A Christmas Rescue

After 35 years of marriage, we don't celebrate Christmas the way most people do.  Having most of what we want, and all of what we need, we don't give each other presents—we just plan for a quiet day together.  As vegetarians, we even skip the traditional feast, instead opting for Chinese food at the local buffet.  It's one of the only restaurants open.

But always first on my list of things to do is a walk on the road with our new Border Collie, Happy.  Happy has lost much of his wildness and has come to be pretty tame.  He still chases our cats, though, so we constantly keep an eye on him.  The morning walks are a way of burning off a little energy.

This Christmas day Happy and I had hardly stepped onto the road when we were approached by another walker.  He said he didn't have a cell phone or he would call a local seabird rescue group to help a bird he had seen on the beach in front of our house.  He called it a duck.  I told him we would call, and Happy and I went out on the beach to check out the little creature.

Sure enough, there it was at the high water line, lying on the sand.  It appeared healthy, but wasn't walking or flying.  Its head was erect, and it was looking around, apparently alert.

Happy and I left him there and went back to the house to tell Charlene, the real rescuer in our family.  We'd been through these problems before, so I got out a ladder and climbed up to get down a good sized animal carrier hanging from a hook in the garage ceiling.  Charlene got a beach towel--ideal for picking up and moving a larger bird.  We picked our way through the bushes at the edge of the beach and approached the bird.  Charlene took over and had the bird in the carrier in no time.  She tried to call the wildlife rescuers, but couldn't get past a menu of messages.  "I guess I'll take him to the emergency animal veterinarian," and soon she and the bird were in her car and going up the road.

Happy got the rest of his walk while Charlene was at the vet office.  They told her that Wildlife Rescue of Venice would pick up the bird, and in the meantime, they would stabilize and hydrate the bird.  We figured we'd call the next day to find out how the bird was doing.

Christmas afternoon found us eating at the Chinese buffet, and afterwards we arrived home.  The first order of business when we return from being away is to let the dogs out into our fenced back yard.  Peachy, our Golden Doodle has trouble with steps down into our back yard, so I took her on a leash for a walk on the road.  Peachy's infallible nose led us into my neighbor's yard to the base of a tree, where I spied a little brown squirrel, clearly alive, seemingly intact, but not moving away from us.

"Not again," I said to myself once I was sure he was alive, but I couldn't deny it, I had been presented with an injured wild animal twice in one Christmas day.  I led Peachy home and roused Charlene from whatever she was doing.

At least this time I didn't have to climb a ladder to get a carrier—we hadn't yet put it away.  So Charlene used the same towel to pick up the squirrel and transferred him to the carrier and took him to Wildlife Rescue of Venice.

We were told the wildlife rescue people picked up the bird from the emergency vet's place within an hour of when we dropped him off.  They said it wasn't a duck, it was a loon.  The following day—today as I write this—the loon was reported to be recuperating.

And so, on a Christmas day, when we didn't expect to get any presents, we got two.  Charlene often says, "Never be too busy to stop and help an animal in distress."  The way she looks at things, the opportunities to help those little guys were nature's Christmas presents to us.

Les Inglis

A Quick History of the Aniplant Project

In late 2005 I was licensed to visit Cuba for a week.  I had long been interested in seeing Cuba, an island so near and yet so far.   Americans have been separated from it by more than 50 years of estrangement caused by a rigorous embargo and mutual political enmity.  My license wasn't as a tourist—I was accompanying Christina, the Humane Society International's (HSI) Latin American Manager.  Our mission was to observe the situation of Cuba's animals.

As part of HSI, Christina already had contacts in the animal protection field for us to visit.  As it turned out, the most important contact we had was Nora Garcia, the President of Aniplant, Cuba's Association for the Protection of Animals and Plants.

Aniplant (not a part of the Cuban government) is a private member organization, now over 25 years old, which does a surprising amount of good for Cuba's animals on a scant, almost nonexistent budget.  Nora showed us vet offices, a vet hospital, a pound, zoos, and even the radio station where she gives a short talk weekly on pet care,  There was so much to see we were still seeing new organizations having to do with animals a year later when I returned to Cuba with Neil Trent, HSI's Managing Director.

