As the beginning of this year has been so good to me, I've decided it's about time to give some of that good karma back. Lumo and Cuddlefish were kind enough to get down and dirty with me, in a very literal sense. We spent our Sunday volunteering at CROW and I've got lots of photos to prove it.

I guess a lot of people think that volunteering at a place like that is mainly cuddling cute baby animals, but I can tell you right now - hell no! It was hot, filthy, a lot of hard work and SO worth it. We started at 7am with cleaning bird cages (which involved touching a lot of poo and stinky pieces of chicken) as well as cutting fruit and vegetables for the animals. After that we got to feed some of the animals, but interaction with them was minimal, as most of the animals will eventually be released into the wild. Some can't because they've been hand-reared and are now too friendly or their injuries prevent them from ever living the normal life of a wild animal. All of them go to good homes, though. We did bend the rules a little in order to show you what we've been doing, and some of the animals are just too damn cute to resist a cuddle or two.

The next task was ours and ours alone - cleaning one of the hadedas' enclosures. Hadedas are generally very noisy and filthy birds, and as they eat meat, you can imagine that they don't smell too good either. I won't tell you the details, but my gag reflex was working hard too.

This is what the enclosure looked like before we started (the water is red because of bacteria in it, which was the main reason for such a thorough clean).



Halfway through (yes, those ice cream tubs are what we used to empty the pond).



And after, with the happy birds already trying their best to return the enclosure to its previous state.



After two hours of heavy lifting, scrubbing and shoveling, we had a bit of time to walk around and snap some photos. So here's what I got...

CROW is a lovely place in general; well maintained and clean, even though it's a non-profit organization that lives off donations.

And of course, some of the animals...

We will definitely go back as soon as we can, and we'll try to make it a monthly thing. They always need people and some months they have no volunteers at all, so we'll try and help as much as we can.
And remember...