The Flash Flood Kids!!

Hola Y'all!!!

The furkids that Mom rescued from the flash flood are doing great! They're growing like little weeds and eating up lots of good puppy food!! They all got a bath today.
Midonna, the pup that was abandoned at a spay/neuter clinic is getting better too. Her mange is starting to clear up a little.
Carmen, the German Shepard pup got ADOPTED!!!! Her new family is the absolute BEST!!
We thought you folks might like to see some photos of the flash flood pups!!

Please don't forget to vote for us in the shelter challenge!!
Just go to www.animalrescuesite.com and click on shelter challenge. Type in lighthouse for the shelter name, click on Costa Rica for the country and click search. When our name comes up click vote!! Don't forget to wait for the vote confirmation question to come up!

Flash Flood Rescue

Mom did a real exciting rescue yesterday!!! Personally I think she's NUTS!!!
I do NOT approve of lightning!!!!!
Here's her story
Tailwags,
BudBud

Ovidio, a young man who lives down the road from us, called me from work just before a horrendous cloudburst. He told me someone had driven in, late last night, and dumped dogs and puppies down at the corral. As you know I have the two new kids that came in this week so I really don't have a place for any more. I sat there for maybe 2 minutes after his call thinking, "Don't go. You don't have room." before I got up and started walking down to the corral. It had already started raining and thundering so I turned around and came back to the house to get the car.

I stopped at Ovidios house to pick up his little niece. He had told me she could show me where the dogs were.

When we got down to the corral there were 2 adult females and 5 puppies. The largest of the two adults was laying in a cardboard box with four of the puppies. The smaller adult was up against the fence with one puppy.

I got leashes out of the car and put them on the adult dogs and handed one of the leads to the little girl. I started back to the car with the bigger dog who decided she did not want to go.
About that time the skies opened up. Lightning was striking all around us and it was raining so hard I couldn't see but a few feet in front of me.

The little girl, more worried about the puppies than the adult dogs, dropped the leash and gathered up all the puppies, tossed them into the cardboard box and loaded them in the back seat of the car.
Finally, after getting the toe of my shoe caught in a vine and falling, I got the bigger dog to the car and tossed her in the back seat with the puppies.
At that point we realized the other dog had run off. WITH A SLIP LEAD ON HER NECK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I told the kid to get in the car and stay. I was afraid she was going to be struck by lightning it was striking so close. I ran back to the area where the dogs had been but the dog was not there.

By this time it was flash flooding and there was a RIVER running through the pole barn and out across where the box had been with the puppies in it. They would all have been washed away or drowned. Even the two adult dogs might have been washed away the flooding was so strong.

I went back to the car and we sat and waited to see if the other dog would come back. She finally came running past the car. I think she was running from the lightning.

I saw her run toward the barn. It was still a downpour and the lightning was still striking close by.
As I got out of the car the little girl said something to me in spanish but I didn't understand it and I jumped out anyway to try to catch the dog.

I ran to the area where the dogs had been again. By this time the "river" was about half way between my ankles and knees. It was rushing water full of mud and cow poop. Healthy huh?

I didn't see the dog. Lightning struck REAL close by. I ran up past the barn and into the woods to see if the dog was up there. No luck.

By this time I am, of course, SOPPING wet and praying that I didn't get hit by lightning.

Coming back through the "river" the water was rushing so fast it knocked my left foot out from under me and down I went again. In the cow poop river!!!!

I ran back to the car planning to just sit there and wait until it stopped storming and THEN get out and find the dog.

When I jumped back in the car the little girl said something to me, again in spanish.
But this time I caught a few words.
She was saying the dog was under our car.
She had been there the whole time I was wading in rivers of cow poop and dodging lightning strikes.

I got out and called to her but she wouldn't come close enough for me to grab her or the leash. So I got down and crawled under the car, in the mud, to reach the leash.

I tossed her in the back of the car and started trying to turn around in the mud in a steep area. I managed to get turned around and dropped the little girl off at her house and drove back to my house with the dogs.

Bruce and I unloaded them in the rain. I didn't have a clue which puppies belonged to which dog.

