[Gpdd] Misc: The Shelter and cute piggies card

[Mieke Staaks]

Hi all,

I have to share a little story with you which I can probably not share in
Holland because then our shelter might be closed...
which unfortunately they are already planning... but tie seems to be turning
now they received a grant from a previous (fairly wealthy) volunteer who
left us 10 % of his fortune...
(by the way I guess no one from the netherlands wil actually read this,
except for my sister Janneke, but I officially do not know yet about this
grant... but trust this little inside scoop will be save with you all) (and
i really hope no-one from the netherlands will read this from the gpdd
archives..)
by the way below story might not be so good to read if your not that fond of
mice...
But do look at the link for the cute guinea pig card we found!!

Anyways, reasons for closing the shelter are that the RSPCA (the dutch
equivalent of that) will stop paying the rent for our current shelter
building, because the shelter is too full.
They state that a rodent shelter is very needed, but the shelter is too full
at the moment, which could treathen the health of the rodents and even the
volunteers... which is the reason they will close it and will start their
own shelter for rodents... Our shelter is trying to find a new (bigger) home
but that proof to be hard.
They are some things about this we as shelter volunteers are not that happy
with...
1. We do not like to see the shelter closed since it is necessary to have
one
2. the new shelter will only shelter the animals that are found, not the
ones the owners do not want anymore, or the wild animals (like hares for
which we have a certified volunteer for their care) that we also take care
of...
3 the also will not offer the oppurtunity for people who go on a holiday to
take care of the animals for a short time... which we think will lead to
more animals to be dumped because of holiday care...
4. the new shelter will be located somewhere in the middle of nowhere, which
is hard to reach by public transport and not safe after dark...
5. the new shelter will we run by 3 people whereas we currently are with
about 15 volunteer and have to struggle to get the work done...

The shelter is going to try to stay open and when a new shelter along our
shelter we would have more space for the pets, and we could still do the
holiday care, care for wild animals and take in the unwanted animals... but
for that the shelter will need a lot of money...

I have to admit that the shelter is in a bad condition. The building where
the shelter is housed is up for demolition, but this had been postponed,
which means we will not get a new location on a short notice because it will
not be demolised yet...

We also have the problem of wild mice, for which we cannot spray any poisons
because that would effect our animals as well...
An other problem is because we are not very many volunteers we need all our
time to keep the animals comfortable, which leaves hardly any time to keep
the shelter spot clean...

Trying to fight that last problem we embarked on a cleaning mission last
friday...
I cleaned the table which had the Degus (degoes in dutch, not sure what the
english name for them is), it turned out to be white instead of a brownish
colour!
Under this table where many boxes, the boxes where dirty with loads of mice
droppings...
So I took all the boxes from under the table, took the lids of and cleaned
them.
The boxes contained mostly rodent related gifts, which are probably meant
for selling to people to raise some money for the shelter...
One of the boxes turned out to be open, and in it where stuffed toys, mostly
rabbit stuffed animals...
But unfortunately this was not the only thing in the boxes....
The box turned out to be packed with mice. varying from mice that were
probably just a few hours, wheeks, months maybe even some years old...
I have to say there probably were about 40 mice in the box...
I started taking all the other stuff out, and the more I took out the more
mice i encountered...
The mice stirred by the fact their giant breeding nest was cleared out
started jumping out of the box... mainly the big fat one, managed to
actually get out :(
I quickly put the lid back on before anymore could jump out...
I honestly have to say i'm not really scared of mice, but the jumping... I
do not like that at all!

We called to owner on what to do with them, and got rid of them in the
end...
I really kind of hope we got rid of most of the mice in our shelter this
way, but it does seems strange to rid your self of these mice, whereas you
are also taking care of other rodent with the best of care...
But I hope you can understand that we have to get rid of the mice
infestation in order keep the shelter open at all...
I also had to share this with someone, but cannot share it with other
dutchies, because i feel it might close the shelter for sure...
so I shared it with you, i hope you do not mind...

In all those boxes we found a really nice guinea pig card. I've google it
and found it online:
http://www.samburu.com/p-2272-guinea-pigs-pets-life-slimline-greeting-card-by-pollyanna-pickering.aspx


I am for now keeping the shelter boys until I know what will happen to the
shelter / new shelter. I would hate it not knowing where my boys will end
up...
My boyfriend already said that if they would really close the shelter that
we should keep the boys...
so we are making a bit of progress, but I have not found him wanting to keep
the boys anyway..
I did notice he likes them, and luckily he does not seem to be much more
irritated (allergy-wise) now we have 5 instead of 3 guinea pigs...
If anyone has any good argument why he should let me keep them let me
know...
I think currently he is not against having more guinea pigs, but it's more a
matter of drawing a line on how many animals I can have...
I only have 3, so I think that isn't that much...

Okay, so much for my story
Iff anyone has any good ideas on how to keep the shelter open and maybe get
more people to donate or sponsor, please let me know!!

Wheeks and piggy kisses,
Mikey and the Winky girls: Guiny, Dunya and Woopy
And the shelter boys: Chico and Toby
btw, did I tell you the boys have really gotten a lot more active and
livelier since staying at our place!
-- 
pandameisje at gmail.com
pandameisje at hotmail.com
m.staaks at pecoma.nl

Blog: http://pandameisje.hyves.nl
kleding: http://mist-clothing.blogspot.com/