Elizabeth McCullough
I”ve recently been revisiting a number of avian welfare sites that are like old friends to me. I always am in awe of what these amazing people with rescues and sanctuaries are doing, the sacrifices, even lifestyle changes that they adopt to care for neglected, unwanted, and abused birds. As I was rereading a few of the articles that Sybil from The Oasis Sanctuary has posted on her website I realized that in some areas I am just as guilty as the majority of people that do not SUPPORT these resources!!!
At the end of the article “The Story That Won”t Be Told” Sybil states: “And as I have said many times before…. Once a year put a dollar in each of five envelopes and send them to the five rescue or research organizations you want most to support. Both the breeding community and the rescue community agree on this statistic: there are between five and six million homes in the United States with at least one bird in residence. If each of these homes sent a dollar a year to the organizations of their choice, there would be enough money to properly care for the birds who are displaced. It doesn”t take much…but it does take you. ”
My husband and I were discussing what kind of support we could actually afford to give The Oasis when I realized how guilty I was of being egomaniacal! Well of course we want to sponsor a pair of macaws AND a pair of small cockatoo’s (we have a rescue Goffin’s Cockatoo that runs our house!) but that simply isn”t feasible for our budget right now. Realistically we could handle maybe a pair of small Cockatoos, which would be $60 a month (although I do wonder how much more The Oasis REALLY needs to support a pair of small Cockatoos in the manner that it does). Our ability to do this is fairly recent, as we”ve been blessed with incredible job gains for my husband. But even three years ago WE COULD HAVE MAILED IN A DOLLAR A YEAR OR EVEN FIVE DOLLARS A YEAR IN SUPPORT OF A WORTHY, NEEDFUL SANCTUARY!
Why didn”t we? Looking back on it, I think it was too embarrassing to admit that we simply didn”t have the kind of money we”d like to send in. How incredibly pathetic and egocentric is that? For the sake of my EGO instead of doing what I could to help…I did nothing. I can”t rewind the clock and fix that now. But I can point out to others out there where I went wrong. I can point out that the smaller gifts are all the more precious for they bespeak of a true love of the birds and a desire to do everything YOU can to help… no matter what you can do. Please remember that it”s not about us. It”s not about our egos or what we want to do. It”s about getting real, taking a look at what we CAN do and then doing it!