'boarders and bunnies

dear friends,

I know I'm way behind on updates; the days have flown past, with little time to sleep or eat, let alone write. The only reason I have a minute now is because the car has broken down and I am on the train back to Fukushima.

Last time I left you with the promise of Olympic snowboarders and other shenanigans.

JEARS crew and volunteers.

Over Golden Week, we had a rash of volunteers who came up to work with us for the week. One of these was the snowboarder Kazu Kokubo, a sweet young guy with an Olympics under his belt and a couple of other trophies, like the recent Burton US Open. Here we are in Minami Soma, just outside the 20 km. exclusion zone blockade. Left to right, it's Isabella Gallaon-Aoki, JEARS founder and founder of Animal Friends Niigata, David Wybenga, JEARS founder and Japan Cat Net founder, Susan Mercer, JEARS founder and Heart Tokushima founder, me, Tales Mello, an engineering student from Osaka, Nori Watanabe, Kazu's cameraman, Carl Harris, Kazu's friend and agent for this trip, and Kazu Kokubo.

Kazu has written a great blog for this trip at Snowboarder magazine (that's my geiger counter he's got down his pants).

animal friends

After visiting Animal Friends on Wednesday, we set out early on Thursday morning for Soma City, just north of the exclusion zone.

The town of Soma is mostly shut.

In front of Soma City Hall.

There we visited some evacuation centers and distributed pet food, and had a run-in with an angry drunk evacuee who berated us for not bringing enough dog food for everyone. When we proffered him some kibble, he admitted that he did not have a dog.

Outside an evacuation center in Soma.

Goats in Soma.

We also visited a small festival where there were some lonely farm animals hanging around, looking forlorn but with their people nearby. On the way back from the festival, we passed a cage holding some rabbits with a sign saying "free". When Isabella stopped to talk to the owners, she found they could not take care of all of them, so in short order we had a rabbit in tow.

From Soma, we made our way to the Minami Soma area. Minami Soma sits at the north edge of the 20 km. exclusion zone, with part of the town inside and part of the town outside the zone. En route, we traveled along the coast, through the debris field.

Photo from Kazu's blog.

I was driving a van with some of the founders and some volunteers inside, and someone asked - do you ever find animals here? We all replied - not anymore. It's been a month and a half since the quake, there aren't any more animals to be pulled from the rubble.

Just as we finished saying it, someone yelled, and we all spotted the dog emerging from the vast and barren wasteland, tail wagging. Our small caravan quickly pulled over and we rushed to don gloves, masks, grab slip leads, and find dog treats.

This guy was so friendly and eager to see people that it was a snap to get him in the van and secured with a bowl of food to snack on. I nicknamed him Barney since he came from the rubble.

I'd like to dedicate the rescue of Bun and Barney to Emma aka Emu, who was so kind to send me a donation, and JB, who worked hard to spread the word by blogging our activities and sent our video out to several places, including getting the video on Cute Overload - a major accomplishment! Thanks ladies for your help and support, love ya.

Love,

-selena-

Help cats and teach English!

Substitute for a good cause!

Japan Cat Network is looking for someone to come to Hikone (near Kyoto), to cover some evening English classes so that we can continue to work in Tohoku. Right now there are classes that need to be covered for tomorrow night (Thursday). We are not looking for a volunteer - we can pay 4,000 yen per 60 minutes plus some transportation. If you might be able or interested please write back right away, We need someone for tomorrow, and need to set it up now, or leave Tohoku in the morning. There are also classes on Monday and Friday nights - with the possibility to crash here overnight if need be.

 If you are able to volunteer at the shelter as well, we would love you forever. 

Drop me a comment or shoot me an email if you can help!

kits and pups

I have taken on a role as an (unpaid, of course!! ha) coordinator, so I'm trying to manage volunteers as well as drive, translate, and of course pick up and transport animals. Every day is a blur!

This is Mr. Saito and Ginny with one of the six kittens and five adult cats that we picked up in Aizu. He was really sad to see them go and shed a few tears as we left.

I was able to visit with Cocoa, the dog from Iwate, at the shelter the other day. I took her out for a walk and though she barks at most everyone else, she seemed happy to see me and gave me a kiss and didn't yell at me. I'd like to dedicate Cocoa's rescue to Lily, who not only gave me a donation and bought me coffee, but offered to spread the word about fostering in Niigata and has been in touch about other ways to volunteer.

Here are a few more shots of dogs we got on the last day we were in the 20 km. zone. They are all receiving food, shelter, and medical care now, and though some were quite sick going in, they all have a better chance now at survival and happy homes in the future.

I'd like to dedicate these dogs to my dad, who sent us a couple of good geiger counters, enabling us to monitor the situation, be safer, and scan the animals and ourselves after coming out of the exclusion zone.

