March 31, 2009

Why We Euthanize

In my first year working at a grossly substandard animal shelter in Maryland, I forced myself to go in early to euthanize dogs by holding them in my arms and gently helping them escape an uncaring world without trauma or pain and to spare them from being stabbed haphazardly, while they were fully conscious, terrified and aware, in the general vicinity of their hearts with needles blunt from reuse and left to thrash on the floor until they finally died by the callous people who would arrive later to do the job.

I always wonder how anyone cannot recognize that there is a world of difference between painlessly euthanizing animals out of compassion, aged, injured, sick, and dying animals whose guardians can't afford euthanasia, for instance, as PETA does, and causing them to suffer terror, pain, and a prolonged death while struggling to survive on the streets, at the hands of untrained and uncaring "technicians," or animal abusers.

It's easy to point the finger at those who are forced to do the "dirty work" caused by a throwaway society's casual acquisition and breeding of dogs and cats who end up homeless and unwanted, but at PETA, we will never turn our backs on neglected, unloved, and homeless animals, even if the best we can offer them is a painless release from a world that doesn't have enough heart or homes with room for them. It makes it easy for people to throw stones at us, but we are against all needless killing: for hamburgers, fur collars, dissection, sport hunting, the works. PETA handled far more animals than 2,124 in 2008. In fact, we took in more than 10,000 dogs and cats and work very hard to persuade people to spay and neuter their animals and to commit to a lifetime of care and respect for them. We go so far as to transport animals to and from our spay/neuter clinics, where they are spayed or neutered and given vet care, often for free! Since 2001, PETA's low to no cost spay and neuter mobile clinics, SNIP and ABC, have sterilized more than 50,000 animals, preventing hundreds of thousands of animals from being born, neglected, abandoned, abused, or euthanized when no one wanted them. And on a national level, PETA is focusing on the root of the problem through our Animal Birth Control (ABC) campaign.

If anyone has a good home, love, and respect to offer, we beg them: Go to a shelter and take one or two animals home. The problem is that few people do that, choosing instead to go to a breeder or a pet shop and not "fixing" their dogs and cats, which contributes to the high euthanasia rate that animal shelters face. Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could hardly be called "pets," as they had spent their lives chained up in the back yard, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed someone's, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to place, and the like, and PETA offered them a painless release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.
Every day, PETA's fieldworkers help abused and neglected dogs, many of them pit bulls nowadays and many of them forced to live their lives on chains heavy enough to tow an 18-wheeler, by providing them with food; clean water; lightweight tie-outs; deworming medicine; flea, tick, and fly-strike prevention; free veterinary care; sturdy wooden doghouses stuffed with straw bedding; and love.

What we see is enough to make you lose faith in humanity. One pit bull we gained custody of, named Asia, looked like a skeleton covered with skin when PETA released her from the 15-pound chain she had been kept on for years. Asia suffered from three painful and deadly intestinal obstructions, which prevented her from keeping any food down. She faced an agonizing, lingering death, so our veterinarian recommended euthanasia to end her suffering. We pursued criminal charges against those responsible for her condition, leading to their conviction for cruelty to animals. That is just one of the dozens of cases we see every week.

The majority of adoptable dogs are never brought through our doors (we refer them to local adoption groups and walk-in animal shelters). Most of the animals we house, rescue, find homes for, or put out of their misery come from miserable conditions, which often lead to successful prosecution and the banning of animal abusers from ever owning or abusing animals again.

As long as animals are still purposely bred and people aren't spaying and neutering their companions, open-admission animal shelters and organizations like PETA must do society's dirty work. Euthanasia is not a solution to overpopulation but rather a tragic necessity given the present crisis. PETA is proud to be a "shelter of last resort," where animals who have no place to go or who are unwanted or suffering are welcomed with love and open arms.

Please, if you care about animals, help prevent more of them from being born only to end up chained and left to waste away in people's back yards, suffering on mean streets where people kick at them or shoo them away like garbage, tortured at the hands of animal abusers, or, alas, euthanized in animal shelters for lack of a good home. If you want to save lives, always have your animals spayed or neutered.

January 20, 2009

From D.C. to Delhi, compassion unites us

Like many who will be watching President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration, I wasn't made in America, but I'm a typical American: I'm from somewhere else.

In my case, I was conceived in Denmark, grew up on the wild, rugged Cornish coast of England and was sent to school in the Orkney Islands, crossing the sea in a light plane. Next stop, France, where we children wore clogs to school, then eight years among the bears in the everlasting snows near Shimla, India, followed by a marriage in Spain during the frightening days of martial law under General Franco. My home is now a medium-sized riverside town in the United States. I've been an American for the last 30 years.