We got them inside the clinic, got them dried off and warm, and I put the bigger dog in a crate with the four pups she was laying in the cardboard box with. I put the smaller dog in another crate with the one pup who was with her against the fence.
Within seconds, the pups were all yelling at me, "HEY LADY!! This is our grandmother!! Did you even check to see if she's got milk?? (sheeeesh...stoopid humans)

Soooo...I put all the pups in the crate with the smaller dog and everyone was happy.

I had to wait about posting the full story because I was way too angry.
If I ever find out who dumped these precious babies will one of you promise to bail me out?

Video of the new kid!! Midonna.

Midonna is the new kid here at Lighthouse.
She was abandoned. She has mange, parasites, and is very skinny.
Mom's gonna fatten her up, get her well and find her a family to love her!!
Tailwags!!!!
BudBud

Bella Got Adopted!!!

WHOOO HOOO!!!! Little Bella got adopted yesterday!!!! Some friends of ours, from San Ramon, saw her on our page and fell in love. They drove over here in HORRIBLE rain just to get her!!! They have a great place with chickens and cats and a couple of birds too!! Bella will love it!!!
We got a new kid in yesterday who is all covered in mange. Her name is Midonna!! Y'all say some prayers for her and send healing thoughts ok?



Don't forget to vote and get all your friends to vote too!!!! www.animalrescuesite.com We're holding in 2nd place right now and could win a thousand dollars for the furkids!!!!
TAILWAGS!!!!!!!!!
BudBud

News from the lighthouse 6/10/10

Hola Y'all!!

I'm gettin' a little concerned about Mom!! Last night she put a NET over the BED!!!! Dad helped her hang it from the ceiling!! I don't have a clue what the thing is for.

But that's not the worse part!! For three nights before that she kept us all awake BEATING HERSELF UP!!

We'd all be just sleepin' real sound and all of a sudden WHACK!!!!!!! Mom would slap herself on the side of the head and say a dirty word. Then, once we all fell back asleep...WHACK!!! She'd do it again!! It went on all night!!!! A few times she just smacked herself, said a dirty word and then got up and worked at the computer for a while!!

It was AWFUL!!! None of us got any sleep. FOR THREE NIGHTS!!! Well last night she and Dad hung this net thingy over the bed and we all slept under it!! I'm telling you it was weird!!!! But at least Mom didn't smack herself in the side of the head all night long.

I did hear Mom say something about ^%)!$%$#&* mosquitos, but I don't have a clue what that is.

We got a new kid into the shelter. Her name is Bella and she was dumped on the street like most of our other rescue kids. She's a sweetie. We've gotta get her "fixed" and then we can try to find a home for her. Mom says she is a german shepard mix.


You guys remember Cookie and Candy right? The two german shepard pups who were dumped on the road a while back? Well below is a before and after photo of them!! MAN!!!!! Those are some BIG DOGS!!!!!!!!!!!! Their new dad spoils 'em rotten and they are VERY happy dogs!!! I'm glad Mom found a home for them cause they'd eat up ALL the food!!!


My 2 legged human sister might be comin' to see us in August!! WHOOO HOOO!!!! Joray is lots of fun!! Aunt Pat may be comin' too!!! We'd LOVE that!!!!!

OH!! Mom got somethin' called Skype on her computer!! Now we can talk to people in the states and it don't cost any money as long as they have Skype too!!

We get to talk to Joray and my uncle Lance!! We get to talk to Aunt Pat in Savannah and I get to see my girlfriend!! That's the best part!! We can actually SEE each other on the computer while we're talkin'!!!

Mom says they used to have things like that in the space movies when she was a kid!!

If you've got skype on your computer look us up!! Just search for Frances "Kitten" Jones.

I gotta go. Mom's gettin' tired of typin' for me and it's gettin' close to suppertime. I'll catch you guys later.
Thanks for all the votin' you're doin' in the shelter challenge!! Please keep votin' every day!!!

Tailwags and snuggles!!!
BudBud

News from Lighthouse 5/31/10

Hola Y'all!!!!

Things are goin' pretty good here. Princess Joy is not coughing as much and seems to feel better. Thank you to EVERYONE who prayed for her and sent healing thoughts!!

Mom and Dad almost had a wreck last night!! They were on their way home from town and there was a bus stopped, in the oncoming lane, letting passengers out.

It was really dark but Mom caught just a glimmer of "something" in her lane so she started slowing down. Then the bus driver started flashing his lights REAL FAST to warn her about something!!!

