It's
my BIG NUMBER FIVE BIRTHDAY and that means I'm big nuf to eat FIVE cans of
Fancy Feast all at one time ..... YES
IT DOES MOM ..... you go way .... this
is MY newsletter to MY friends ....
I'm not talkin to YOU ........
So
-- YUP ... AUGUST 4 be my birthday
.... and I be FIVE .... and I think
that's real grown up and all !!!! I'd
really like to take a day off working from all the stuff mom makes me do
...... but she say I have to work all the time or there be no money to buy nums for me and all my friends .....
Maybe
you make nice Happy Birthday
Present for me so there be num $ to feed all my friends and
I can have day off on my birthday ???
Pleaz
Melissa,
Nora, and Paul took our wool to the Wool Pool.
We
had 246 pounds! It's easy to tell which bags were ours (the amateurs) and which
came from people who have done this before.
But, we'll have the big bags for next year! I
wonder how many green pieces of paper all of that wool will give us?? We'll
know in about 6 weeks.
From here, the wool will travel to Ohio, where it
will be sorted. And then, it will go to South Carolina to be washed, and then
sold to become clothes, blankets, craft supplies, yarn, etc. Too bad there is
no way to "mark" some of the wool in order to track it....
The scenery was beautiful, and we found a few new
friends!
In honor of the sheep, and
other livestock, to help them get safely from one field to another and to see
the doc when necessary .... and also
useful for picking up their feed and hay and PUMPKINS !!!
Meet our newest staff
member, Livvy the Livestock trailer!
We have needed one for some
time and this gal came to us at a really great price. It's worth about $2,500
and we got it for $850 - isn't that awesome?
BUT even that great price really
hurts our checkbook.....CAN YOU HELP by tossing in a few
dollars? Pretty please?? THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Sad news to report here. Angelina left us one night recently in her
sleep to cross over Rainbow Bridge. She's been failing for the last couple
months, so it came as a sad, but not as a surprise. She was curled up with her
best friend.
She was one of the first dogs
who joined us in our first year here .... she lived with us almost 18 years.
She came cuz she was shy and scared of people. She eventually made friends with
the people she knew very well and saw every day. New people always scared her.
But she loved her doggy friends ... oh how she loved them !!!!
She was top gal in her area
of Doggy Downs and though she'd get along with gentleman dogs who'd bow-wow to
her wishes, she never tolerated a female sharing her space.
I guess there's a time for
everything .... but it always leaves a sad. Angelina had been with us so long.
The only other doggy resident who's been here as long is Flash the beagle, and
they told us he was too old to adopt when he came here !!! We did adopt him out
three times .... each time he was returned cus the folks could not convince him
to potty outside instead of inside ... they knew going in he'd never been
housebroken ... but wanted to try. After three times, we agreed to his wishes
and let him live most of the time outside where he loved being a beagle and
doing beagle things .... these days being so old, he spends most of his time
indoors .......
The sad thing about being a
sanctuary is eventually most of our residents will come to the end of their lives
here .... the happy thing is that they all would have come to their end so many
many years ago if you didn't make it possible for Rikki's Refuge to be here for
them. Bye Bye Angelina, you were always loved, and you will be missed.
Its YOUR
SUPPORT that makes it possible for
dogs like Angelina to have love and peace their entire natural lives .... THANK
YOU FOR SAVING
THEM
Hope you've got a cool spot
in the sun to lay around and roll in the dirt !!!!
But could I interrupt you for
just a couple minutes? A doggie friend
of ours named Lucy is running in a photo contest to help win money for Rikki's
Refuge .... lots of our supporters go
on vacation and they're doing fun things in the summer ... and they kind of
forget that we count on them for our food and care .... so it gets a bit tough
to keep the pantry full and to get us our meds and flea drops and all
...... so if you could help Lucy win,
Rikki's will get $1,000 and that goes a really long way.
All you gotta do is click on
her photo here ..... and then LIKE
(that means click on the like button) her photo .... if she gets the mostest
LIKES then Lucy and Rikki's Win !!!!
Us Piggies are enjoying the
summer under the bushes and rolling in the mud !!! And we especially enjoy all the treats of fruits and veggies YOU
bring us on tours .... sign up for a
tour one Sunday .... and bring melon !!!
Yeahhh .....
Twix And Patrick Having Their
Morning Meeting To Discuss Plans For The Day
That's right ... even itty bitty baby piggies .... even the
itty bitty teeny weenie miniature kind ... grow up to be piggies of at least
150 pounds .... I mean when you compare
it to a full grown regular size farm pig at 1200 pounds .... ya know ... 150 pounds IS itty bitty.
It's just not what people are
thinking "miniature" means.
But 1/10 the size of a regular item is considered "miniature"
on the global scheme of things.
AND if you get two adorable
itty bitty little piggies ..... and
you don't spay and neuter them ...