America is a melting pot, I can describe the people of this country by talking about the people of Uganda, Uruguay or Utah. Some Americans may move people to tears of joy while others provoke them to react with disgust, but Americans are no better or worse than anyone else. We are all of us preoccupied with our own worries about relationships and children, health and mortality. Some are bursting with love, while others are scarred and filled with hate. Most are a bundle of mixed emotions.

But there are some universal values that transcend all differences and create a bond between people, and animals, such as understanding, helping and sacrifice. Once when I was in India, I saw a homeless woman on a bridge remove a handful of boiled rice from the hem of her skirt, place it on a flat leaf and push it a few inches away from her. A mother street dog appeared, wagging her tail very softly, humbly, her head down in a submissive pose. The woman let the mother dog eat, squatting beside her and guarding her so that she could feel safe while she took her meal.

These values were also present when a plane crashed into the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, D.C., one winter, its wing flaps too frozen to move. People of all nationalities, for it was Washington after all, were caught in their cars on that bridge. News footage showed many people fleeing on foot as best they could. Others leaned over the bridge rail, frantically trying to determine whether there was anything that they could do, anything at all, even shouting encouragement over the wind and the snow to the passengers trying to stay alive in the frigid water below.

When tales were told afterward, it was no surprise that, finding themselves in a cabin filling up with ice water, some people had trampled and shoved aside other passengers in their panic to stay alive. But one man, an American, remained in the river, his body half in, half out of the plane, using his strength to hoist other, less able passengers out of the wreckage. He helped for as long as he could before his fingers and feet froze and he died. I am sure that he did not ask or care where anyone was from.

America is called the "melting pot" because it is home to people of all races, creeds, colors and religions. Yet America is not perfect, and among our citizens, we have the best and the worst and the middling. Within a few generations, the young often forget or even disavow their grandparents' or earlier ancestors' migrations, but no one can alter the fact that all of us, even those of us called Native Americans, are from somewhere else. And all of us are, in the ways that truly count, simply residents of this planet with the potential to be compassionate citizens.

December 22, 2008

Donna Karan

Donna Karan has announced that all her fall 2009 lines will be fur-free and that she has "no plans" to use fur in the future. Well done, everyone!

I'm sure that Donna Karan has never thought about any of this or soiled her yoga slippers wading in the muck on a rabbit farm: Rabbits are full of personality and fun, unless they don't know you and what you have in mind, in which case, they tend to be timid and wary. They certainly live on their nerves, every minute, on a fur farm, stuck in their filthy, smelly, grassless, cramped cages - denied any ability to dig or hop over the hills or play tag (which they do, with friends).

I've been to a rabbit farm, and I've watched them being butchered for fur and meat: As on many farms, the man in charge took the scared rabbits by the legs with one hand and cupped his other hand under their jaws and yanked. There was a popping noise. Rabbits don't die when their spines are separated; they are merely paralyzed and start to suffocate, gasping and in pain.

Well, Donna Karan will no longer be responsible for such horrors, and for that, I truly am thankful. I'm sure that you are, too, my friends. So happy holidays!

Posted by Ingrid E. Newkirk

December 12, 2008

Let's Not Get Taken for a Ride

fund4horses / CC

Every visit to New York causes me to reflect upon the misery that befalls those poor old cast-off racetrack, Amish cart pullers and other worn-down horses who end up between the shafts of a heavy carriage, pulling loads of tourists, and invariably some uncaring driver - through the dirty, noisy streets of New York City, in all weather. Seeing them out there in the winter is particularly upsetting: A few weeks back, I watched one horse still lumbering along in traffic, head down, at 9:30 at night.

Even when they aren't working, horses need lots of water, yet the "carriage" horses' water troughs are often bone dry and people report seeing the horses standing there, unbending in their traces and unseeing in their blinders, unable to take a drop of water. And, when, late at night, they finally end up at their 'stables" (I've seen a driver , obviously anxious to go home to his comfortable house, whip his horse and race him, chariot-style, pounding along the road, which must have added to his pain) - which are actually decrepit fire-trap walk-ups, they cannot even take their weight off their aching feet: the "stalls" are boxes or bars that fit just around their bodies, like factory farm sow stalls.

