The sanctuary held its first open house in many years. A local radio station brought out their party tent, prize spinning wheel, prizes, and one of the local radio personalities hosted the event.
Unfortunately, the new director was unable to attend due to family emergency, so that left one employee and I in charge of making sure the grounds were clean, gift shop was clean, rummage table set-up, and volunteers ready to greet the visitors. It looks like the sanctuary earned about $1200 total for the day – not too bad considering the tickets were just $2 per person. That means approximately 350 people came out to see the animals.
The reason why the sanctuary only charged $2 per ticket was to draw in people living nearby to see the animals. Most of the people who attended never even knew the sanctuary existed and were very surprised to see so many tigers close-up. The event was also a publicity tactic to put a wonderful face on the sanctuary after the past reports leading up to the former directors’ departure. I am really concerned that once the OAG report comes out, laying out all the findings, attendance and donations may dramatically decrease. Right now is the time to show the people the animals are thriving and doing well – not when the report finally comes out. Rumor has it the OAG plans to levy a fine of $25k against the sanctuary, mainly due to the actions and inactions of the board.
Anyhoo, the event itself went great! The visitors seemed to have a great time. Three tours were going at the same time with about 20+ visitors per tour guide. This event ran from 10am – 4pm. The first tour had a few folks, but by the time KONO showed up, the place was “rock’n.” The event theme was “Rock n’ Roll” Party at the [sanctuary’s name].
Okay, now the downside. The juvenile probationers caused a few problems, talking trash in front of guests, wearing “crack” jeans (jeans hanging half way down the boys backsides), wearing hats backwards, etc. Management received complaints from guests about these boys, which made me reevaluate their use at these events. In the future they can help set-up the function and clean-up at the end, but they cannot be present for the event unless they pay for a ticket.
And the icing on the proverbial cake was the diva workers refusing to help clean-up after the event. Everyone was tired that day, no question about it, but instead of coming together, the workers decided to sit around while I and a volunteer broke down 15 rummage tables by ourselves. That meant sorting through 15 tables of non-sellable stuff, but them in bags, and placing the bags in my truck to be taken to Goodwill that evening. It took us almost two hours to breakdown the tables. Did the workers help us? Nope. They sat in the office, no doubt “bitching” about me because I had the audacity to ask for their assistance in putting away two cat cages. These cat cages had soiled newspaper lining, litter boxes, food scattered through out. When I started to clean out the cages, one of the volunteers (turned out to be the husband of one of the diva animal caretakers), turned to his wife and asked if it was okay to leave the mess inside the cages. The diva animal caretaker replied yeah it was okay because they would eventually put another animal in the cage!! OMG!! I told him no, we were going to clean the cages and then put them away. Then real loud I said, oh, look at all the urine on the paper” to which he responded I guess this one will need to be cleaned out. After I removed all the stuff from the cage, the diva’s husband loaded the cage in the gator. Then we walked over to the second cage. I started to remove the stuff from this cage when diva’s husband said you don’t have to remove the stuff. I told him yes, we do have to remove the stuff. Before I got the sentence out, diva’s husband spoke around me and asked the diva animal caretaker if we needed to the clean out the cage! Again, OMG! She said no, and when he said the animal caretaker said no, I told him I don’t care what she said, we are going to do things the right way. That is when he yelled at me, “fine you can clean the damn thing out by yourself,” walked over to the gator and sped off, leaving the second cage behind. Okay, it’s not like he helped me clean out the first cage or anything – all he had to do was load the empty cage into the gator! Good thing I did clean out the cage because there was dried up throw-up at the rear of the cage. And to think, the diva animal caretakers thought it was okay to leave animal cares in a messy state, and even scarier, reuse the messy cage for either sick or healthy animals! These ladies need to read USDA guidelines regarding animal care. In my personal opinion, these ladies are lazy and really do not care about the animals living at the sanctuary. They care more about “looking good” than the health and welfare of the animals and this scares me greatly.
