Power Stabilized

Hardcore volunteering

I have always loved volunteering with animals, which is why I have volunteered for the Humane Society, the Chimpanzee Sanctuary and the zoo, for example, over the course of decades. It is usually because I must move to a new city that I have switched volunteer opportunities. And I have never minded getting my hands dirty in the process. At the zoo, where I was a zoo keepers' assistant rather than a docent, I shoveled musk ox doo doo [shaped like milk duds], cleaned out the rotten fish and oysters from the otters' enclosure [stank to high heaven], and washed down the belugas' pool with chlorine. My zoo clothes sported perpetual white chorine stains. But my daughter, who is a chip off the old block, goes above and beyond, I think. This cute girl, Tink, is the newest addition of her four dogs from an organization that takes in old dogs for their last forever home. Several of her dogs are diabetic, several are blind, one is deaf. Several have eye problems. It's tough duty. But she gives the shots and the eye drops and the pills every day, is often up in the middle of the night. This is what I call hardcore volunteering. [Tink's mouth is closed; her tongue just always hands out the side like that.]