Meet the beaver...

Exquisite...

Wildcare is gearing up for one of the two times during the year that the public is invited to tour the facilites. In the spring they host their annual Babyshower and allow folks to become familiar with their operations, focusing on their springtime busyness of saving baby animals that are injured or orphaned (or kidnapped...lots of babies thought abandoned really aren't...but well meaning humans try to 'rescue' them anyway...unless there's imminent danger to the baby don't move them until talking to a wildlife care operation).

Yesterday I was there helping with sprucing up the place in preparation for the Baby Shower scheduled from 2 to 5pm on April 28th of this year. Rondi (the director) came strolling out holding the little one pictured above. She (or he...I didn't pay attention to which sex the baby is afflicted by) is melt you into a puddle gorgeous. There are really no words to describe the impact she has...you might be able to see her on a video here. I say 'might' because I'm unsure of how well linking to facebook videos works out. If you can't get there with the link you can go to WildcareOklahoma on facebook and see the video which was posted on April 16th, 2012.

If you are in the vicinity of Norman Oklahoma I would urge you to go out and attend the Wildcare Baby Shower, the human animals do a great job and the other animals are even niftier.

When I was looking at the baby beaver I was thinking...how...how can we harm such beautiful beings...how? I can't wrap my mind around it. It is mind boggling how absolutely exquisite and beautiful babies are...and we murder them by the billions.

We recently released some baby cottontails out at Heartland...you can see one of them in the pic below (thanks to Christina at Rabid Tidbits for the photo...more pics of them over at her blog).

Baby Cottontail (maybe 'Dirty Harry').

We gave them some play time outside prior to release, to get them familiar with running around and such....and when playtime was over....herding 4 baby cotties into a crate is an interesting bit of work. One of them in particular ended up being called "Dirty Harry" in honor of the fact that if you placed your hand in his/her path in an attempt to guide her/him s(he) simply would give you a good smack with her/his hands (front paws). Each of the little ones were (and are) a wonderful delight and so amazingly beautiful...beyond description. And yet...

And yet...every year we murder 9 or 10 billion babies and youngsters (and some adult) animals either for unhealthy food or for fun?...every year some 12 or 13 million human animals in the U.S. go out with guns and bows and traps and probably bazookas (if they could get their hands on one) and kill and kill and kill and call it "sport" and call it "recreation" and call it "fun" and call it "conservation". And every year the rest of us (except those living as ethical vegans) pay somebody to inflict suffering and misery and death...out of the range of our sight, smell or hearing preferably.

We need a keeper. Somebody needs to grab us by the back of our necks, give us a shake and tell us to straighten up....and then kick us in the caboose if we don't do it. If you don't want to live like you need a keeper, live as an ethical vegan...please.

Also...do come on out to Wildcare's Baby Shower...I'll be there somewhere helping park cars or guarding the baby deer or whatever they need me to do. :-)