Oh, there's so much more that stinks for these poor horses, including the traffic accidents that spook, hurt and kill them. PETA and local concerned citizens are working hard to make this business go away, see it switch to something humane, perhaps to a new environmentally friendly tourist vehicle that doesn't bleed, ache and die. It may take another year of hard work, but in the meantime, what, other than tell people never to ride in the carriages?

Perhaps you'd like to contact the ASPCA - which is charged with enforcing the anti-cruelty code and carriage horse regulations - with your thoughts and questions and share the answers you get with us. The horses can't ask why someone doesn't order the horse owners to allow them to lie down at night, for example, but we can. And, in my opinion, local law enforcement can compel the owners to let them.

OCMAD Tour Continues in Canada

With the exception of the falling snow, which makes me think way too much about dogs I can't reach and don't know tied out in the stuff, Canada was lovely. Everyone was kind (with the exception of the really odd, hostile reporter from The Globe and Mail, who even interpreted my "Please, drink your tea, it's getting cold" as some sort of attack!), the book store was packed, and I couldn't have asked for a nicer escort, who even took me out to a steakhouse (yes!) for dinner afterwards. The chef must be bored out of his mind cooking those ribs every night, as he happily conjured up two pasta dishes that were delectable. We ate down to the china-dish bottom. Even the waitress seemed glad for the diversion. A great vegucational meal, all around!

Earlier in the day, I failed to recognize a top Canadian comedian in the Green Room at CBC and got cheered by wonderful supporters in the audience who yelled, "We love you," and wore all the right PETA T-shirts. I also had a good-natured conversation on air with George Stroumboulopoulos, who is clearly a pre-vegetarian I must look up again in a year's time. Unlike most U.S. shows, he actually converses rather than shouts, and the guy's way too smart to stay a meat-eater much longer. My only regret: being late for the great Animal Voices radio show because of botched directions and no obvious street numbers in the dark. But, again, the host was gracious and intelligent, and she allowed me to speak freely about animal liberation, milk, sexy ad, the works. What a smart lot!

Click here to watch my interview with George.

November 26, 2008

And the OCMAD tour continues...

I tell everyone that a book is a great investment: you can read it, trade it, win friends by lending it out, and, if the fuel prices go through the ceiling, you even can burn it!

I'm on a short break from the tour (if you consider wading in gum boots through the work on a creaking desk, a break). After stuffing a fabulous Tofurkey dinner with all the trimmings down my gullet this Thursday, I'll be a road warrior again. The highlight of the last leg was Portland, home of the wonderful Powell's books, where I picked up a used book by the old Sunday Times travel writer, A.A. Gill. Gill, like Michael Specter of the New Yorker, is well traveled and well educated, and is moved by AIDS and interested in fashion week in, but there's something else they have in common: an old-fashioned male failure to relate to animals they want to eat. Gill has "the boys" lug an old "stubborn" goat up a granite rock face in the Kalahari, so that he can remove 'its twitching haunch" with his penknife;Specter unashamedly sits with Mr. Prada (yes, that one) to savor steaks cut from, no doubt, some poor twitching cow. Why doesn't the part of their brains that registers empathy light up when they see fear and suffering or the product thereof unless it involves a human being?  Don't you think that's mostly, but not all, a male generational thing, fast fading?

I used to love English bookstores best, but, hands down, Powell's is the best book store on earth, the people are terrific and so is the selection of books, used and new. Paige Powell, Andy Warhol's muse and now a vegetarian and animal activist, attended the signing and, refusing to buy my latest book on the grounds that it contained celebrity writing and she's sick of celebrities, graciously found two other of my tomes in the racks and bought those instead. Three wonderful PETA members gave me vegan jellies and Christmas tea, and someone else, whose name I didn't get - are you out there? - left me a lovely pendant, the second necklace I've received on my tours. PETA scored a $100 check, too! Thank you all. What wasn't that hot was being accosted in the dark as I walked back to my motel, high on the hill, by two young men who were even higher. They stepped out of a dark corner door, one of them demanding: "Hey, give us 97 cents for a bus ticket. It was a fascinatingly precise (or imprecise, actually) amount, but I wasn't about to stop and take out my wallet at night, there not being a living soul around but the three of us. The homeless humans situation in Portland Eugene and Seattle is growing. You know what that means for dogs and cats.

November 11, 2008

For All Beings: Yes. We. Can.

When President-elect Barack Obama was born, numerous U.S. states would have prohibited his black Kenyan father from marrying his white Kansan mother. The Voting Rights Act was still a few years away, and the Supreme Court's order to desegregate schools was being fought tooth and nail. Look at how far we have come. Who alive then would have believed that just a few short decades later, Americans would elect their first black president?

