It is an almost universal experience, the bond between human and non-human that shapes our formative years and leaves us nostalgic for the remainder of our lives. The beloved family dog with whom we walked on beaches and through bushland over seemingly endless summers. The cat we snuggled with fireside during cold winters, shrouded in warm blankets as their purring reverberated through our souls.

The abject devastation of having to say goodbye all too soon.

From our earliest years we are taught through these relationships that the animals in our lives are individuals of importance, and that they deserve moral consideration. We are told to let them sleep and eat uninterrupted, to not pull their tail or fur; to provide food, water and companionship throughout their lives. We refer to them as “they”, our “best friends”, and give them names. We laugh over their quirky personality traits and mourn the void they leave when old age or illness takes them from us.

Yet somehow as we ourselves grow into adulthood we are able to look back on the fond memories of those individual animals we loved so dearly, whilst simultaneously remaining unable to view other animals as individuals themselves just as capable self-expression, of suffering, and of experiencing love as those we grew alongside.

That non-human animals have individuality is rarely contested; even those engaged in the animal exploitation industries will acknowledge the varied personalities of the beings they use for profit. As Cornish “beef” farmer Kurt Duncan said in a recent CBC NEWs article: “When you see them every day you get to see their personality traits.” This does not prevent Duncan and many like him from sending these individuals to a violent end. However, increasing numbers of farmers tied to those trades dealing in animal life and death are seeing the inherent individuality of the beings they live with, thus recognising the injustice of their actions with life changing results. A recent example being the BAFTA award-winning short film 73 Cows, which documents the tale of former dairy and “beef” farmer Jay Wilde as he sends his herds to sanctuary and transitions his business model to plant-based agriculture.

Most of us have experienced the profound change an individual animal or the recognition of animal individuality can bring about in our own lives, though perhaps not on such a grand scale. I myself am fortunate to have experienced this many times throughout my life, which I feel has been instrumental in guiding my transition from a meat-loving hunter’s daughter to animal rescuer and rights activist. Experiences that continue in ever increasingly more traumatic circumstances it seems.

Such as the first time we saw Dooley, an abused and neglected driller’s dog my father saved from being shot; he had such soulful eyes as though he had lived a thousand lives.

Or the day I learned to look beyond the overwhelming vastness of the exploited herds and bore witness to the individuality of a steer called Tommy, whose bludgeoning death in an Indonesian abattoir was broadcast globally by Animals Australia and set me along the inherently political stance of living vegan.

The day I picked up a single duckling from the sodden floor of a slaughterhouse and ran for their life, for the first time publicly crossing the line between that which is legal and that which is just.

And then there was the day a friend called me, having collected a raggedy old rabbit from a backyard fur and flesh farm just outside of Launceston. She saw his photo listed on Gumtree and was heartbroken by his hunched and defeated appearance. He had a dented head, moth-eaten ears and urine stained white fur.

We called him Gary Busey Bunny, and from the moment I saw him my life changed irrevocably.

Gary Busey Bunny required intensive physical and psychological rehabilitation; he was riddled with lice and mites, his nose was green and sticky, and his feet affected by advanced ulcerative podermatitis. He could not understand that hay was for eating, soft blankets for sleeping on, and that a house though vast was still a safe place to roam freely. These were things so foreign to him that he could not cope, shutting down in the corner and swaying side to side as though drunk.

My friend informed me that he had been used as a stud rabbit on this fur and flesh farm, breeding generation upon generation of babies who were all too soon slaughtered onsite. She described the conditions in detail; we knew we had to investigate further.

She organised for me to visit the property with her, posing as a prospective buyer looking to get into the meat rabbit trade. I took with me a small camera hidden in a keychain device in order to film as much as I could.

The sheds were mostly open fronted and high-rooved, yet the stench emanating from within was so powerful my eyes and airways began to burn as soon as I left my car. The property owner toured us proudly around her sheds, without any idea that we were in fact struggling to accept the horror she was unveiling to us.

Suspended wire with scarce wisps of rotting straw contained countless rabbits, mixed breeds of Rex and New Zealand Whites deliberately bred to gain weight rapidly for slaughter whilst producing a coat suitable for use. They huddled in corners, piled up on top of one another desperate to escape human contact. The breeding does were crammed into similar cages, the babies desperately seeking safety under their mothers. The stud males were kept in a separate, smaller shed devoid of sunlight or fresh air, cages a mere 1m x 1m suspended mid-air so the excrement could fall to the ground beneath; this was where Gary Busey Bunny had lived for five long years.