About that time Mom saw what the glimmer was. A black horse coming down the road in her lane!!!! She got the car stopped, turned the emergency flashers on, and jumped out of the car to try to catch the horse.

The bus had moved on so now there were cars coming down the road at full speed!!! Mom started waving her arms like crazy and jumped over into that lane to make the people stop. She had shooed the horse over onto the shoulder but she was afraid he might spook and run back out into traffic.

Mom got ALL the traffic stopped and then a man from the other side of the road jumped over the low wall and came toward her. Mom asked, "Es su caballo?" (Is this your horse?) and he said "Si Señora" (yes) and ran to shoo the horse into a gate that was standing open.

Mom still had both lanes stopped and people were blowing their horns and being ugly but Mom stood her ground. She was NOT gonna let any traffic through until she knew the horse was safe. Mom's kinda stubborn when it comes to stuff like that y'know.

The owner of the horse got the gate closed and started thanking Mom. Mom says God put her in that exact spot at that exact time. Somebody else might not have stopped and the horse could have been hurt. YAYYYYYY GOD!!!!

It's rainy season now and we're gettin' a LOT of rain. Usually it is later in the season when the BIG rains come but Mom says there was a tropical storm somewhere nearby and that was where all our early rain came from.

The rains are causing problems with the new highway. People from Spain built the highway and they left really high banks that should have been terraced. The rain is causing the banks to collapse and making landslides come onto the highway.

When the Costa Rica government asked the spanish people to cut the banks down the spanish people said no. They said it was NORMAL for the banks to "slide a little." A big boulder came down the other night and hit a couple on a motorcycle. The girl was hurt really bad and the National Cruz Roja ambulance got there right away and loaded her up.

THEN, the authorities from the spanish "owners" of the highway told them they could not take her to the hospital because it was THEIR highway and THEY had their OWN ambulance.

They had to wait for the other ambulance and then transfer her from one to the other in a heavy rain. The girl died. Humans aren't really very smart if you ask me. Mom says our new lady president ought to tell those spanish people to hit the road.

Anyway, that's all for now. I gotta go check on Mom and see if she's finished baking the treats!! She makes treats for us perros out of leftovers!! Aunt Karen showed her how to do it!! They're GOOD and CRUNCHY too so it helps keep our teeth clean!!!

You guys have a good Monday and don't forget to vote at the www.animalrescuesite.com

TAILWAGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BudBud

The Pig Farmer

Hola Y'all!!!!
This is a picture of Daisy. We rescued her when we lived in the states. She LOVED belly rubs.
A friend of ours, who does pig rescue sent Mom the following story. Mom says it is very true. Some people do things they really don't want to do because they think that is the only way. Sometimes something happens to make them want to change. The story is REALLY REALLY long but Mom says it is worth the time to read it.
Enjoy!!
BudBud

THE PIG FARMER John Robbins One day in Iowa I met a particular gentleman—and I use that term, gentleman, frankly, only because I am trying to be polite, for that is certainly not how I saw him at the time. He owned and ran what he called a “pork production facility.” I, on the other hand, would have called it a pig Auschwitz. The conditions were brutal. The pigs were confined in cages that were barely larger than their own bodies, with the cages stacked on top of each other in tiers, three high. The sides and the bottoms of the cages were steel slats, so that excrement from the animals in the upper and middle tiers dropped through the slats on to the animals below.

The aforementioned owner of this nightmare weighed, I am sure, at least 240 pounds, but what was even more impressive about his appearance was that he seemed to be made out of concrete. His movements had all the fluidity and grace of a brick wall. What made him even less appealing was that his language seemed to consist mainly of grunts, many of which sounded alike to me, and none of which were particularly pleasant to hear. Seeing how rigid he was and sensing the overall quality of his presence, I—rather brilliantly, I thought—concluded that his difficulties had not arisen merely because he hadn’t had time, that particular morning, to finish his entire daily yoga routine.

But I wasn’t about to divulge my opinions of him or his operation, for I was undercover, visiting slaughterhouses and feedlots to learn what I could about modern meat production. There were no bumper stickers on my car, and my clothes and hairstyle were carefully chosen to give no indication that I might have philosophical leanings other than those that were common in the area. I told the farmer matter of factly that I was a researcher writing about animal agriculture, and asked if he’d mind speaking with me for a few minutes so that I might have the benefit of his knowledge.