During that second year we became very familiar with Aniplant's activities, and we were able to conclude that Nora (nearing 25 years as Aniplant's President) was unusually skilled in animal protection, and like many Cuban organizations, Aniplant was starved for support.  If there was a way to help her, great and good changes could result for Cuba's animals.

Aniplant was sterilizing about 600 dogs and cats a year in weekend clinics tht served different Havana neighborhoods each week.  That effort was well organized but lacked resources.  They needed injectable anesthesia meds in greater quantities if they were to expand.  Havana, with its large population, had too large a population of homeless animals on the streets.

HSI has long preached that the only effective humane way to reduce homeless animal populations is through massive sterilization campaigns applied over the long term.  I began to think we could organize a small charity to support Aniplant in Cuba, especially with anesthesia meds, Aniplant could expand their sterilization clinics to the point where the stray population is significantly reduced.  Out of these thoughts our charity, The Aniplant Project (TAP) was born in 2007. Its sole purpose was and is to help Nora with support for Aniplant, Cuba.

Today in most ways TAP is as small as it was the day it was formed.  It has no employees, or real estate or other tangible assets.  It does have some donated money dedicated to help Aniplant as the need and our ability to meet it become clear.  It does have my efforts and those of Charlene, my wife,  Charlene has worked tirelessly for years to create a website, Christmas cards, brochures, our incorporation, our 501(c)(3) designation, our registration as a Florida charity and much more.  Without her efforts, TAP would have failed.  I have traveled to Cuba 7 times and Charlene once to coordinate our efforts with the work of Aniplant.  I have scribbled blogs and newsletters (as I am doing now) to try to export an appreciation Aniplant's good work and our mission to support it.  We've had a few notable successes:

·       Sterilizations increased from 600 to over 5000 per year in a few years.

·       Aniplant was able to trade its old HQ (an 8th floor apartment in a building with no working elevator), for a one floor building on a known street in Central Havana.  Much renovation has been done, and the addition of upper floors has provided expansion.

·       A prominent British veterinarian, Dick White Referrals, has equipped a modern veterinary office and surgery located in Aniplant's HQ building.

·       Dick White Referrals has established yearly conferences in Havana for Latin American veterinarians in Havana.

·       Several years of thousands of sterilizations has cut the number of strays collected from the streets and poisoned by the government.  Currently killings in this "zoonosis" program have declined by 4000 a year from the level of ten years ago.

·       Electrocution of pound animals has ceased in Cuba.

The biggest difficulty has been Cuba and Costa Rica banning Ketamine, an injectable animal anesthetic used in Aniplant's sterilization clinics. This has required substitutions and caused shortages and now threatens the rate at which sterilization work is done.

Another problem is the US Embargo against Cuba.  This requires a license for every shipment, visit, and money transfer, even for humanitarian purposes.

For the future, we have goals to help the animals:

·       We would like to provide a small car for Nora's transportation within Havana and to nearby cities.  Used cars are very expensive and new cars are almost impossible to obtain.  Now Nora uses taxies, jitneys, public buses, and the help of friends in addition to walking.  One suitable example of an old Fiat 500 cost $6000.

·       We would like to substitute humane euthanasia meds for the strychnine used in the government's zoonosis program.  This requires negotiations with the zoonosis staff, and the managers who run the program, as well as significant costs of the needed meds.

·       A boarding kennel at the HQ could become a source of income for Aniplant.

Since TAP was established, I have written much about Cuban animals.  My blog contains about 200 chapters at helpingcubananimals.blogspot.com.  I have studiously avoided expressing political opinions as the goodwill of both the US and the Cuban governments is needed for Aniplant's success.  But, thanks to President Obama's and President Castro's 12/17/14 agreement to normalize relations between the two countries, we now see a much brighter future for the animals.  It portends a relaxation of restrictions on travel and money transfers, and, above all, an eventual lifting of the US Embargo, one of the longest lasting ill-considered restraints ever in world trade.

Now, nearly ten years to the day after my first visit to Cuba, we see opportunities well beyond what we envisioned at the beginning.  May the future be a much better one for the animals.

Les Inglis, Founder, The Aniplant Project.