Good morning! This is Fleet Captain Jennifer Sontag, reporting from the science lab aboard the USS Tiburon currently en route to Starbase 11 for a refitting of the science labs. Someone on my staff forgot to properly shut the Tribble cages, and a few of the unaltered ones accidentally got into the Captain’s secret stores of Skittles, so we had to get new cages and bigger Glomers.
A few weeks ago the command staff had the privilege of visiting the Wildlife Sanctuary in Keenesburg, CO. They are a nonprofit charity that takes in wild animals people have surrendered because they can no longer take care of them, confiscated from roadside zoos and picked up by local law enforcement. They have everything, including tigers, bears, lions and panthers. The sanctuary sits on about 1,000 acres and is well stocked with everything a recovering animal would need, with ponds to play in, rocks to climb on and pipes to lie in. The public is welcome to visit these magnificent animals on a 3-mile out-and-back walkway that overlooks all the pens so that that animals can rest in quiet.
Some of the stories that we heard were just appalling:
- Three bears were rescued from a roadside zoo, where the trainer was keeping them addicted to cigarettes so they would perform for him.
- Tigers that were kept in small cages in zoos that wouldn’t be able to care for them.
- Lions that were kept on someone’s back porch, just as you would keep a dog.
Luckily these animals had a saving grace and people who were looking out for them, and now they can play and have a good life with other big cats and be just animals.
Thanks for listening and I will have more posts in the future.
TTFN