In response, he grunted a few words that I could not decipher, but that I gathered meant I could ask him questions and he would show me around. I was at this point not very happy about the situation, and this feeling did not improve when we entered one of the warehouses that housed his pigs. In fact, my distress increased, for I was immediately struck by what I can only call an overpowering olfactory experience.

The place reeked like you would not believe of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and other noxious gases that were the products of the animals’ wastes. These, unfortunately, seemed to have been piling up inside the building for far too long a time. As nauseating as the stench was for me, I wondered what it must be like for the animals. The cells that detect scent are known as ethmoidal cells. Pigs, like dogs, have nearly 200 times the concentration of these cells in their noses as humans do. In a natural setting, they are able, while rooting around in the dirt, to detect the scent of an edible root through the earth itself. Given any kind of a chance, they will never soil their own nests, for they are actually quite clean animals, despite the reputation we have unfairly given them. But here they had no contact with the earth, and their noses were beset by the unceasing odor of their own urine and feces multiplied a thousand times by the accumulated wastes of the other pigs unfortunate enough to be caged in that warehouse.

I was in the building only for a few minutes, and the longer I remained in there, the more desperately I wanted to leave. But the pigs were prisoners there, barely able to take a single step, forced to endure this stench, and almost completely immobile, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and with no time off, I can assure you, for holidays.

The man who ran the place was—I’ll give him this—kind enough to answer my questions, which were mainly about the drugs he used to handle problems such as African Swine Fever, cholera, trichinosis, and other swine diseases that are fairly common in factory pigs today.

But my sentiments about him and his farm were not becoming any warmer. It didn’t help when, in response to a particularly loud squealing from one of the pigs, he delivered a sudden and threatening kick to the bars of its cage, causing a loud “clang” to reverberate through the warehouse and leading to screaming from many of the pigs. Because it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide my distress, it crossed my mind that I should tell him what I thought of the conditions in which he kept his pigs, but then I thought better of it. This was a man, it was obvious, with whom there was no point in arguing.

After maybe 15 minutes, I’d had enough and was preparing to leave, and I felt sure he was glad to be about to be rid of me. But then something happened, something that changed my life, forever—and, as it turns out, his too. It began when his wife came out from the farmhouse and cordially invited me to stay for dinner. The pig farmer grimaced when his wife spoke, but he dutifully turned to me and announced, “The wife would like you to stay for dinner.” He always called her “the wife,” by the way, which led me to deduce that he was not, apparently, on the leading edge of feminist thought in the country today.

I don’t know whether you have ever done something without having a clue why, and to this day I couldn’t tell you what prompted me to do it, but I said Yes, I’d be delighted. And stay for dinner I did, though I didn’t eat the pork they served. The excuse I gave was that my doctor was worried about my cholesterol. I didn’t say that I was a vegetarian, nor that my cholesterol was 125. I was trying to be a polite and appropriate dinner guest. I didn’t want to say anything that might lead to any kind of disagreement.

The couple (and their two sons, who were also at the table) were, I could see, being nice to me, giving me dinner and all, and it was gradually becoming clear to me that, along with all the rest of it, they could be, in their way, somewhat decent people. I asked myself, if they were in my town, traveling, and I had chanced to meet them, would I have invited them to dinner? Not likely, I knew, not likely at all. Yet here they were, being as hospitable to me as they could. Yes, I had to admit it. Much as I detested how the pigs were treated, this pig farmer wasn’t actually the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. At least not at the moment. Of course, I still knew that if we were to scratch the surface we’d no doubt find ourselves in great conflict, and because that was not a direction in which I wanted to go, as the meal went along I sought to keep things on an even and constant keel.

Perhaps they sensed it too, for among us, we managed to see that the conversation remained, consistently and resolutely, shallow. We talked about the weather, about the Little League games in which their two sons played, and then, of course, about how the weather might affect the Little League games. We were actually doing rather well at keeping the conversation superficial and far from any topic around which conflict might occur. Or so I thought.

