animal rescue — blog — Anne Benvenuti

The Real Cost of Things

Last year I calculated the cost of the jars of cherry jam I had just made. This after long hours spent harvesting the cherries from a friend’s tree, buying the jars, making the jam. I came to the conclusion that the cost of one jar of jam was about $249, based on labor alone, at the approximate hourly rate of my old job. The cost did not include anything related to the tree, the land, the irrigation, the cherries themselves, the sugar, the jars, the pots and pans, the stove, the construction and maintenance of the kitchen. How, I asked myself, even allowing for the many statistical errors in my tired train of thought, could this thing sell for $2.79 at my old neighborhood market?! Suddenly I understood that the purchasing power of my labor bore no relation to sustainability but was astoundingly inflated.

I had based my calculation solely on my own labor because that is what I spent my life trading, my skilled labor as a professor, psychologist, author, and lecturer, for money to buy stuff. I bought houses, cars, experiences like travel, backpacking, kayaking. I bought bikes, kayaks, backpacks, clothes, dishes, appliances, insurance policies, health and beauty aids, gifts, and lots of things intended to calm and soothe and comfort. My life was an endless round of long hard hours of work traded for relief from those long hard hours of work.

Playtime! It's Seriously Important

My dog Lexi is a ten year old Jack Russell terrier who had a rough childhood. Lost in an Indiana blizzard at six months of age, she was brought into rescue with double pneumonia. She spent two months in the hospital before going to a "forever home" that had some human problems with alcohol and violence. Back to rescue. She was a nervous little gal when we brought her home, quick to find a hiding place but also gregarious, liking to mix it up or to cuddle, especially with other dogs. But there was one sure way I could engage her, and that was by playing the imaginary game of hunting my fingers as they acted like mice across the bedspread.

On Saving a Moth

One morning recently, I noticed a small dark shape fluttering in the pool. I went over to investigate and saw that it was a large gray moth, desperately and barely clinging to life as water saturated her wings. Her energy was exhausted. I lifted her out and she clung the fabric of my dress. I bent my head and very gently blew down the length of her body, drying her with my breath for perhaps fifteen minutes. And then I raised her up in my hands and blew on the underside of her wings, learning in the process that what looked like two was actually four.

Feeding Fido and Fluffy

Yesterday I created a new Facebook group, called Animal Family. Within an hour, the page had 100+ members. Dozens of portraits of fur-family, mostly dogs and cats, were posted within a few hours. Most of these were rescued, picked up off the street in various dire conditions or brought home from shelters. These family members were not purchased with pedigrees from puppy mills but rescued, sometimes with great expense and effort from their humans.

A Valentine for my Wild Lovers

I used to say that the way to save a wild animal is to sleep with him. I enjoyed the double entendre, especially because we project all our own feelings of beastly sexuality onto our furry friends. But there's some simple and literal truth in my self-entertaining expression; I learned by sleeping with wild animals that they want the same things we do, that they communicate their desires with surprising clarity, if we pay attention.