Guess What? Just like kitties
and doggies .... and well any creature ....
pretty soon you end up with a lot more than the Three Little Piggies
.....
And that seems to be about
the time people call Rikki's Refuge hysterical ... a howlin and a yowlin ...
but I didn't know a miniature pig would be THIS big .... and I don't know how
it happened (really, you missed biology in high school?) but my pig just had a
WHOLE litter of babies .....
And that's how piggies find
their way to a wonderful forever home where they are allowed to be the piggies
they were born to be ... at Rikki's Refuge !
Us Piggies are doing a
fundraising promotion to buy nums !!
Won't you try some of our popcorn?
And hey ... how about sending a
few canisters our way too !!! We love
pop corn ...
NUM NUM POP CORN
It's back! Our NomNom Popcorn
fundraiser is underway thru August 10th!
More than 65 awesome and unique popcorn flavors, new snack pack
combinations, gourmet seasonings, and build-a-tins, plus great prices! Runs through
August 10 and all the money we earn goes to feed the animals piggies at
Rikki's Refuge! Check it out!
Or you can send the $ and we'll feed the pigs for you !!!
We just hang around in the
summer .....
Netting at the end of cat
runs can be bunched up to make hammocks ....
this is a favorite place for kitties just lounging the day away !!!
Even though they have
"official" tree houses and places to chill and play ....
Simba likes high places and
hangs out on a roofing support ....
makes for a great lounger in the shade ....
..... see his tail ??? Isn't that cute !!
Goliath only wants the real
thing !
But no matter where they like
to hang out ... they get fed every day ....
summer time is often a time that donations are down ... people are busy
climbing their own trees and sometimes forget about the kitties at Rikki's
Refuge ......
Summer is a time we
especially need YOUR
SUPPORT and love !!
Iggy practices his sailing
skills in the duck ponds ......
Patty came to Rikki's Refuge
because she didn't want to be killed for being feral.
Here she's on her way to the
Speuter Clinic before joining a Cat House and making new friends. She's still scared .... but soon she'll find
her niche and be happy with other feral friends.
She is a little worried
though .... she's heard she needs $75
for her initiation fee to cover her surgery ..... she doesn't have a job and has never worked ...... would YOU pay her VET
DEBT ?
Calli-Jill, this beautiful
lady, has a number of worries on her paws.
She was living in someone's yard and had three kittens. Two black and white girls and an orange and
white boy. She loves her kids very
much. But really, she says, three is
enough.
Calli-Jill knows there are so
many homeless animals out there and she's so thankful she came to Rikki's
Refuge and not to a place she would probably be killed and maybe her kittens
would get adopted out get out alive .....
she knows she wouldn't have stood a chance when the shelters are so full
of kittens.
Callie-Jill is a very smart
kitty, she wants to help her kids so they don't end up having babies in a few
months too. She knows the only way to
stop so many cats and dogs from being killed in shelters is to make sure they
all visit the Speuter Clinic ......
She has appointments waiting
for herself and her three kittens ..... and she's worried that if she can't
come up with the money to pay the VET
DEBT she won't be able to take her
family to the Speuter Clinic ..... gee
it's going to be $300 for all four of them .... and that's a lot of money for a
young mom with three kids who's been living on the street.
Poor Callie-Jill's got
another worry too ..... soon her family
will be going to the adoption center at Re-Tail .....
she's excited about them all
getting nice wonderful furever homes ....
but the thought of being separated from her kittens forever and ever is
making her very sad.
Would YOU consider adopting
all four members of this lovely family so they could live together
forever? It would make them all so
very happy. And four cats isn't too
many. It just breaks our hearts to see
a family separated. You'll get a very
very special low low adoption fee for the whole family.
Please ..... help keep this family together.
Oh, Hi there .... So you want to know what we pigeons do in
the summer? I bet a lot of you think we
just eat and fly and poop ... I bet
you even know that many humans are mean to us because we poop. And
yeah, we do ..... but so do you. Everybody does .... it's a fact of nature
... you be alive ... you eat ... you poop.
So please be kind to us, we're only doing what we have to do.
Don't want your car pooped on ... don't park under our trees !!! If I sat in your toilet ... I sure couldn't blame you for what's gonna happen !!!
Don't want your car pooped on ... don't park under our trees !!! If I sat in your toilet ... I sure couldn't blame you for what's gonna happen !!!
Did you know that pigeon
guano - that's the polite term for pigeon poop - was considered an invaluable
resource in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries? Highly prized as a fertilizer, pigeon guano is far more potent
than farmyard manure and was so prized, in fact, that armed guards were
stationed at entrances to dovecotes (pigeon houses) to stop thieves stealing
it!
AND in England, in the 16th
century, pigeon guano was the only known source of saltpetre, necessary for
gunpowder and hence a highly valued commodity.