Piles of ordure, refuse straw and spilled feed rotted into the dirt floor beneath every row of cages. Many of the rabbits were splay legged as a result of their bodies growing too quickly on such an unsupportive surface and with an inadequate diet. The stench of faeces and urine mingled with another smell I recognised, that of blood, spilled innards and fat from within the nearby slaughter shed.

I filmed as much as I could, dangling the keychain as inconspicuously as possible into every cage and corner, hoping that whatever footage I obtained could eventually lead to a shutdown of this place, possibly even a prosecution. I would soon learn how naïve I truly was.

The children of the property owner ran around us laughing or sat atop the cages idly fiddling with the bats and knives used to kill the rabbits. We asked multiple questions about how to rear them, best breeding practices, and how to slaughter them, words that stuck in my throat as I uttered them. And whilst I filmed, they removed a beautiful grey-furred boy from a cage, his eyes white with terror, and demonstrated for us how to kill a rabbit with a baseball bat.

We left having bought some rabbits to maintain our cover, and with a bag full of rapidly defrosting skins that had been stripped from the rabbits slaughtered the day before. We left utterly broken, pulling over further down the road to chain-smoke in shaken silence.

In the end over twenty rabbits were saved from that hell hole, an act of liberation brought about by my dearest Gary Busey Bunny.

This was my first ever undercover animal rights experience; it was also instrumental in utterly shattering any faith I had in the systems put in place by the industry, the government and the RSPCA to “protect” farmed animals. Having provided all the footage I had gathered to the relevant authorities I was informed that nothing we had seen that day was illegal. In fact, this facility was operating at a “higher” standard as their cages were bigger than legally required. Everything from the lack of adequate flooring to the method of slaughter was permitted under the code written by the industry and implemented by the government.

It took months of rehabilitation for Gary Busey Bunny to recover physically from years of neglect and abuse. Ear drops, bottom baths to clean away the thick poo clinging to his fur, a slow and gradual introduction to hay and the correct food, antibiotics, pain relief, wrappings over the sores of his feet. He never lost the hunch in his back though; his spine was literally twisted by years of confinement. And having lived in an environment devoid of interaction beyond the occasional matings with equally abused and terrified breeding does, for the rest of his life his main outlet for emotion were the simultaneously comical and tragic mounting of any inanimate object he could find (even after desexing). Despite being a calm and often loving boy, the psychological harm of his former years was simply too great to completely overcome.

In this way, Gary Busey Bunny was pivotal in opening my eyes to the fact that injustice against animals does not simply occur in the slaughterhouse nor the cage; it is ingrained in every facet of these industries right up to the houses of parliament.

Gary Busey Bunny died two years after rescue of a congenital heart defect that had been bred into him, and that killed his two rescued sons as well. It was his death that inspired my words at the Dominion March (April 2018): “The reality is that for most animals rescued from these facilities there is no long, healthy life. The industries will kill them, whether in the cages, the slaughterhouses, or in the loving arms of their rescuers.” It is a sentimental belief shared particularly keenly by those involved in the rescue of chickens from egg and flesh farms; these industries breed them to lay or grow intensively and die young as it is simply economical.

One small broken rabbit is significantly responsible for everything I have experienced since. He inspired me to investigate some of the darkest places on Earth. He taught me to speak up and act in the face of extreme injustice. And he taught me to no longer lay my trust in government authorities or animal welfare protection agencies who are intrinsically involved with the very industries that destroyed my beautiful boy.

Just as the aforementioned Kurt Duncan acknowledged the individuality of the cows he exploited, so too did the owner of the facility Gary Busey Bunny came from. She had favourites, she gave them names, she laughed at their personality quirks (though how she could see the expression of those traits in the shaking, terrified beings she kept caged I’ll never know). But she still engaged in a mass slaughter of all her “stock” when the business closed not long after our visit, due to ill health. Unlike Jay Wilde she did not seek sanctuary for them; the baseball bat was their only release from hell.

All I can hope is that as she killed her “favourite” breeding doe Reba, she saw something in that rabbit’s eye. A plea for mercy, or perhaps an accusation of betrayal. A profound and lasting moment that remains with her forever if there is any justice, an experience just as life changing as the day I first met Gary Busey Bunny.