But then suddenly, out of nowhere, the man pointed at me forcefully with his finger, and snarled in a voice that I must say truly frightened me, “Sometimes I wish you animal rights people would just drop dead.” How on Earth he knew I had any affinity with animal rights I will never know—I had painstakingly avoided any mention of any such thing—but I do know that my stomach tightened immediately into a knot. To make matters worse, at that moment his two sons leapt from the table, tore into the den, slammed the door behind them, and turned the TV on loud, presumably preparing to drown out what was to follow. At the same instant, his wife nervously picked up some dishes and scurried into the kitchen. As I watched the door close behind her and heard the water begin running, I had a sinking sensation.

They had, there was no mistaking it, left me alone with him. I was, to put it bluntly, terrified. Under the circumstances, a wrong move now could be disastrous. Trying to center myself, I tried to find some semblance of inner calm by watching my breath, but this I could not do, and for a very simple reason.
There wasn’t any to watch.

“What are they saying that’s so upsetting to you?” I said finally, pronouncing the words carefully and distinctly, trying not to show my terror. I was trying very hard at that moment to disassociate myself from the animal rights movement, a force in our society of which he, evidently, was not overly fond. “They accuse me of mistreating my stock,” he growled. “Why would they say a thing like that?” I answered, knowing full well, of course, why they would, but thinking mostly about my own survival.

His reply, to my surprise, while angry, was actually quite articulate. He told me precisely what animal rights groups were saying about operations like his, and exactly why they were opposed to his way of doing things. Then, without pausing, he launched into a tirade about how he didn’t like being called cruel, and they didn’t know anything about the business he was in, and why couldn’t they mind their own business.

As he spoke it, the knot in my stomach was relaxing, because it was becoming clear, and I was glad of it, that he meant me no harm, but just needed to vent. Part of his frustration, it seemed, was that even though he didn’t like doing some of the things he did to the animals—cooping them up in such small cages, using so many drugs, taking the babies away from their mothers so quickly after their births—he didn’t see that he had any choice. He would be at a disadvantage and unable to compete economically if he didn’t do things that way. This is how it’s done today, he told me, and he had to do it too. He didn’t like it, but he liked even less being blamed for doing what he had to do in order to feed his family.

As it happened, I had just the week before been at a much larger hog operation, where I learned that it was part of their business strategy to try to put people like him out of business by going full-tilt into the mass production of assembly-line pigs, so that small farmers wouldn’t be able to keep up. What I had heard corroborated everything he was saying. Almost despite myself, I began to grasp the poignancy of this man’s human predicament. I was in his home because he and his wife had invited me to be there. And looking around, it was obvious that they were having a hard time making ends meet. Things were threadbare. This family was on the edge.

Raising pigs, apparently, was the only way the farmer knew how to make a living, so he did it even though, as was becoming evident the more we talked, he didn’t like one bit the direction hog farming was going. At times, as he spoke about how much he hated the modern factory methods of pork production, he reminded me of the very animal rights people who a few minutes before he said he wished would drop dead. As the conversation progressed, I actually began to develop some sense of respect for this man whom I had earlier judged so harshly. There was decency in him. There was something within him that meant well. But as I began to sense a spirit of goodness in him, I could only wonder all the more how he could treat his pigs the way he did. Little did I know that I was about to find out. . .

We are talking along, when suddenly he looks troubled. He slumps over, his head in his hands. He looks broken, and there is a sense of something awful having happened. Has he had a heart attack? A stroke? I’m finding it hard to breathe, and hard to think clearly. “What’s happening?” I ask. It takes him awhile to answer, but finally he does. I am relieved that he is able to speak, although what he says hardly brings any clarity to the situation. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, “and I don’t want to talk about it.” As he speaks, he makes a motion with his hand, as if he were pushing something away.

For the next several minutes we continue to converse, but I’m quite uneasy. Things seem incomplete and confusing. Something dark has entered the room, and I don’t know what it is or how to deal with it. Then, as we are speaking, it happens again. Once again a look of despondency comes over him. Sitting there, I know I’m in the presence of something bleak and oppressive. I try to be present with what’s happening, but it’s not easy. Again I’m finding it hard to breathe.

Finally, he looks at me, and I notice his eyes are teary. “You’re right,” he says. I, of course, always like to be told that I am right, but in this instance I don’t have the slightest idea what he’s talking about. He continues. “No animal,” he says, “should be treated like that. Especially hogs. Do you know that they’re intelligent animals? They’re even friendly, if you treat ’em right. But I don’t.” There are tears welling up in his eyes. And he tells me that he has just had a memory come back of something that happened in his childhood, something he hasn’t thought of for many years. It’s come back in stages, he says. He grew up, he tells me, on a small farm in rural Missouri, the old-fashioned kind where animals ran around, with barnyards and pastures, and where they all had names.

