S1 E6 - What's the Deal with Animal Rescue?

Nora Dean joins us to talk about animal rescue and how her family has helped to save and relocate various animals in our area. Tune in and listen to what Nora has to say, and please remember to never be afraid to embrace your inner weirdo!

Contact Mr. B: [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

(00:12):
Ladies and gentlemen. Can we beyou know, real with each other.
I think we're friends now right,Well, but this is what episode are
we in here? We're in episodesix? I think episode six. Yeah,
we're in episode six. Um,I'm not right right now. I
gotta be honest with you. Ifor the past week, I've been sick.
I had I don't know covid,flu co flu, fluvid, covidium,

(00:41):
I don't. I don't even knoweverybody, I really don't. I've
been sick all last week. Um, my family, there are five of
us in our family. We're allsick. We've all come down with it.
Um. I think we're on theroad to recovery. But my uh,
you know, my poor daughter.Shout out to my daughter. She's
still recovering. And now I'm sickand I sound like that. Yeah,

(01:08):
that's what it's like at my houseright now. Tell my daughter sounds.
She looks like she's just sitting onthe couch, just sad as can be.
She's absolutely miserable. So whatever thisis, I don't care, covid,
flew, bad cold, whatever's goingon. Either way, it's not
nice. And if you come downwith it, you have my sympathies because

(01:30):
it kicked me in the tail.And I've told teachers today, you know,
usually I get sick and I'm downa day, maybe two, and
I'm back up. So I gotsick on Tuesday, and on Thursday,
I was getting ready to come backinto work and I was headed out of
my house, had my bag withme, I was all dressed, had
my keys with me. I wasgetting ready to walk out the door.

(01:51):
Coffee was made, and I'm sweatingprofusely. I'm just like, still sick,
still in the throes of it,and I'm like, what am I
doing? So I went back,got back in bed, and by the
middle of that day was so gladI did not come into work because I
was absolutely measurable. So if youare suffering from this right now, you

(02:12):
have my sympathies. It's a roughgo right now. And the sad thing
is that the person you're about tohear next here in just a moment,
Nora and Dean, is currently sufferingfrom the sickness. Let's just call it
the sickness and just make it anice, little fun family and they can
all just hang out together in thisdisgusting, sick environment world that they've created.

(02:38):
I'm serious, my brain like there'sfog just so. But Nora is
currently sick right now. She wasn'table to publicize the podcast this morning on
our morning announcement. So the youngladies you're about to hear, you know,
you can kind of as you're listeningto this podcast here in a moment

(02:58):
and kind of be sending up prayersfor her and hoping that she gets better
as long with everybody else, andthen we can just get through this cold
season, maybe get cold season,flue season, COVID season, sickness season,
and enjoy Thanksgiving with our families andnot all be sick and miserable as
we do so without any further adoin me whining anymore about Oh yeah,

(03:20):
I guess I should let you knowwhat you're listening to. Huh see,
I told you COVID brain, flue, brain, messed up brain. This
is the Alma GT podcast, everybody. It's the podcast that asked, hey,
what's your deal? Just because wewant to know what's going on with
you? And we're here to kindof find out about our GT students.

(03:42):
Of what you're about to find out. My name is Michael Bridges. I'm
the GTNAP coordinator here at Alma.And this is our student, nor Deane,
who is going to tell you allabout pets and rescue pets who like
the dogs out. All right,So we are here with our fifth grade

(04:17):
GT student and friend of the program, Nora Dean, Norah, how are
you? I'm good? Good good. How are things going in the world
and land of fifth grade? Prettygood? Pretty good? What's your what's
your favorite thing you're doing in fifthgrade right now? Um, I don't
know. I kind of like themath. It's like kind of easy for