During Golden Week, many volunteers and animals flowed through our network, stopping for a spell at the Sendai or Fukushima bases, transporting animals to Animal Friends Niigata, and from there on to Japan Cat Net and Heart Tokushima.

This dog, Jam, had severe separation anxiety. He was ok if he was basically in your lap, but if you walked away, he cried piteously until someone came back. Judy, a bitchin' translator with a fabulous potty mouth, slept in the genkan with him, then took him back to some of his people (friends of the owners, who had evacuated to a no-pets-allowed spot in Tokyo) in Hirono. One happy ending.

Next up: Olympic snowboarder rubs elbows with goats, drunks, dogs, and debris.

radioactive dogs

dear friends,

We returned from Iwate late Thursday night with Cocoa. We were able to pass her to Isabella, the founder of Animal Friends Niigata, along with some other dogs that had come in with other teams. We went to bed, exhausted from the many hours of driving and the chaos that we had seen.

My rest didn't last long, however. No sooner had I gotten into bed then Susan and Miho came in, stressed and frantic. They had just arrived from the exclusion zone with a van full of sick and starving animals. They had learned that the <20 zone was to be closed at midnight, and had scrambled to take out as many animals as possible before the deadline.

Ginny with Skinny

We went down to the parking lot in the middle of the night to minister to the frightened animals. We fed, watered, and walked them, cleaned their cages, and put anything that had been exposed to radiation in bags to be disposed of as toxic material. These are the animals that you can see in the video. I walked a few of the dogs, including the skinny brown dog whose ribs were highly visible in the video. He was wheezing the whole time, walking unsteadily.

In the morning, the dogs (and one cat, who ate six packets of food at one go) were transferred to AFN, where they were washed and put through a decontamination and quarantine procedure. The cat, Stuart the vet said, had probably a 15% chance of survival, as it had an upper respiratory infection, fleas, and was malnourished.

This tiny, sweet, and sick kitty stayed the night in the hotel bathroom before we could get her to the shelter.

The skinny brown dog, it seems, is in bad shape. When he was washed in his decon procedure, he collapsed. He is currently in intensive care at the vet. The cat however, has perked up quite a bit. She is on medication and has a healthy appetite.

 

On Friday morning, as we were walking and ministering to the dogs, I had the chance to meet the lovely Lily of the blog Café Yamashita. We have been reading each others' websites for awhile now, and when she saw I was in Niigata she reached out to me. She is just as friendly and generous as she comes across on her blog. Lily, flanked by her little boy Sora, jumped right in with offers of help, support, whatever we needed. Thank you so much, Lily!

And an update on the kittens from Aizu: Five out of six made it - the runt didn't survive. The rest are doing fairly well, though they have some kind of bacterial infection that gives them diarrhea, and kittens are highly susceptible to dehydration. Happily, one of the adult cats has already been rehomed. I'd like to dedicate those cats to my mom, who gave me a donation for gas money. Thanks mom! Cats are being sheltered, cared for, and put in good homes thanks to you.

see what's happening

 Here's a video with some of my fellow volunteers in the exclusion zone on the last day before it was sealed. If this speaks to you, please repost it and spread the word as much as possible. Animals are dying every day and need to be gotten out of there.

 Animals left alone in the 20 kilometer exclusion zone in Japan need your help now.
We are asking people to send a comment to this government link:　https://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/forms/comment_ssl.html
Please remind the government that the pets in the 20 kilometer zone are loved and wanted. They should not stay there to starve, nor should they be removed to go to animal control facilities. Rescue groups are being asked to help rescue pets for guardians that cannot get back to the area to retrieve their pets themselves. Please let animal rescue groups back into the zone now, to be part of the process of getting animals to safety.
You might also write your nearest Japanese embassy with the above request.

One day in Fukushima - by Axel

Here's a great blog post by one of my fellow volunteers, about going into the exclusion zone in Fukushima on the last day before it was sealed. Animals are now trapped inside and people are not being allowed to go in for them. 

http://axellieber.blogspot.com/2011/04/one-day-in-fukushima.html

Iwate and tsunami dog Cocoa

Hi friends,

Thursday was a very long day. Late Wednesday night, I received a mission to go up to Iwate prefecture, about an eight hour drive. We were to leave at 7 a.m. After getting the pertinent details and loading supplies, Ginny and I sent off on the long windy drive through snow-capped mountains, to the northern coast of Honshu. The north is not very densely populated, so traffic was minimal and we made good time. We drove past Sendai city and saw little damage, and found our way to the city of Otsuchi-cho, where we were to pick up.

The devastation was sudden and immediate. One moment we were driving through normal looking neighborhoods, the next through mountains of unrecognizable rubble, stretching into the distance. Even a month and a half on, the piles are enormous and look like they did when the tsunami first happened. Japan Self Defense Force members and other uniformed officers crawled over the wreckage like ants, combing through it and making transfers of debris, bits of sand in a gigantic Texas anthill. Perhaps eventually we'll see progress and it will be cleaned up, but for now it seems like they are just shifting dirt from one point to another with no measurable progress.

