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FRIDAY, JULY 10, 2020
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UXBRIDGE, CANADA (AFP) - The coronavirus pan-
demic has led millions of people to embrace meet-
ings via Zoom, but admittedly, those can be as te-
dious as in-person conferences.
So one animal sanctuary in Canada, in dire need
of cash after being forced to close to visitors, found
a way to solve both problems.
Meet Buckwheat, a donkey at the Farmhouse
Garden Animal Home, who is ready to inject some
fun into your humdrum work-from-home ofice day -
for a price.
“Hello. We are crashing your meeting, we are
crashing your meeting - this is Buckwheat,” said
sanctuary volunteer Tim Fors, introducing the grey
and white animal on a Zoom call.
In the video application’s signature window
panes, the call attendees offer some oohs and aahs
as they realise what’s happening - and then erupt
in laughter.
“Buckwheat is crashing people’s meetings in or-
der to make some money,” Fors told
AFP.
“They donate to the sanctuary when they want
her to crash a meeting, so it’s mostly a fundraiser so
we can feed the cows, especially during COVID.”
The Farmhouse Garden Animal home in Uxbridge,
about an hour’s drive northeast of Toronto, used to
rely on visitor donations and paid on-site activities to
make ends meet.
But since the pandemic erupted in mid-March,
the former cattle ranch can no longer welcome out-
siders, putting a serious dent in its inances.
“About four years ago, Mike Lanigan, who is the
farmer here - he is a third-generation cattle farmer -
he had a change of heart and decided not to send his
cows to slaughter anymore,” Fors explained.
The animal sanctuary was born: it’s now home to
about 20 cows, chickens, ducks, a horse and Buck-
wheat, the female donkey born 12 years ago.
With the pandemic threatening the sanctuary’s
survival, its leaders quickly realised they needed to
identify other ways to bring in money.
They themselves were using Zoom calls for work
- and thus was born the idea of having animals sit in
on people’s work calls to lighten the mood.
On the sanctuary’s website, interested parties
can ill out a form to hire Buckwheat, Melody the
horse or Victoria, whom Fors called the “matriarch of
the herd”.
A 10-minute Zoom appearance costs CAD75
(USD55). For double the time, the price shoots up to
CAD125, and USD175 for 30 minutes, sanctuary co-
founder Edith Barabash told
Toronto Life
magazine.
“We are always happy when the people on the
meeting are surprised,” said Fors.
“We started about the end of April, and I think
we done about 100 meetings and sometimes we are
crashing meetings three or four times a day.”
On one call, Fors told attendees that he hopes
they will visit the sanctuary once lockdown measures
are lifted.
“Deinitely,” one of them said.
Meet Buckwheat,
the donkey you
can hire to crash
Zoommeetings
ROME (AFP) - Even cats must quarantine. A six-month-old
cat named ‘Pupi’ who survived a trip with his Tunisian owner
across the Mediterranean before landing at Lampedusa is
in good health and will be cared for, the island’s mayor said
on Wednesday.
Mayor Toto Martello wrote on Facebook the orange male
tabby with a white chest and paws had spent a few days at a
migrant reception centre with his owner after their arrival by
boat in Italy on July 1.
It was then sent to a veterinary clinic for observation.
Provincial health authorities determined the cat was “in good
health” and did not present symptoms of disease, said Martello.
But it would still have to be kept away from other animals for
six months under an anti-rabies quarantine.
A woman from Lampedusa offered to take care of the kitten,
said Martello, who signed a “custody” order for Pupi. Migrants
from Libya and elsewhere in North Africa continue to arrive
at Italy’s shores, either after being picked up by humanitarian
rescue boats or in their own small vessels.
La Repubblica
daily wrote that over 100 migrants had
landed on Lampedusa on July 1, in 11 separate landings.
“It’s a story that may seem to some of little importance but
it shows how many procedures and tasks, sometimes even the
most unexpected, weigh down the municipal administration
when we are faced with a landing of migrants on the island,”
Martello wrote. But, he added, “even if it’s a small story, I’m glad
it has a happy ending.”
Migrant cat survives voyage,
heads to quarantine in Italy