AND we pigeons were the
precursors to your smart phones ---
your whole communications systems really - so thank us !! You hoomans really had a lot to learn from
us to get to your current state of evolvement.
We were the messengers in the
earliest large-scale communication network on the planet, in Syria and Persia around the 5th
century BC. That was a VERY long time
ago !
Later, in the 12th century
AD, we linked the city of Baghdad and all the main towns and cities in Syria
and Egypt by carrying messages about. This
was the SOLE source of communication back than. Just think, instead of that smart phone in your pocket, you could
have one of us Pigeons on your shoulder !!!
I think that would make the world a LOT more fun.
In 1896 New Zealand and the
Great Barrier Island set up a pigeon messaging route. Prior to us taking
control, it took the humans on Great Barrier Island 3 days to contact New
Zealand to send help for a serious emergency, like a sinking ship. We could get a message there in 1.75 hours
.... and one of us named
"Velocity" could do it in only 50 minutes ... averaging 78 miles an
hour .... We've even been clocked flying
at over 90 mph !! So how's that for
being the speed demons of the world !!
The cheetah is the only
mammal who can get close to our speeds, and they can't keep up that pace for
long, and imagine trying to train a CAT ... ha ha ha ha.
Falcons can dive faster ...
but that's straight down .... you don't
want your SOS message going down when you're treading water while the great
whites circle ......
Reuters, the famous news
agency, started its European business in 1850 with 45 pigeons carrying the
latest news and stock prices from Aachen in Germany to Brussels in Belgium.
They had telegraph but the numerous gaps in the transmission lines made
communication difficult and slower than pigeons. We pigeons also beat the railways by four hours.
And you call us bird-brains
as if it's derogatory ! Think twice
about that one human !!
The last ‘pigeon post’
service was abandoned in India in 2004 with the birds being retired to live out
the rest of their days in peace. See,
they care about us too. We've worked
hard for you humans over the years.
Science - human science I
might add - ranks us pigeons as highly intelligent, tops in the bird kingdom,
and right up there with some of the mammals you think are super smart, compared
to you. It's always comparing it to a
human, isn't it?
We are the heroes of the
Navy's Project Sea Hunt, identifying life jackets floating in the water and saving
time and lives by finding survivors quicker than humans can. We were found to be more reliable than
humans (not too hard to surpass that ... yeah, I see the wheels in HER head
turning, can we train pigeons to do litterboxes?), but also we are many times
quicker spotting survivors from a capsized or sinking boat than you humans with
all your technology.
So does that make you feel
like giving us a reward and getting some nummy food for us?
At only $4.99 a bag, wouldn't
you like to FEED US ....
a 5 pound bag will last one of us close to a month .... and I have 50 friends to share with !!!
Thank you !!
Summer time at Rikki's means
lots of festivals and events to go to ....
Richmond Vegetarian Festival
Events are fun and sociable
for volunteers and it helps to spread the word about Rikki's, brings in
donations, rounds up new volunteers, and helps animals to get adopted !!!! All very important! If you'd like to have some fun and help the
animals at the same time, sign up as an event volunteer .... Events@RikkisRefuge.org
Summer is a great time for
everybody to get involved in some fix up and spruce up, making the animal's
homes even nicer !!!
We've seen a lot of Dennis,
Crystal, Ron, Paul, Clarence, Robyn, Matthew, Lolly and Frank (looking forward
to seeing more of you soon!) and others scurrying all over the Refuge up to one
good chore or another !!
Day after day, Dennis and Crystal chugged away .... and now the office trailers have
gotten a serious face lift, the roofs sealed, the windows caulked, walls
repaired where there had been water damaged, interiors painted, cleaned up,
organized and all set up. We now have
usable offices, photo studio space for adoption animal portraits, an employee
lounge and lunch area ... and there's more to come.
We still need to paint the
exteriors, stain the deck .... and I really need somebody who can change out a
circuit breaker that keeps blowing and is bogus ... and we'd love someone who
can paint murals on and in the office trailers and all over all the barns and
outbuildings !!!!
Could that be YOU ? Volunteers@RikkisRefuge.org
Feline Fields has seen a
facelift, thanks mostly to Ron. Fresh
coat of paint on the exteriors -- need those murals !!! New windows for all the cat houses.
Ron has also worked on
planting trees, fix up and bridge and deck staining at Rainbow Bridge and fresh
new signs to keep us all on track.
The Life Center had the deck
stained and is getting the shutters and front porch painted. I needs lots of interior paint. All the outbuildings and barns need paint
AND MURALS, and the fences need painting.
Clarence has been hugely
instrumental in putting in miles - literally - of fencing. Thank you Paul for letting us use your
tractor, without that, we could not have installed so much fencing so
quickly. Now the livestock have four
large pens instead of one .... paws
crossed this will give them enough to eat year round as we rotate fields. With only one large one and one small one in
the past, we'd run out of grass too quick having to spend $800 a WEEK on hay 4
or 5 months out of the year.
