and ambassador of all things pig and wonderful.

Letters That Look Better

Don’t end up in the round-file. Stamp your snail mail with truly Happy Cows, smiling sheep, and peaceful pigs. Some whiny, gun-toting, thrill-killa-types took down the HSUS’s Protecting Farm Animals stamp series at Zazzle, but you can still stand out from the op/ed response crowd with these from Farm Sanctuary.

Just look at the expression on Marigold’s hen face—enraptured with her roo fella, Beck. True clucky love.

You know you would, too, if you had half a damn chance. We get our piggly smooch on like every other day, so just stop sipping on the Haterade and start licking some stamps, people.