I learn, too, that he was an only child, the son of a powerful father who ran things with an iron fist. With no brothers or sisters, he often felt lonely, but found companionship among the animals on the farm, particularly several dogs, who were as friends to him.

And, he tells me, and this I am quite surprised to hear, he had a pet pig. As he proceeds to tell me about this pig, it is as if he is becoming a different person. Before he had spoken primarily in a monotone; but now his voice grows lively. His body language, which until this point seemed to speak primarily of long suffering, now becomes animated. There is something fresh taking place.

In the summer, he tells me, he would sleep in the barn. It was cooler there than in the house, and the pig would come over and sleep alongside him, asking fondly to have her belly rubbed, which he was glad to do. There was a pond on their property, he goes on, and he liked to swim in it when the weather was hot, but one of the dogs would get excited when he did, and would ruin things. The dog would jump into the water and swim up on top of him, scratching him with her paws and making things miserable for him. He was about to give up on swimming, but then, as fate would have it, the pig, of all people, stepped in and saved the day.

Evidently the pig could swim, for she would plop herself into the water, swim out where the dog was bothering the boy, and insert herself between them. She’d stay between the dog and the boy, and keep the dog at bay. She was, as best I could make out, functioning in the situation something like a lifeguard, or in this case, perhaps more of a life-pig. I’m listening to this hog farmer tell me these stories about his pet pig, and I’m thoroughly enjoying both myself and him, and rather astounded at how things are transpiring, when once again, it happens.

Once again a look of defeat sweeps across this man’s face, and once again I sense the presence of something very sad. Something in him, I know, is struggling to make its way toward life through anguish and pain, but I don’t know what it is or how, indeed, to help him. “What happened to your pig?” I ask. He sighs, and it’s as though the whole world’s pain is contained in that sigh. Then, slowly, he speaks. “My father made me butcher it.” “Did you?” I ask. “I ran away, but I couldn’t hide. They found me.” “What happened?” “My father gave me a choice.” “What was that?” “He told me, ‘You either slaughter that animal or you’re no longer my son.’” Some choice, I think, feeling the weight of how fathers have so often trained their sons not to care, to be what they call brave and strong, but what so often turns out to be callous and closed-hearted. “So I did it,” he says, and now his tears begin to flow, making their way down his cheeks.

I am touched and humbled. This man, whom I had judged to be without human feeling, is weeping in front of me, a stranger. This man, whom I had seen as callous and even heartless, is actually someone who cares, and deeply. How wrong, how profoundly and terribly wrong I had been.

In the minutes that follow, it becomes clear to me what has been happening. The pig farmer has remembered something that was so painful, that was such a profound trauma, that he had not been able to cope with it when it had happened. Something had shut down, then. It was just too much to bear. Somewhere in his young, formative psyche he made a resolution never to be that hurt again, never to be that vulnerable again. And he built a wall around the place where the pain had occurred, which was the place where his love and attachment to that pig was located, which was his heart.

And now here he was, slaughtering pigs for a living—still, I imagined, seeking his father’s approval. God, what we men will do, I thought, to get our fathers’ acceptance. I had thought he was a cold and closed human being, but now I saw the truth. His rigidity was not a result of a lack of feeling, as I had thought it was, but quite the opposite: it was a sign of how sensitive he was underneath. For if he had not been so sensitive, he would not have been that hurt, and he would not have needed to put up so massive a wall. The tension in his body that was so apparent to me upon first meeting him, the body armor that he carried, bespoke how hurt he had been, and how much capacity for feeling he carried still, beneath it all. I had judged him, and done so, to be honest, mercilessly. But for the rest of the evening I sat with him, humbled, and grateful for whatever it was in him that had been strong enough to force this long-buried and deeply painful memory to the surface. And glad, too, that I had not stayed stuck in my judgments of him, for if I had, I would not have provided an environment in which his remembering could have occurred.

