Yesterday evening, Sunday, April 17, 2011, Razzle's long journey to his forever home ended when I handed him over to a mother and child from Brewster, New York. We met in the parking lot of Stew Leonard's in Yonkers. I took possession of Razzle from another volunteer driver in Elizabeth, New Jersey an hour earlier.
Razzle's journey started the previous day in Tallahassee, Florida under the aegis of the All American Dachshund Rescue (AADR). Days before, Razzle's new family saw him online, wanted to adopt him, but Tallahassee lay approximately 1200 miles away.
Enter the network of volunteer animal transporters crisscrossing the United States like a grid. I am a member of the I-95 and I-80 group which are, for those who don't know, two of the longest interstate highways in the U.S. I receive via email information about transports, or runs, that cross my area (NYC, Northern NJ). I get to choose which leg I can possibly do. A volunteer driver normally does one-hour legs, or 60 miles. A driver becomes a link in a long chain of drivers. In Razzle's case, his run consisted of 20 drivers, two days of driving plus an overnight stay in Wilson, NC. The entire run was monitored by Heather Clemmer, an official of the AADR.
In reality, doing a leg will mean more than just an hour of your time. In this case, I initially had to drive down to Elizabeth NJ from River Edge NJ to pick up Razzle. That's nearly an hour's drive. I, then, drove up to Yonkers, NY to deliver Razzle to the adopters. Along the way, I bypassed an hour's delay over the George Washington Bridge by taking the Lincoln Tunnel, traversed Manhattan, drove up the FDR Drive and crossed the East River for I-87 North (Major Deegan Highway). After handing Razzle over, I still needed to get home. That took me another hour by crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge and down the Garden State Parkway.
The video above was taken in Elizabeth NJ as I took possession of Razzle from another driver. I have a video of the adopters taking Razzle from me, an hour later, but I don't have their permission to put their faces on YouTube. There are always dogs & cats needing transport to their forever homes. This example might move you to participate in animal transport, making both animals and humans extremely happy. Sometimes, the difference between life and death is a ride.
When a member of the animal or plant kingdom goes extinct, there will be no second chances. Evolution will simply not repeat itself. There are reportedly eighty bird species that are unique to the Philippines and many of them have already made it to the endangered list. And we, to a great extent, have indiscrimate hunting to thank for it. In spite of two national laws protecting Philippine animals, the carnage continues unabated. The killings could occur as arbitrarily as guys getting together for macho time, or as a result of a well-planned hunting trip involving speed boats, bird callers, and camouflaged outfits. Either way, the outcome is the same. Philippine wildlife, our natural treasures, inches closer to a state of irreparable vacancy. Not too long ago, we learned about the Bacolod Air Rifle Club (BARC) whose unbridled killing of Philippine birds and ducks became the subject of an online petition calling for immediate government intervention. My post on that most disturbing c...
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