Author: Kristy Alger
Animal Liberationist

I never questioned that you could love a chicken. Why not? You can love a dog, a cat, a horse, a human. Why not a chicken? I just hadn’t yet myself. Not fully anyway. I had loved being around the rescued chickens who live here. I have observed them in wonder as I have opened my home and my heart to them. I have felt great joy and gratitude at seeing them heal and experience the basic life essentials, like sun, and dirt, and grass for the very first time. I have loved their company and grieved their passing. But I’ve also kept my distance somewhat, wanting them to just be chickens, in their flocks, as wild as they can be in their human controlled environment.  

But for Beatrice that was not to be. Her ongoing ailments in need of my care brought her into the shelter of the house often and therefore deeper into my heart. This allowed me to really see her. To really get to know her character. And WOW, what a big character she was.

Beatrice was rescued from a filthy shed as a tiny chick with her two friends. Choosing three lives to save out of tens of thousands is as bitter-sweet as it gets. They were simply standing in the right part of the shed at the right time. I remember procrastinating over which tiny chicks I would pick up as various lives wandered all around me.

In the end, I didn’t choose them, they chose me, as did four other chicks who climbed onto the softness of my beanie that lay on the shed floor. As I scooped up the three little babies into my arms and placed them safely into a warm carrier I lifted the other four who’d gathered together for comfort and placed them back on the soon to be waste coated shed floor. Knowing their future held nothing but a short life of suffering before being sent off to the slaughterhouse, I cried a silent tear and told them I was sorry.  Three lucky ones would escape hell that night, still young enough to hopefully never remember who they were leaving behind.

It was late December 2015 – close to a hopeful new year, and a new life.

Without their mums wings to protect them and keep them warm, Beatrice and her two friends lived under a heat lamp in my bathtub for their first few weeks of life.

They ate, pooped and chirped like crazy. It was a welcome relief for me and no doubt them to finally allow them to venture outside into the great outdoors to join the rest of the flock under my watchfuleye. Their natural instincts to scratch in the dirt and bathe in the sun were instant and a reminder that the thousands left behind in the shed would never experience such a basic but essential joy.

They grew quickly, together, rarely leaving each others sides. They would explore together, dustbathe together and sleep together. They were bonded so close, offering each other comfort. They were family and Beatrice was without a doubt the matriarch. 

Beatrice, Bertie and Bob maintained a special bond until hormones raged and a battle over which rooster would rule the roost took hold. Around the same time Beatrice was badly injured by one of them. Her body had grown so large, as chickens bred for their flesh unnaturally do, that when one of the boys tried to mate her he cut deep into her skin. Like so many other chickens, Beatrice was so resilient you would not even have known had you not seen the gaping wound hidden under her wing. This brought my beautiful girl inside again to live for a few weeks as she healed and where I got to know her quirky and hilarious personality. So friendly, so active, so entertaining and so curious, as she carried her oversized body around with her, refusing to let herself tire in her zest for life. 

A few months on Beatrice become terribly ill showing symptoms of a heart condition, tumours and peritonitis. Her heart was failing but thankfully medication helped to improve her condition making her seemingly strong enough to face her operation. Putting someone who is more commonly referred to as a broiler chicken through surgery is a scary decision as their organs, particularly their hearts, are so fragile from their unnatural speedy growth and oversized bodies. Before she went in we spent some special time together and I said my goodbyes.

Beatrice survived surgery. She had no tumours at all. She had a large elastic band stuck in her lower intestine, no doubt found in the garden and mistaken for a worm. Some more time was spent inside as we further bonded. She even came along for visits with family as her body recovered.

Once returned to the flock and meeting with a newly arrived rooster, Beatrice left her feisty boyfriends at bay and buddied up with the much more gentle and gentlemanly Twiggs. She became protective of him and jealous when any new girls came his way, especially one who looked very similar to her.

Beatrice’s surgery and heart medication allowed her another 3 joyful months of life. She breathed fresh air every day, felt the sun on her wings and moved about freely among the grass and the trees. She was safe and she was loved. One day, at only 16 months old, as she ran towards me excited for food, she stopped in her tracks. Her body collapsed, then she stood again. I scooped her up in my arms as I had that night in the shed and held her close. Her heart raced, so fast, like nothing I had ever felt before, as she threw her head around and convulsed. She’d stop, be still, then start again. I wailed and begged for her to stay. She looked up at me, confused and scared, her heart pounding against my hand, then, she was gone.

I sat with her for hours; angry that her body had been so manipulated by humans that she had the heart of an old unhealthy woman as only a baby; devastated that people would not allow their hearts to see what I could now see; glad that she’d been able to live a life that billions like her don’t get to live, and thankful that I’d been there to hold her as she passed.