We've just spent a huge
amount of money we don't have on fencing ....
but we think in the long run it will more than pay off. But that debt is sitting there staring us in
the face .... if you could spare the
price of a board or panel or post it would BE SO MUCH HELP ....
Bowie helps out with computer
work.
And so can you !!! Lots to do ... computer and office like
work. Filing, data entry, graphic
art. Help on social media from the
comfort of your own home .... come out
here and volunteer in our nice new air conditioned office trailers !! Take pictures of the animals !! We now have a nice studio where you can
dress them up (oh joy for joy, says Opie) convince them to act cute and snap away
!! Write stories about the
animals. Even learn to give tours and
help in other ways.
We desperately need a good
webmaster to help revamp our web site and to keep it up to date.
If we're calling YOUR name
... let us know Volunteers@RikkisRefuge.org
Pop over to GREAT NON-PROFITS
and tell 'em how much you LOVE Rikki's Refuge !! All sorts of contests, prizes and grants count on the REVIEWS
there to pick winners .... please give
us YOUR
REVIEW and make Rikki's Refuge a Winner !!!! Thank you ....
Lo and behold ... as Ron was
working on replacing a board on the Rainbow Bridge .... he heard a THUMP
..... turning to look .... expecting
to see a cat .....
He didn't expect this guy
!!! He'd just jumped right down from a
branch on an overhanging tree to see what Ron was up to !!! Lucky for us, Ron stayed .... COOL ... and whipped
out his camera for a photo.
After getting a pic ... Ron tried
to urge the little guy off the bridge so the pounding of nails to set the new
board didn't bother the poor little guy .....
..... little green guy decided to stand his
ground ... or bridge ..... and watch
what Ron was doing.
You know all about saving the
1300 animals who live at Rikki's ... that's the domestic animals, the cats and
dogs, and the farm animals, the cows and sheep and chickens .... 1300 who live here day in and day out
.... and the thousands and thousands of
others who have been here before them, spending their natural lives, or finding
new adoptive homes.
But do you think about the
thousands and thousands of other animals who make their home in our protected
350 acres of woods and wetlands? If you
come on a nature hike, you might see a few of them. But most will stay hidden from you. That's because humans haven't been very nice to wildlife and so
the animals we want to see and photograph are fearful of us and hide. And they can do a very good job of
hiding.
Most of the wildlife here,
from little fish and frogs and turtles that swim in the creeks and beaver
ponds, to the birds and owls and bats who nest in the trees, to the bear and
deer, bobcats and foxes, were native to these woods. Every year they are joined by many new wild residents who were
rehabilitated or relocated by Virginia animal control officers or licensed
wildlife rehabbers.
In this world of shrinking
natural habitat .... YOU have allowed
us to give them this 350 acres of peace and happiness where they know their
home will never be bulldozed down to make way for condos.
And they appreciate all the
help you give them !!!
ps.
we're NOT promoting the feeding of wildlife, it's just a cute picture,
we ARE
promoting safeguarding natural habitat !!!
Come on a tour, catch the
next nature hike, watch for the full moon walks .... get your tickets at Tours@RikkisRefuge.org
Please stop by on a Saturdays
and drop off donations
Bring donations to our store
RE-TAIL in Fredericksburg --- we can turn ANYTHING into cash to buy nums for
the animals !!
And now we've reached about
the coolest place on the Refuge !!!!
With lots of cool water "ponds" and the water being freshened
daily ... everybody gets a chance for a
swim !
Anybody's unsupervised water
bowl makes for a great swim
... come on mommey ... let us
in ....
How on earth do you get ducks
and geese, as a lot of visitors.
Well a lot of people think
it'd be cool to have ducks or geese or chickens or peacocks or guinea hens
around their yard ... then they find out they are animals .... they make noise .... they poop .... and their
environment smells bad if you don't keep it clean every day .... and that takes
a lot of time .... and guess what else?
They even reproduce without
abandon if you let them. No, we can't
send these guys to the Speuter Clinic, it's all cuz of bird anatomy and I bet
you don't want an anatomy lesson right now. But
you can manage population growth thru egg management. Just incorporate that into the hours you spend every day cleaning
and caring for your birds and you'll have that problem solved .... but most folks wait till they have an
explosion of babies, the landlord says get rid of these birds, the home owner's
association cites you for noise or smell or birds wondering about ..... and here come new residents for Rikki's.
And sometimes animals get
left behind when people move .... like
last year when we rescued 67 ducks from a back yard butcher who'd been shut
down and just abandoned them.
Yikes ... what a mess
!!!!
We're so thankful that YOU
have made it possible for us to Save a
Life each and every day
!!!
I love you,
Opie
