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.

October 09, 2008

One Can Make a Difference

Some people ask me if it is true that my latest book, One Can Make a Difference, contains essays by people who have done things like make documentary films or compose songs, collect shoes for South American village children, clean up the base camp at Mount Everest, or make people laugh—instead of being all about animals? Well, yes, but I'll reveal my secret. Every single one of the more than 50 people in the book—from the famous people such as Sir Paul McCartney (the world’s most famous "veggie"), Stella McCartney (who is adamantly opposed to fur and leather), Petra Nemcova (the supermodel who stopped eating fish after she saw them on the beach in Thailand after a tsunami), Dr. Henry Heimlich (a staunch anti-vivisectionist), and Willie Nelson (who fought to ban horse slaughter) to the little-known seal-hunt protesters, soup-kitchen operators, performance artists, and sanctuary founders—are kind souls. If they weren't, they wouldn't have made the cut.

As the author John Galsworthy said (and those of you who've heard me speak know that I often repeat this), the three most important things in life are to be kind, to be kind, and … yup, to be kind. His Holiness The Dalai Lama is in my book, and he says pretty much the same thing in his lovely little essay about how a person's religion should be based on compassion—nothing else matters. Now, some essays, including those by Brigitte Bardot, Rachel Rosenthal, Carol Buckley, and Peter Hammarstadt, are all about animals—elephants and cats and mice and whales specifically, but you will find animals, such as Doris Richard's dogs, peeking out of other essays. And in the essays that do not mention animals, the spirit of the writer leaves you no doubt that he or she would no more ignore a bird fallen out of a nest than he or she would step over a destitute human being.

I hope that my book will open hearts to the diversity of life and open eyes fully to the stunning number of ways in which one—anyone—can make a difference. Writing it was a great experience. I hope that reading it will be just as much fun!