We wound our way through the town and up a hill, where a few completely intact houses sat looking down over their former neighbors. Here we met our contact, though we couldn't locate her at first because the people milling around the house didn't seem to know her name or the address we were seeking. Finally it turned out that we were indeed at the right place and that Ms. I was inside. She brought out a little dog, her ten year old daughter trailing behind. The dog, a brown mix that betrayed some Pomeranian blood when she began yapping at us, seemed healthy and lively when we met her, her fur a little matted. Her name was Cocoa.

Upon closer inspection, Cocoa showed a raw red egg-sized lesion on her lower belly, between her back legs. Ms. I told us that they were separated during the tsunami, at which time Cocoa was hurt. After it was over, they managed to find each other again. They have been living at the neighbor's house, but have been unable to take Cocoa to a vet as they have no car. They don't know where they'll end up, but have asked us to take care of Cocoa until they can find a place to live. It was an emotional goodbye, with some tears; Cocoa is ten years old and I imagine she's been a part of their family for awhile. She needs medical care though, and at the shelter she'll receive food, warmth, kindness, and medical treatment. I assured Ms. I that Cocoa would be gone just a little while, and as we pulled away, she said "Itterasshai" - "go and come back", or "see you when you get back".

We dropped off some dog food at a house with a hungry-looking dog chained outside on the edge of town, then began the long drive back to Niigata.

xox,
-selena-

fukushima prefecture and kitties

dear friends,

I'm about to hit the sack for an early day tomorrow. Today, I drove to the town of Aizu Wakamatsu in Fukushima prefecture, where we had gotten a call about some semi-socialized cats that were on their way to animal control. The six kitties were easy to trap, but the adults were more difficult and took a lot of time, tricks, some humane traps, some cardboard, some bribes, and innovation - but luckily no scratches. Ginny and I managed to round up 11 cats in all (out of about 13) and brought them back to the shelter. The staff there is really great, dealing with an enormous intake of animals with grace and cheer. Here's one of the vets working at Animal Friends.

I've met some other really interesting people - Stuart is another vet, visiting from England. Today he's in the exclusion zone picking up animals and doing public feeds for the wandering packs. Sister Michael, a nun, comes from an order that tries to alleviate suffering, and her specialty is animals. She's a pro. Miho, a Kanagawa person, is excellently fluent in Japanese and English and has an acerbic wit to boot. She slept on the floor of our hotel room last night (three of us shared a business hotel room), snuggled up in her tiny backpacking zero-degree sleeping bag that she got for when she was traveling in India. There are tons more great people here.

I have not yet been to the nuclear exclusion zone, and may not go there this week. This is probably the biggest problem area, as I mentioned in my previous email, and the team really wants to get out as many animals as possible, as a lot of them are wasting away, some of them shut in houses with nobody home for weeks or even since the earthquake, and farm animals tethered and penned. The team is armed with a dosimeter, highly protective masks, gloves, and wear long sleeves and scarves to make sure their bodies are fully covered. There are also decontamination centers where you can be scanned when coming out, and everyone is logging their exposure in order to minimize exposure to any one person, and to know when it might be a good time to quit going in.

Tomorrow, I'm heading out with Ginny again, this time to Iwate prefecture, to answer a call about someone who's evacuating to a shelter and can't take their pet. It's a long drive - maybe eight or nine hours - and we'll probably be sleeping in the car on the way back. Road trip? No hotels operating up there, or not many, and no money anyway. Wish us luck!

Love to you all.
xoxo,
-selena-

animals, my friends

Hey there - I've started volunteering with JEARS up in Tohoku, helping to rescue animals in this area. I wrote this update to send to a few friends and thought I'd post it here too.

Hey everyone -
I thought I'd dash off a quick email tonight. I arrived in Niigata today (upper West Coast of Japan, across from Fukushima). Niigata is where one of the shelters of JEARS is based, Animal Friends. I connected with the group in the city and took a group out to the shelter to tour it and meet some of the rescued animals, and also to drop off a cat that had been picked up in the exclusion zone of Fukushima the day before.

There are more than 200 animals being held in the shelter; they say there are 10,000 animals wandering Fukushima alone, including dogs, cats, other pets, and livestock that have been abandoned. It's a momentous task and not one this group can do alone.

Tomorrow we head to the tsunami zone and to the Fukushima area. I'm driving a group and doing some translation. Everyone I've met so far is really great and they had a bunch of vegetarian curry pouches donated by an Indian food company, so I'm even fed! Excellent.

I'll update more when I can - early start tomorrow and looks like a full day. Love you all.
xoxo
-selena-