Another example: the divas placed a chocolate Labrador puppy in what used to be a bird enclosure on tour, along with another dog up for adoption. During the course of the event, the puppy dug his way out of the enclosure. The enclosure was located in between a tiger and bear enclosure! I put the puppy back, covered the hole with very large rocks, and notified an animal caretaker of the digging, suggesting that he be placed somewhere else as he may dig out again. Sure enough, a minute later, the puppy was out again! He had dug another hole in the soft dirt and fled the cage. This time I asked the animal caretaker to place him somewhere else because he could not stay in this cage. By the way the diva animal caretaker tossed the puppy into the used and not cleaned out marmoset enclosure which was empty for about two months, I could tell she was pissed that I had to tell her to put the puppy into a different enclosure. What’s worse, the puppy received no water or food in this filthy cage (animal droppings were easily seen in the bottom of this cage). Sometime during the late afternoon, someone put the puppy back into the same enclosure where he kept escaping from!!! And sure enough, just as the volunteer and I were wrapping up our clean-up effort, there goes the puppy running towards to bear enclosure! While the volunteer was trying to round up the puppy, I ran inside to get one of the divas to help us contain the dog. This time, the diva scooped up the puppy and placed the puppy in the used cat cage which I emptied and the volunteer and I lugged up to the office. Why did we place the empty cat cage in the office instead of the warehouse? Simple – the divas in a fit of spite, knowing the volunteer and I were still cleaning up, locked up the warehouse so we could not finish putting up chairs, tables, cat cage, and miscellaneous items the sanctuary could use from the rummage sale! Can you believe how childish these so-called adults can be towards people who actually know the meaning of the words “hard work” and “integrity?”
So, the last I saw of the puppy, he was in the cat cage, located in the office, laying on what looked like to be plastic covering with a water bowl with water splashed all over the enclosure. I didn’t see any dog food for the puppy.
Later that evening, the diva’s husband, without authority from the director, in a fit of defiance, posted animal stories to the sanctuary’s web site. The uploaded pages were horrible! Links that went no where and pages that contained gross inaccuracies were posted to the site. When I discovered their little defiant act against me, I immediately notified the director. Why do I and the director think this was an act of rebellion against me? Simple, the diva animal caretaker knew I was now working the web pages and on the day of the open house she wanted me to know that her husband was this great webmaster and that he was redesigning the sanctuary’s site. I told her great, he and I would need to sit down together because I have ideas on how I would like to see the layout of the website. This statement did not go over well with the diva as her face hardened and she stalked away! So, I have reason to believe the diva and her husband were trying to make a point that they still “owned” the website and posted the horrible pages as their way of getting back at me. Needless to say, the new director told me to take down the pages immediately, which I did. Unfortunately, a lot of people saw these pages before they were removed from the web site. The new director told me she sent me an email to all employees they could not post anything to the website without her authorization. This email spurred a lengthy email spouting out excuses as to why he thought it was okay to post material to the website without any permission.
In the meantime, on Saturday, another macaque was injured from a fall (the cage tops are extremely high and if the primate fights or slips from the top of the enclosure, it could cause serious injury or death). In this case, the primate was having trouble moving his limbs and supposedly the vet was supposed to come out Monday to check on the primate. I have a feeling the two animal caretakers did not express to the vet the seriousness of the injury and what is worse, they never notified the new director of the incident. The new director happened to walk into the warehouse and found one of the workers sitting on the ground with the dying macaque in her arms. The macaque was vocalizing and was able to move his head. When the director saw this, she said she told the worker she did not like what she was seeing – for you see, the workers are not allowed to handle the macaques, especially when they are not wearing the quarantine gear. The macaque died on Monday, March 29, 2010. For at least two days the primate was allowed to suffer without any vet care. The new director is at a loss as to what to do at this point. With several of the workers acting out causing problems for the organization, it makes it very difficult for her to effectively fundraise for the animals.
Update on the second pregnant worker – she turned in her two week notice. One less diva working at the sanctuary. I met the new animal caretaker and she seems nice. Needless to say, the other workers were mad because no one informed them of the new animal caretaker selection! One of the divas took it upon herself to send a chiding email to the director, demanding an explanation. As if!
This was one crazy weekend…
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