About Us
Meeting up with the stork
In July, the time had come. At long last I was going to Medina as a volunteer at Scooby for three weeks. Now I could visit my virtually adopted dogs in person (and they look great face to face!) and see everything else that I only knew from the Scooby website and the updates I had translated.
While standing in the Medina train station, I was tremendously excited and curious. One short hour later, there I was sitting in the Scooby courtyard/on the Scooby patio (?) scratching a dog behind the ears, meeting the other volunteers and saying hello to the animal welcoming committee waiting in the garden. I already felt completely at home!
The following day, after being briefly told what to do, I started in working. I grabbed a bucket and a pooper-scooper and went off to the paddocks to clean up. After a while, the volunteer team changed and some dogs came and others left. The work, though, stayed the same. Hardly had I arrived when it was time to leave – my three weeks were over in a flash.
What are some of my special memories of that time? Well, of course, there were the many dogs that are always so happy to see you when you come into the paddocks or the quarantine area. It was delightful to have them keep me company while I was working. Their joy is so tangibly genuine. Then there were the puppies that we bathed and fed. I shall never forget the fun of playing with them during our free time. And, the Scooby team. And, the stork...
Yes, indeed, Scooby now has a resident stork. A local man told Sandra that he had spotted an injured stork lying on a field near Medina. Naturally, we drove out there immediately to rescue it. Probably the bird had flown into a power line. In any case, when we found the stork it was so completely exhausted that it let us pick it up off the ground and bundle it into the car without protest. At first we thought the stork was blind and were worried that it would not be able to find its way around. Fortunately, it was only shock.
From day one the stork was my own personal foster child. At the beginning it would only take water from a syringe. Then, for a while, it fed on baby food mixed with cat food – a combination that smelled about as appetising as it sounds. Frankly, that mash looked pretty disgusting too. Carolina from Scooby Cuellar helped me for a few days to stand that huge bird up on its legs to eat so that swallowing would be easier. By this time, the stork had become crazy about tinned cat food. I was glad about this for the bird's sake and for mine, because the cat food smelled a whole lot better than the mixed mash. After three days, the stork started trying to stand up on its own. It still could not walk, however. When, during the morning of day five, I visited my foster child and it greeted me standing up, I knew that the worst was over. I never had seen a stork from so close up before. It was a really impressive sight! And, because the stork was relatively tame, we could all take turns admiring it.
In the meantime, the stork has been named Josefina and now lives together with the other birds on the Scooby pond. On her long legs, Josefina contentedly struts around her new habitat, looking beautiful while she devours enormous meals.
I will be seeing Josefina again in January. My flight has already been booked, because Scooby is truly fantastic and I am certainly hooked!
Sabine