We talked that night, for hours, about many things. I was, after all that had happened, concerned for him. The gap between his feelings and his lifestyle seemed so tragically vast. What could he do? This was all he knew. He did not have a high school diploma. He was only partially literate. Who would hire him if he tried to do something else? Who would invest in him and train him, at his age? When finally, I left that evening, these questions were very much on my mind, and I had no answers to them. Somewhat flippantly, I tried to joke about it. “Maybe,” I said, “you’ll grow broccoli or something.” He stared at me, clearly not comprehending what I might be talking about. It occurred to me, briefly, that he might possibly not know what broccoli was.

We parted that night as friends, and though we rarely see each other now, we have remained friends as the years have passed. I carry him in my heart and think of him, in fact, as a hero. Because, as you will soon see, impressed as I was by the courage it had taken for him to allow such painful memories to come to the surface, I had not yet seen the extent of his bravery. When I wrote Diet for a New America, I quoted him and summarized what he had told me, but I was quite brief and did not mention his name. I thought that, living as he did among other pig farmers in Iowa, it would not be to his benefit to be associated with me. When the book came out, I sent him a copy, saying I hoped he was comfortable with how I wrote of the evening we had shared, and directing him to the pages on which my discussion of our time together was to be found.

Several weeks later, I received a letter from him. “Dear Mr. Robbins,” it began. “Thank you for the book. When I saw it, I got a migraine headache.” Now as an author, you do want to have an impact on your readers. This, however, was not what I had had in mind.

He went on, though, to explain that the headaches had gotten so bad that, as he put it, “the wife” had suggested to him he should perhaps read the book. She thought there might be some kind of connection between the headaches and the book. He told me that this hadn’t made much sense to him, but he had done it because “the wife” was often right about these things.

“You write good,” he told me, and I can tell you that his three words of his meant more to me than when the New York Times praised the book profusely. He then went on to say that reading the book was very hard for him, because the light it shone on what he was doing made it clear to him that it was wrong to continue.

The headaches, meanwhile, had been getting worse, until, he told me, that very morning, when he had finished the book, having stayed up all night reading, he went into the bathroom, and looked into the mirror. “I decided, right then,” he said, “that I would sell my herd and get out of this business. I don’t know what I will do, though. Maybe I will, like you said, grow broccoli.”

As it happened, he did sell his operation in Iowa and move back to Missouri, where he bought a small farm. And there he is today, running something of a model farm. He grows vegetables organically—including, I am sure, broccoli—that he sells at a local farmer’s market.

He’s got pigs, all right, but only about 10, and he doesn’t cage them, nor does he kill them. Instead, he’s got a contract with local schools; they bring kids out in buses on field trips to his farm, for his “Pet-a-pig” program. He shows them how intelligent pigs are and how friendly they can be if you treat them right, which he now does. He’s arranged it so the kids, each one of them, gets a chance to give a pig a belly rub.

He’s become nearly a vegetarian himself, has lost most of his excess weight, and his health has improved substantially. And, thank goodness, he’s actually doing better financially than he was before.

Do you see why I carry this man with me in my heart? Do you see why he is such a hero to me? He dared to leap, to risk everything, to leave what was killing his spirit even though he didn’t know what was next. He left behind a way of life that he knew was wrong, and he found one that he knows is right.

When I look at many of the things happening in our world, I sometimes fear we won’t make it. But when I remember this man and the power of his spirit, and when I remember that there are many others whose hearts beat to the same quickening pulse, I think we will. I can get tricked into thinking there aren’t enough of us to turn the tide, but then I remember how wrong I was about the pig farmer when I first met him, and I realize that there are heroes afoot everywhere.

Only I can’t recognize them because I think they are supposed to look or act a certain way. How blinded I can be by my own beliefs. The man is one of my heroes because he reminds me that we can depart from the cages we build for ourselves and for each other, and become something much better. He is one of my heroes because he reminds me of what I hope someday to become.

When I first met him, I would not have thought it possible that I would ever say the things I am saying here. But this only goes to show how amazing life can be, and how you never really know what to expect.

The pig farmer has become, for me, a reminder never to underestimate the power of the human heart. I consider myself privileged to have spent that day with him, and grateful that I was allowed to be a catalyst for the unfolding of his spirit. I know my presence served him in some way, but I also know, and know full well, that I received far more than I gave. To me, this is grace—to have the veils lifted from our eyes so that we can recognize and serve the goodness in each other. Others may wish for great riches or for ecstatic journeys to mystical planes, but to me, this is the magic of human life.