We have broken through a significant barrier, but we cannot stop there. We must now break down the barrier that prevents us from caring about all the "others" who are "not like us," regardless of race, regardless of gender, and regardless of species.

Prejudice and oppression come about because of a belief that "we" are important and that "they" are not.

In the days of slavery, for example - not so long ago - some people honestly believed that African men did not feel pain as white men do, that African women did not experience maternal love as white women do. And so it was quite acceptable to brand men's faces with a hot iron and to auction off slaves' children and send them vast distances away from their mothers. All evidence was to the contrary, yet highly educated people defied their own eyes, ears, and common sense by denying the facts before them. Society accepted this horrible exploitation, and then, as now, it takes courage to break away from the norm, even when the norm is ugly and wrong.

Today, we have abolished human slavery, at least in theory. But we continue to enslave all the others who happen not to be exactly like us but who, if we are honest with ourselves, show us that they experience maternal love as we do, that if you burn them, they feel the same pain as we do, that they desire freedom from shackles as we do.

In their natural homes, elephants live in complex multigenerational social groups, mourn their dead, and remember friends and relatives from years past. Yet we tear them away from their families, confine them with chains to stinking and squalid boxcars, and beat them into performing ridiculous tricks for our amusement.

Rats are detested, yet even these tiny animals - who are mammals like us - have been found to giggle (in frequencies that can't be heard by the human ear) when they are tickled and will risk their own lives to save other rats, especially when the rats in peril are babies. Although no mouse or rat bankrupted our economy, invaded Iraq, or set poison out for us, we dismiss their feelings as inconsequential and somehow beneath our consideration.

Mother pigs sing to their young while nursing, and newborn piglets run joyfully toward their mothers' voices. On factory farms, a sow spends her entire life surrounded by the cold metal bars of a space so small that she can never turn around or take even two steps. Chickens who are raised for the table fare even worse. Their beaks are seared off with hot blades, and the birds will never enjoy the warmth of a nest or the affectionate nuzzle of a mate.

The time has come to stop thinking of animal rights as distracting or less deserving of our energy than other struggles for social justice. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." All oppression, prejudice, violence, and cruelty are wrong and must be rejected no matter how novel the idea or how inconvenient the task.

And for those who think that we will never be able to achieve the dream of liberation from oppression, not just for human beings but for all beings, regardless of race or gender or species, I have just three words for you: Yes. We. Can.

November 07, 2008

Glass-Coated Kite String a Horror for Birds

Earlier this year, I was driving along the crowded streets of Hyderabad in India, near one of the Mahatma Gandhi shrines, when I saw something I'd never seen before that almost flipped my lid. I was there to launch the Indian version of PETA's kids' book, 50 Awesome Things Kids Can Do to Save Animals, and I knew instantly that kids had to get involved in the atrocity that was unfolding right before my eyes.

It was a few days into the annual kite-flying contest, which Hyderabad is known for, and kitemakers were squatting at every curb, spinning colored kite string. However, the string was being coated in spun glass, much as you would coat a stick with cotton candy. This makes the string razor-sharp and able to rip through an opponent's kite in a millisecond.

Errant kites, set free to entangle in phone poles and trees, rip birds to shreds. So I set off with Jayasimha, one of the great movers and shakers in PETA India, a bird sanctuary where we watched the volunteers gearing up for the coming horror: a grueling three-day festival in which hundreds of vultures, parrots, crows, and other birds were going to be wounded, many of them fatally.

PETA India started a petition asking kids never to buy glass-coated string, called "Manja." And here is the first demonstration against it in Hyderabad:

November 05, 2008

Answering Your Questions

I was asked to respond to 10 commenters' questions on PETA's blog, The PETA Files. I thought I'd share these with you. Check out my responses below.

Question from Sasha: When will a movie about your life be made, and who will take your place in PETA when you retire?

In a way, the HBO special I Am an Animal was about my life, but beyond that I do not know. As for "succession," a few years ago, when my plane almost crashed, I had time to reflect on my legacy at PETA, and it was exciting to think about what good hands PETA is in. We each have our talents, and there are plenty of stunningly talented leaders at PETA and the PETA Foundation who each make a mark in their own areas, from marketing and youth outreach to IT and law, and from rounding up stars and making heartbreaking videos to going undercover - and, of course, raising and bringing in money so that we can hire more staff and help more animals. The multitalented Tracy Reiman is my right-hand person, and I feel confident that she would lead the team when I pop off.

