There are many things I love about my company (helloooo sabbatical!), but today exemplified one of the major ones. Each year my entire organization (hundreds of people across North and South America) take the day to do community service. We do community service throughout the year, but this is one day that everyone does it all at once. There were several options – this year I chose the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary. We had a couple different projects that we worked on while we were there – I chose to help out with cleaning some of the cages and enclosures.

Here are a few pictures from the day – all of these are animals that I was in the cages with! This is Gus, a horse whose mother was a horse in Canada that was bread for her urine – apparently the urine of a pregnant mare can be used in some menopause medication. She was constantly kept pregnant and the male foals were sent off to the glue factory. Gus was rescued. He’s a sweet guy who was very happy with his hay.

This is a Barbados Blackbelly Sheep… there were two in the pen and they were both a little shy, but eventually ate some hay I gave them.

We also helped clean out the wild pig enclosure, where we met Wilbur and Templeton. Seriously, how cute are those names? Great Charlotte’s Web reference, for those of you who didn’t pick up on it. While in there, the pigs sort of kept to themselves, but we did get to see a bunch of peacocks!

Seriously, it was a really great day and I’m so glad we had the opportunity to go help!