Jeremy and Lenny: Rescued from Death at a Small Local Dairy

Jeremy and Lenny came to the sanctuary when they were just a few days old, rescued from a goat dairy. At the small local dairy, they were considered garbage. That's true of babies at all dairies. It is the way of business.

A woman visiting the dairy, a believer in buying local and from small operations, witnessed the treatment of the babies born in front of her eyes and was horrified. The baby goats had value to her - not as an investment, not as commodities, not as food, but because they were alive, and she believed they should be allowed to live free of harm, free to be themselves. Simply because they were alive, because they were individuals, because they wanted to live, as we all do. This realization opened her eyes in an instant.

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She rescued some of the babies instead of buying the goat cheese she'd gone there to purchase - a drop in the bucket when looking at the large picture, but everything and the world to those she saved.

Lenny and Jeremy were two of those saved, and now that they are at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, they'll live their entire lives safe and cared for. They aren't profit or a means to some end; they are individuals who are valued for that simple fact.

They captured everyone's heart when they came to the sanctuary. Small, curious little beings, standing on legs that still wobbled, greedily gulping down life-sustaining baby-goat-formula and sucking on our fingers, we couldn't help but to be charmed.

When they were old enough to mingle with the adult goats, they were treated with what I can only describe as amused indulgence. The adults would obligingly lower their heads almost to the ground so the little babies could practice their head-butting.

Now a year old, they are rambunctious trouble-makers, their individual personalities shining through ever brighter.

Lenny is the one who always "helps" in the goat yard by standing on and in the wheel barrows as we clean the stalls. He somehow jumps onto narrow ledges, what looks to my non-goat eyes like a precarious perch.

When I heard that one of the boys had broken a leg, I thought for sure it would have been Lenny. But it was Jeremy, in an unknown ice-caused accident. He came back to the yard with the rest of the goats, leg dangling.

Terry, the co-founder of the sanctuary, took him to the vet, where he got x-rays, a cast, and impossible instructions - no roughhousing!

When he came home, he had to be separated from the rest of the herd, especially his partner-in-trouble, Lenny. They'd never been away from each other before. The separation was easier for Lenny, who had the rest of the herd, but Jeremy is off on his own, lonely and bored.

After three weeks, Jeremy bust out of the stall he was kept in. After four weeks, his cast started falling off. X-rays showed that the healing hadn't finished, so he got a new cast on, this one a cheerful red with yellow stars.

As I gave him food and hay and cleaned his water bucket during my volunteer shift this past weekend, he looked longingly out the screened-in window and cried his loneliness. His brother was out there, and 400 acres of goat fun and trouble, and he wanted to be in the middle of it.

There are many people who don't believe that animals bond or feel emotions. There are those who feel that life has no worth or no meaning, unless it is human life. There are some who simply feel that their fleeting pleasure in the taste of food outweighs any other consideration, any other cost to another's life, whether it is the chocolate slavery in Africa or death-by-dairy next door.

I see the wonder that is life, and I know that there is no taste in the world that can be worth taking life away, whether through death or through exploitation and slavery. Being vegan does not mean I suffer a tasteless world; it is more like a culinary adventure. Veganism is just the start of the ethical considerations that come into play, but it is the cornerstone.