Question from Aneliese: How supportive is your family on your views of animal rights and welfare? Do they agree with you on such matters?

I don't have much of a family; my mother is the only one left, and she is wholly supportive. She has a "Proud PETA Member" bumper sticker on her car, puts copies of our "Vegetarian Starter Kit" in people's hands, and makes sure animal rights books are on the library shelves. She also makes great vegan cakes! In fact, her recipe for almond tarts is in the PETA cookbook.

Question from Ben: Was there a particular life-changing experience or event that led to you become an animal rights activist?

I've told many of my personal stories in my books, such as Making Kind Choices and my latest book, One Can Make a Difference. I was a slow learner, and my late father and I basically ate our way through the animal kingdom before I met a pig who had been cruelly treated. That's when I stopped eating all animals. As I say, I was a slow learner, so before that I had stopped eating lobsters (one wiggled his antennae at me when I chose him from a platter to be broiled alive) and snails (I let a bag of them go at the bottom of my garden rather than cook them). It wasn't until I found a fox and a squirrel in steel traps that had been set for fun by some youngsters that I stopped wearing fur! Oddly enough, those were the very two types of animals whose furs had been used to make the first fur garments I owned: a suede coat with a collar made of silver-fox fur and an artsy coat made from the bodies of about 100 squirrels. I also inspected laboratories for the government, and what I saw inside them convinced me that animal experimentation is crude and cruel and can easily be replaced with sophisticated non-animal research.

Question from Mitch: What was the most exciting campaign or event - a specific demonstration, press conference, undercover investigation, arrest, etc. - that you have worked on with PETA?

It's all exciting when you know that animals are being rescued and that people's minds and hearts and eyes are being opened. And stopping car-crash tests on animals, getting men who beat pigs on factory farms convicted on cruelty charges, seeing an elephant who has spent her entire life in chains be retired to a sanctuary - it's all exciting. But if I have to pick one, I think the very first lab case, the Silver Spring monkeys case, in which PETA got the police to serve a search warrant - the first in U.S. history - to take those monkeys out of the hellhole in which they lived - that would be it.

Question from Brielle: If someone truly wants to make a difference for animals, how do they choose the cause that will have the most impact for animals and spreading awareness? What is the most crucial step now in the cause - promoting veganism? Saving animals? Fighting big KFC-like corporations?

I believe in personal activism and that every single thing we do makes a difference - the more we do, the more difference we make and the more quickly animal liberation from exploitation and torment will come. Because everyone eats, washes their hair, puts on clothes, finds amusement in life, and buys stuff, it is vital to start setting an example and encouraging others to follow. Eat a vegan diet and shun animal skins in all their forms - they are all stolen and/or animals have been killed for them. Cook for friends and give vegan cookbooks and cruelty-free toiletries as gifts. Leave copies of Animal Times in the doctor's office and at the bus stop and put Free Vegetarian Starter Kit cards on every bulletin board. Hand people literature and engage in conversation to spread the word - and never, ever be silent in the face of abuse. When you speak up, others listen, and people who felt confident getting away with cruelty are shaken - perhaps not visibly, but shaken on the inside all the same. If you want to help with one particular campaign in addition to all this, then just jump in and do your best - it all counts.

Question from Sharon: What are your opinions on what happens to the "fighting dogs" who are rescued from dogfighting, and what is the proper way of evaluating a fighting dog to determine if rehabilitation would work for the animal?

With so many homeless dogs being killed for lack of homes, I would rather the time, effort, money, and work that goes into trying to rehabilitate a fighting dog be used to help the ones who don't need such an evaluation. It just makes more sense. Also, if you find homes for cocker spaniels or Chihuahuas or mixed terriers, there is no likelihood that, even if they go nuts, they will kill a child or a cat, but the same can't be said for the ex-fighter who is likely too strong to control and can have a fighting mindset. It isn't the dog's fault, but we have to make choices. The most sensible choice is to put our money and time into sterilization programs as well as combating fighting and making fighting breeds unpopular so that people do not breed more of them.

Question from Kathleen: I wanted to know - how do you keep a positive attitude after all the horrible things you have seen while working at PETA?

I look back at how far we have come: Silk soy milk in the supermarkets, veggie burgers too. Faux "chicken" at most KFCs in Canada. Students able to say "no" to dissection. Medical schools having abandoned the use of animals in training. Pleather, faux fur, the great youth movement. Many circuses, such as Cirque du Soleil, getting out of the animal business. That means that our work pays off, so we must keep doing it!

