Where's Dave, Director of HSUS NRRO

I just received this email from Dave. He has had a very trying week. All the artist at AHAA send him sympathy in the loss of his "Lucy". In his own words:

"Another exciting week. Those rescued tadpoles from the August urban sprawl pond rescues are turning into Frogs ( err actually mostly TOADS) this week. This is good news because we had narrowed the potential species down to either non-native Bullfrogs or native spade foot toads. So now we will see if the weather will allow us to release these toads yet this fall or if we will have to over-winter them in my garage in a toad hibernaculum. If they turned out to be bullfrogs we would have to ship them to southern states where bullfrogs are native. (bullfrogs often get released from people who got tadpoles at a pet store and grew tired of the frogs!!!)

We also rescued a young male pheasant that flew into a picture window. After 24 hours of care from being "stunned" the bird was released at the capture site. Imagine the "dreams" this pheasant must be having about be captured by aliens!!!!

The rest of my week was consumed in planning a unique mobile spay neuter clinic for next week. We are going onto the Crow reservation with a small surgical and trapping team to live-trap and spay up to 35 cats at one farmhouse. Normally we would transport 6-10 cats at a time to any available clinic but the transport stress to the cats and the expense of sending someone out to trap and transport three to four times made these events very difficult.
So this trial event is taking the team to the property and getting all the cats spayed without having to transport them.

For this week I hope you will allow me to close my Blog with a totally self indulgent obituary that celebrates the life of my oldest non-human daughter.

Thank you for your artistic efforts to help animals". Dave

In Memory of Lucy Pauli



Lucy Pauli: Gooood Girl ! Lucy Pauli, 14 (98) , left her worldly body to join her soul mates in the afterlife early in the Morning of September 24th.

For fourteen years Lucy has offered unconditional love, asking only occasionally for some quality time, a slice of Wisconsin Cheddar or a simple pat on the head.

Lucy was a working class gal. Her primary job was protecting the three Pauli women and property, but for her entire life she served as foster mother, therapist and educator to literally hundreds of rescue dogs, cats, exotics and wild animals that passed through her domain. She was especially fond of the unusually odiferous foster animals like the opossums, and bobcats, and unimpressed with the Tigers, bears and alligators that she was responsible for. More recently her assignment was to impress upon two young rehab fox squirrels that they should seek the safety of high branches whenever a predator comes by. She accepted this duty with relish and the scenes of this geriatric patron repeatedly "treeing" the baby squirrels will bring smiles in our memories for years to come.

For those who want to honor Lucy or other nonhuman family members who have crossed the rainbow bridge we ask you simply to take an extra few minutes each day to pet, walk or praise the companion animals in your life.

We want to thank the Billings Animal Shelter for bringing us Lucy 14 years ago, and Doctor Amy Lamm of Vet2go for providing Lucy pain relief in her final waning hours. -- Dave