Driving up to Liberty Wildlife on Saturday, I realized something had gone down. I didn’t follow a yellow brick road, see Dorothy or Toto and I missed the occurrence of a cyclone, but I had the distinct feeling that our tattered little facility had been dropped back into Scottsdale, directly from Oz….and beautifully refurbished at that. How does this happen….well, now I know.
A group of bird loving Angels (in the flesh) from the Desert Rivers Audubon Society (DRAS) won the honor of volunteering to paint our facility. You read that correctly. This group of Angels in the Flesh (AITF) had accumulated so much time volunteering for other projects that they were chosen to volunteer to paint Liberty’s facility…leaving us with a new curb appeal….voila!
According to our own wonderful Claudia Kirscher and also long time DRAS standout, “…the people are among the top (DRAS) volunteers in terms of hours. This was offered to them as a “thank you and reward” opportunity. They all jumped at the chance to take on this job and all left the property with a renewed respect for what Liberty does…they actually thanked us for allowing them to participate…and yes, Claudia, it does warm my heart.
The following AITF DRAS volunteers got to Liberty at 6:30 in the morning and were finished with their task by 12:30….getting a little toasty by then. According to Claudia, “we prepped, scraped, rolled, brushed, joked and had a jolly good time keeping the camaraderie going, had impromptu bird presentations by the Saturday hand feed team, a flight demonstration by Joe and Sonora, visited with Apache (while Claudia fed him on the glove) and toured the facility.”
Here is a list of the AITF and the jobs that they were assigned to: Hold your applause until the end.
Marion Staffell did photos and organized the volunteers for the event.
Krys Hammers-roller and brush on the fence
Maj Anderson –roller and brush on the fence
Linda Long –roller and carport clean up
Jim Banyai – scraping, prep, roller, and touch up
Joy Dingley- brush, fence
Curtis Burns –scraping, roller, brush, carport, touch up, clean up
Sam Alcorn –scraping, roller, fence, touch up, clean up
Marilyn Reiling –brush, touch up, carport
Claudia Kirscher –brush, fence, touch up, clean up, coordinated with DRAS (AITF) and Liberty Wildlife, brought donuts, ice water, and Gatorade
Joe Miller- found funding for the paint through Wal-Mart (a big thank you!!), prepped the site by taking down everything not to be painted, purchased the paint, organized the supplies.
Now can I hear a wild and rambunctious applause from the audience?
It is hard to express in words how much I personally appreciate these folks. Not only do they regularly give back to the natural world, they have given their time and energy to help us and our mission. I’ll bet you wish the AITF would show up at your door. Not a one of them was looking for a heart…they all had more than enough to go around and share. No courage was needed by this group. It existed in abundance. And, brains, it was scary how much brains visited our facility on Saturday…..all it takes is clicking the red shoes (and a big dose of help from Desert River Audubon.)
You all ROCKED our world…many thanks.
2 comments:
Claudia, you and your DRAS crew are the BEST!
Oh my gosh! I can't wait to see it! Coming back from L.A. today. Maybe I'll stop by if it's not too late when I pull in! In a word: WOW!!!
Post a Comment