Question from 4 The Animals: I read that you believe having "pets" is keeping them in captivity. Is this true?

I prefer the term "companion" to pet, as that is more respectful, don't you think? Semantics can be important in how we view others. It drives me wild to see Britney Spears and Paris Hilton acquiring dogs as arm candy, which is why I wrote a book called Let's Have a Dog Party! I wanted to draw attention to the fact that these dogs are individuals with needs and wants. They aren't fashion accessories; cigarette smoke, loud music, and being left alone to stare at the apartment walls bothers them - it isn't a real life. I ask that people stay clear of pet shops and breeders, who exacerbate the dog and cat overpopulation crisis. But if a person has enough love, patience, understanding, time, and money for veterinary care, I would ask him or her to go to the animal shelter and get two dogs or cats so that the animals can keep each other company when their guardians are at work or play.

Question from Dan: I will be turning 70 years of age in a few years, and my wife is in her 50s. We are guardians of two dogs - one of whom is a puppy. My wife and I have no immediate family. I don't mean to sound maudlin, but if anything were to happen to my wife and me, I would like to set aside some money in our will for the lifelong care of our dogs. Do you know of any organizations that have been "approved" by PETA that would be able to take in our dogs and treat them in a loving manner in the event of our demise? We reside in the Southern California area (but we would be willing to send them anywhere if the organization is "top notch").

Please be very careful and always visit the place you might leave your animals to. You have to be very sure that they are right for your dogs. I have seen many "sanctuaries" where animals are miserable. Caged for life and patronized, they have lost the spark of joy that animals should have. Many of these places are warehouses, really - you can't call them much more. If you get stuck, please write to the PETA Foundation's Tim Enstice in our office, and we'll see what we can do to help you find the right place.

Question from Liz: If you could make a magic wish to banish something immediately and forevermore, what would it be? The fur trade? Vivisection? Factory farming? What kind of abuse has the most pressing urgency above all others?

If I had a magic wish, it would be that human beings would put themselves in the place of all "others," and then they'd really live by the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." In other words, I would wish for empathy. And studies show that some people have a very poorly developed part of their brain - the mirror neuron. This means that they can't extend much beyond their own selfish interests. But if I could influence only one area of animal abuse, that's a very hard call. It might be "pest control," as billions upon billions of mostly little animals - raccoons, beavers, mice, birds, insects, etc. - are poisoned with gut-wrenching chemicals or drowned in underwater snares, or their backs are broken in traps, or their faces get stuck in glue boards - and so on.

October 24, 2008

When an Animal Needs Your Help

I'm distraught. A wonderful long-time member wrote to me about three incidents she had witnessed where animals in need sought human help-and unfortunately did not always receive it. There were so many lessons in these stories that I wanted to share them with you.

In one of the stories, a duck with a severely mangled beak walked up to the PETA member and pressed himself against her leg, "looking for help." Not knowing what to do, our member left, went back to where she was staying and called an agency, asking it to send someone to the park to help the duck. When I read this, my heart sank. Who knows whether the agency actually went out, and if it did, whether it found the duck and did anything to help him?

The second incident was a bit better: A duck had approached our member while she was in a park, again "clearly looking for help," a hook stuck through her bill. The duck, although wild, had allowed herself to be picked up and held. Our member enlisted someone with a toolkit to help and the duck waited patiently while the hook was cut out before waddling back to her brood on the lake.

In another case, our member found herself in a rather difficult situation. While traveling in Africa, a bull entered a mud hut in the village that she was visiting. He had come there seeking human help, the owners said, because he had eaten something he shouldn't have, and his stomach was painfully distended. Such a condition can be fatal for cattle. The villagers didn't know what to do, and there was no vet around. In this tragic case, the animal did not receive the care that he needed.

In each of these cases, the animals not only needed human help but also clearly asked for it. Are you prepared if an animal in need asks you for help?

Please remember this: Always stay with an animal in need, or plant someone else's feet there while you go for help. You should never drive or walk away, just as you would never leave a lost child, hoping that someone else will answer your call later and find this distressed being. Often, that does not come to pass. When animals come to us looking for help or when we happen upon an animal in need, we must do all that we can, appointments be damned and obligations no mind, to live up to their expectations. If you aren't sure what to do and how to help, use this guide on PETAPrime.org, or call PETA any time at 757-622-7382 and dial 2 if you cannot find a solution.

Thanks.