Freedom

Freedom as a baby. He was rescued from auction, his fate to be raised and slaughtered for veal.

He's only a year old now and still playful and vivacious! His poem is Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends"

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

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Walle's Hope

Walle is a precious turkey rescued from a "free-range" turkey farm. She has been de-toed and de-beaked, but she hasn't let her former abuse change her outlook on life, which is pretty darn positive.

Her poem is Emily Dickinson's "Hope" is the thing with feathers

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

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Anastasia

Anastasia is a crested Polish hen. She was abandoned at a shelter with a deformed beak that makes it hard for her to eat. Under our care at Animal Place, she is doing well.

She's a strange little bird, so her poem is Weird-Bird by Shel Sivlerstein

Birds are flyin' south for winter.
Here's the Weird-Bird headin' north,
Wings a-flappin', beak a-chatterin',
Cold head bobbin' back 'n' forth.
He says, "It's not that I like ice
Or freezin' winds and snowy ground.
It's just sometimes it's kind of nice
To be the only bird in town."

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Lucky The Pig

Lucky is the oldest resident of the sanctuary. He's looking for his Eldorado.

Edgar Allen Poe - Eldorado

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

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Tulip

Name: Tulip
Age: 2
Likes: Glaring.

William Blake - The Tyger

Tyger Tyger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile His work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

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Simon

Name: Simon
Age: Simon passed away earlier this year.

Thomas Carew - The Spring

Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost 
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost 
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream 
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream; 
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth, 
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth 
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree 
The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee. 
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring 
In triumph to the world the youthful spring. 
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array 
Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May. 
Now all things smile; only my love doth lour; 
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power 
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold 
Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold. 
The ox, which lately did for shelter fly 
Into the stall, doth now securely lie 
In open fields; and love no more is made 
By the fireside, but in the cooler shade 
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep 
Under a sycamore, and all things keep 
Time with the season; only she doth carry 
June in her eyes, in her heart January. 

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Lenny & Virginia

Names: Lenny & Virginia
Ages: Lenny is now 2 and Virginia 9
Story: Virginia rescued from a live market slaughterhouse pregnant.
Likes: Snuggling. Grazing. Avoiding human contact.

William Shakespeare - Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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Lord Tennyson

Name: Lord Tennyson
Age: 3-yrs-old
Story: Tennyson, rescued from a neglect case with 140 other roosters, hens and chicks.
Likes: Sharing scratch with friends. Blocking the entrance to the barn in the evening.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

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Murphy

Name: Murphy
Age: 1-yr-old
Likes: Head-butting Tommy, the steer. Long walks down well-trodden paths.

Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 

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Alice the sheep

Name: Alice
Age: 1 year old
Story: Raised as an FFA (Future Farmers of America) lamb. Student didn't want to send her to slaughter, rescued her instead!
Likes: Pretending to be friends with people. Green grass and sweet grain. Aiden.

Carl Sandburg

Sheep

Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep--
one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one by
one four-footed pattering up and over--one by one wiggling
their stub tails as they take the short jump and go
over--one by one silently unless for the multitudinous
drumming of their hoofs as they move on and go over--
thousands and thousands of them in the grey haze of
evening just after sundown--one by one slanting in a
long line to pass over the hill--

I am the slow, long-legged Sleepyman and I love you
sheep in Persia, California, Argentine, Australia, or
Spain--you are the thoughts that help me when I, the
Sleepyman, lay my hands on the eyelids of the children
of the world at eight o'clock every night--you thousands
and thousands of sheep in a procession of dusk making
an endless multitudinous drumming on the hills with
your hoofs.

 

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Benjamin, the pig

Name: Benjamin
Age: 5-yrs-old
Story: Found running loose in Martinez, California. Hit by a car, suffered broken ribs. Also had mange.
Likes: Staring at his blue eyes. Obviously pumpkin.

Margaret Atwood

Pig Song

This is what you changed me to:
a graypink vegetable with slug
eyes, buttock
incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip,

a skin you stuff so you may feed
in your turn, a stinking wart
of flesh, a large tuber
of blood which munches
and bloats. Very well then. Meanwhile

I have the sky, which is only half
cages, I have my weed corners,
I keep myself busy, singing
my song of roots and noses,

my song of dung. Madame,
this song offends you, these grunts
which you find oppressively sexual,
mistaking simple greed for lust.

I am yours. If you feed me garbage, 
I will sing a song of garbage.
This is a hymn. 

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Chaucer, A Rescued Rooster

Name: Chaucer
Age: 2-yrs-old
Story: Rescued from a neglect situation with 140 other birds.
Likes: Pumpkin seeds and long walks on straw.

William Shakespeare - Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee -- and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For they sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

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Margaret Turkey

Margaret
Age: 6 years old
Likes: Grapes

To Daffodils

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay as you;
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,.
As you or anything.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as to the pearls of morning's dew,
Neér to be found again. 

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