Beatrice is not the only victim to human greed I have held in my arms as they have died. She is one of many, but like all of them, she was special and unique in her own way. She wanted to live and live well and I am grateful I was able to give her that. She rests now under the Camellia tree surrounded by so many others who have been liberated from awful lives but were always prisoners to their own bodies that we have so callously destroyed.

RIP sweet angel.

Author: Kristin Leigh
Occupation: Communications Manager & Volunteer Coordinator
Founder and President of Vegan Rising

She was as beautiful in death as she was in life. Her haunting beauty that had defied age and circumstance, was as grace-filled as it was classic. Befitting of the most glamorous and legendary Hollywood actress, grace and poise were always hers – something that the passage of time was never able to diminish. Lying there before me, on the crisp dew covered grass, she still commanded our awe and respect. And so too our hearts. And whilst we wept heavily, there was a lightness, a sense of calm and peace that overcame us. It was over. The waiting, the not knowing, the searching for ideas, the sinking feeling one got when they looked into her sad and lost eyes. Gemima was gone. Gone to join her one true love in this world. Gone to join Bambi.

Gemima came into our world on the 20th of October 2010. An answer to our prayers and a forever-friend to the perfect being we came to know and love as Bambi. Bambi, having lost both his mother and his world to the tragic fiery inferno of the Black Saturday bushfires in February 2009, was in desperate need of sanctuary and that we were able to provide. But we knew a place to live in itself was not enough for the tiny fallow deer, he needed a life that was truly worth living. Although two gentle sheep, Carly and Twiggy kept his company, we knew the distant gaze he offered each morning told he wanted a friend. That friend came in the form of a hand-reared and captive-bred fallow deer, Gemima. Her human folk were moving on from their country retreat and needed to find a new home for Gemima. Telling us her age was around 16 years saw us racing for the books to find the life expectancy of fallow deer. Oh, how our hearts sank when we discovered their life expectancy can be as short as 16 years. But no one told Gemima that. And so, both she and Bambi thrived, yet we always thought it would be dear Gemima who would leave us first.

One of our fondest memories sees the two of them stotting* about their paddock, at the old sanctuary each frosty morn with such energy and zest for life we couldn’t but help catch the vibe. Their heads held high as they effortlessly teleported upwards with the greatest of ease, aided no doubt by those invisible springs concealed in those ever so dainty hooves. But just as gravity reined them back to terrafirma, they would teleport once again, repeating this scenario over and over. Each time they leapt, so too did the corners of our mouth – nature possesses so few animals who rival the grace of deer and their majesty of movement. I smile now as I write these words, holding dear that image of Gemima and her Bambi together now stotting about, albeit on a different plane.

Although a part of me grieves the loss of Gemima from our world, a part of me does not. Having recently lost her dear buddy, Bambi, Gemima grew increasingly forlorn, and lacklustre. However, it was not a physical illness that plagued her in the most general sense of those words. It was, I say with great confidence, a broken heart. Gemima was never the same after Bambi passed, no more did she spring about the enchanted forest the two had shared. No more did she rush to the gate to greet you as both she and Bambi always did. No more did she sit in the sunshine, as both she and Bambi did, or seek out a quiet spot behind a tree. No more did she enthusiastically nibble on her favorite fruit and veg treats as both she and Bambi did. Despite offering her companionship, love, kindness and any treats you could think of, nothing we did could come close to replacing her beau, nothing.

People often ask, “Can one die of a broken heart?” Of course one can. The heart, the most vital of organs, needs much more than oxygen to fuel and sustain it. It needs a reason to be. And sadly, Gemima had lost hers. Those who have come to know, love and understand animals as many have, in the most purest of forms, divorced from commercial interests and financial gains, appreciate that regardless of our form, our worlds are linked and guided by the emotions we have. Expressed as they are in many guises, these emotions strike at our hearts and our very being nonetheless. Every day we here at Edgar’s Mission have the privilege to bear witness to the rich and emotional world of animals, the joyous moments they share together, the “ah ha” moments when they find a way to tweak the gate, the wiggle of a tail when one recognises a friend or the sharp turn of one’s head and hooves when they see a foe. We cannot witness these things and not see with new eyes and hearts, that animals regardless of the form they have taken, all need something dear in their hearts to have a reason to be.

*Stotting (also known as pronking)- a behaviour of quadrupeds, particularly gazelles, in which they spring into the air, lifting all four feet off the ground simultaneously. Source Wikipedia

“If we could live happy and healthy lives without harming others… why wouldn’t we?” Edgar’s Mission