We had a really weird weekend at the sanctuary, a little bit of panic, and here’s the story for anyone who drove by and saw the emergency crews…
On Thursday, one of our volunteers was doing the daily automatic water clean out and got a good shock (not life threatening.) Figuring that the flood waters had shorted something, we immediately turned off all the power to them, which only runs the internal heaters when it’s cold anyway. Everything seemed fine.
On that day, I was grabbing the mail and noticed a down power line, and called the Xcel Energy emergency line. Didn’t figure the two to be connected, but nobody bothered to come fix it during this whole ordeal. This is a key detail.
During Saturday waterer clean out, Jake happened to touch a fence panel while his hand was in the water and got a shock. We then turned off that entire panel.
On Sunday morning, the animals seemed panicked and reaching through fences for water buckets. So Sean came and tested and somehow the waterers were STILL getting power. We turned off the main power to the whole property. STILL GETTING POWER! WHAT??
That’s when I mentioned the downed power line hadn’t been fixed. It was draping on the reservoir fence and over another hot wire. So knowing that our animals were getting shocked every time they tried to drink, and who could predict what else was electrified, we called 911.
Our poor animals…when we clean waterers out, we are wearing rubber soled boots so unless we touched the metal fence, we didn’t get a shock. They are standing on their little bare feet and getting blasted every time 💔
We filled up water buckets everywhere to quench thirst on such a warm day, and then power was out for 3 hours while they fixed the downed lines (4 days after our original call), which was back feeding onto our property and set up an incredibly dangerous situation. We now have water but it’s been a challenge to get the animals to trust that the waterers they’ve been using for years won’t hurt them.
What’s the moral of the story?
I don’t know, really. Just that every day being a new unforeseen challenge or weird, unwanted adventure, our staff is constantly in go-mode and it gets exhausting. We invested about 12 hours of manpower time trying to figure this out and remedy the situation, even when it was some other agency’s responsibility and we did what WE were supposed to do from the get.
Kind of like the surrender requests we sanctuaries have been inundated with for the past six weeks, chicks people bought who turned out to be roosters they can’t keep, people who bought animals for their own “use” who are now sick or injured and not wanting to pay vet bills for. One even a physician who had the gall to put a vet bill on a smaller non profit because she “didn’t have the money for that kind of thing at the moment.”
I guess I’m saying that when you support us, or other sanctuaries, you’re helping us support the victims of someone else’s bad choices, apathy, or ignorance, animals who should have never have been put in the cross fire of human problems. It isn’t fair we have to do the work, or that we have to ask you for help, but neither would it be ok for us to desert those animals in their time of need, through no fault of their own. And I thank you all for joining us on this often frustrating mission ❤️🩹
