By JOE GRANESE
Feb. 21, 2007

Skip the candy and save an animal

I managed to make it through the entire Valentine’s Day holiday without stuffing my face into a heart-shaped box of chocolates again this year. Along with Halloween and Easter, Feb. 14 is one of the most difficult days of the year for those of us who live with diabetes.

That does not mean that I refuse to celebrate the holiday. I bought boxes of candy for all my office valentines and made sure that they were tightly sealed and decoratively wrapped. This provided three layers of total guilt armor to prevent me from casually opening one just to test the contents for quality.

I left them in the car until it was time to make the official presentation. This kept the candy cool and me farther away from temptation. I asked a colleague to distribute them when the time arrived, allowing me to stay out of the range of the already opened boxes dotting office desks.

I was sitting in my office with a hot cup of black decaf trying to come up with alternative ideas for celebrating upcoming holidays like St. Patrick’s Day and President’s Day. At that exact moment, as if by magic, my e-mail signal rang.

I was being informed that I had received a Valentine’s Day gift from www.bestfriends.org. I clicked on the link and learned that a needy animal had been sponsored in my name, in lieu of more traditional but decidedly less appropriate Valentine’s Day celebrations. It was truly an idea whose time had come, and I knew that I had to share it with you.

www.bestfriends.org

It is no secret that I am an animal lover. People who know me well realize that in most cases I like animals far more than people and will take the highest umbrage at the thought of them being treated cruelly by a human. This conviction has gotten me in Dutch more than once in my checkered past, but that is a story for another time. For now, I would like to introduce you to my new pal, Ballsy.

That’s really his name, and he’s a very handsome mixed-breed adult dog whose background includes surviving Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Ballsy is the kind of misunderstood pooch that some narrow-minded humans, including an entire country immediately to our north, have chosen to outlaw. Showing a little American Staffordshire and maybe even a bit of mastiff in his alert face, he’s a real looker. You can meet him at https://gifts.bestfriends.org/03.cfm?AnimalType=dog&ItemID=4053&page=1.

I really got a kick out of my new virtual dog and decided to check out the Best Friends website at length. I suggest that you browse this site the next time you are feeling a little down in the dumps – and keep your wallet handy. There are enough happy stories, and a few sad ones, here to keep any friend of animals reaching for the box of tissues for hours.

Ballsy was not alone. He had loads of friends there, like Cedar the duck, who had lost her mate and nearly her life to a predator attack. Cedar was living alone, when, after several failed attempts at finding a new beau, James flew into her life. Check the website for more on Cedar and James and to adopt your own animal friend. The people of the Best Friends Animal Society are fighting the good fight every day, and they could use your help. For making a grown man cry in his office, www.bestfriends.org picks up five charitable spiders.

www.savethemanatee.org

This would have been a wonderful week to be someplace warmer, but I was frozen to the spot here in South Jersey, left with my memories of a recent trip to the Sunshine State in search of the ivory-billed woodpecker. I didn’t hook up with any IBWOs that time around, but I did manage to meet a couple of friendly manatees at Homosassa Springs.

These relaxed aquatic mammals can tip the scales at up to 1,200 pounds. As you can imagine, it takes a great deal of manatee chow to keep them topped up. With a little luck they can live to be more than 60 years old. To do this, they need a little help from humanity.

That is where the Save the Manatee Club comes in. Founded by former Florida Gov. Bob Graham and singer Jimmy Buffett, the organization is dedicated to preserving manatees and their habitat. It is an ongoing battle. In 2006, 416 manatees died in Florida alone, most of them from injuries sustained in collisions with power boats.

Benefactors provide funds for manatee welfare. Projects include providing emergency care for injured animals as well as building public awareness of the manatee’s plight, especially among the pleasure boating community. They are doing a great job already, but they can still use your help. The next time a casual gift is in order, consider adopting a manatee. For taking care of my pals Amanda and Betsy, www.savethemanatee.org grabs five swimming spiders.

www.conservewildlifenj.org

I remember it as one of the most thrilling moments of my adult birding career. I peered into a spotting scope and found myself face to face with a barred owl, a bird I had never seen before. The fact that I was able to see one at all was due, at least in part, to the efforts of the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.

Wildlife has a tough row to hoe here in the Garden State. In addition to the main problem associated with life in the food chain – being eaten – many animals have to deal with humanity on a daily basis, from dodging automobiles to sidestepping hunters and trappers. Surviving all this, they can still return home from their annual migration to discover that nutty bipeds have turned their habitat into a bike trail.

The foundation supports the efforts of the NJDEP Division of Fish and Wildlife in protecting Garden State fauna. Its efforts have benefited a wide array of critters, from the bald eagle and osprey down to tiny bog turtles and piping plovers. As you can imagine, this can be expensive work.

You can help by participating in the Adopt-A-Species program in its online store. A $25 donation will hook you up with your very own bald eagle, and for $250 you can take a magnificent osprey under you wing. You can finish off your Mardi Gras gift shopping in one fell swoop and help out a good cause at the same time. For helping bobcats, tree frogs, snakes and others of the animal world, www.conservewildlifenj.org adopts five fundraising spiders.

Sure, a box of candy is a good gift, too, but I found my adopted pooch to be infinitely more fun and less dangerous to the waistline. Those of you who have found Internet resources to help out their favorite local animals are always welcome in my e-mail box. Hit me up with your stories and suggestions at granese@juno.com.