(04:38):
me. The math is easy.Yeah. I think I think I've heard
a lot of kids saying that they'reliking, like in the math program that's
going on, and you are probablyright now in your personal life you're probably
kind of tired, right. Alot of people don't know. I saw
you last night at about what timewas, at nine thirty ninety five,
and I had left my phone downat theater, so I don't go all
the way back right right, Sofor those of you who don't know,

(05:00):
and this will be, of course, by the time you hear this,
this program will have already gone throughand be done by probably about two weeks.
But Nora and my daughter, asa matter of fact, are involved
in Descendants, right, this nameDescendants at the forts at not the Fort
Smith Little Theater at the King OperaHouse down in Van Buren. And that's
Young Actor's Guild, right, Yes, well this is not Norah's deal,

(05:24):
by the way, but she's justinvolved in it. So why don't you
tell us a little bit about theYoung Actor's Guild. What is it?
Exactly? It's basically a place whereyounger kids that like to act can come
and they have like different shows.Like during summer we did Percy Jackson and
the Lightning Thief and that one waslike the older kids show, but it

(05:46):
was for really all ages. Andthis one is considered to be the junior
show. So the age limit forthis one is fourteen. Whenever it's usually
like I think, like sixteen orfifteen. And how do you like?
They just hold open triumphs, right, and if you want to try,
you can come out and try andparticipate. Right. They have a place
that they call it the YAG Headquartersand they give you, like a piece

(06:12):
of paper, a little scene fromthe like musical it was this one was
someone was a musical and you wouldread it, you would act it out,
and then musicals they would also haveyou sing, so you got to
pick whatever song that you wanted toand sing. You usually you usually make
it. Okay, there's not asI don't think I really know if anybody

(06:33):
that's made it not get in.Well. Yeah, So we would like
to recommend that you know, ifyou hear if you're in the Arkansas area
here Fort Smith Van Buren area,and you hear about the Young Actors Guild,
go out and support them any localtheater thing you hear going, because
you will be surprised how many giftedpeople you find there involved in those kind
of programs. So please go outand support those programs. Now, we

(06:57):
could probably sit here and talk aboutthat and many other things all day long,
but that is not Norah's deal.So, Norah, we invited you
on here to tell us, Hey, what's your deal? Oh, rescuing
pets and finding their forever homes?The dogs? So you rescue pets and

(07:18):
find homes for them. Yeah,okay, how how did you get started
rescuing pets? So we live outof city limits and we just started to
get lots of strays and so itwas like too sad to leave them out
there and just like leave them outthere with no shelter or food or anything.
So we started to take them inand we were rescuing them. Actually,

(07:42):
I think the first rescue that wehad, It was either first or
close to the first. We namedher Penny, and she accidentally went to
a little boy with special needs asa comfort pet. Oh awesome, that's
and you live. I mean,we don't want to tell people exactly where
you live, but you live onlike a main thoroughfare right close to where
a lot of traffic is. Soare these animals like dumped on you?

(08:07):
Do you think? Do you thinkpeople kind of drive down the road and
let the dogs go, or doyou think they're just wandering around? I
think some of them are wandering around. We had one cat that we kind
of suspected was dumped because she didn'tseem to have anything like wrong with her,
and she she looked like she wasbeing like fed pretty well. And
so I feel I feel like mostof them are just dogs that come up

(08:31):
because like sometimes they'll be hiding inour barns, and our barns are like
way out in the fields. Okay, so just maybe wandering from the woods
or something like that, get lost. Okay, well that's that's really good.
So so why do you do it? I Mean they're kind of they're
kind of find their way on yourproperty, So why do you do it?
Um, It's just it's too sadfor me to leave them out there

(08:54):
with no food and shelter, Likeif there was like a tornado or something
and they didn't have anywhere to go, and like they've been starved because they've
had to eat like grass and bugs, and so it's like it's hard for
them out there and like just likeimagine like living outside and not having a

(09:15):
shelter, not having a comfortable bedto sleep in, not having your phone
or having a TV. Right,nothing that you would be like used to
have. Are dogs using phones andTVs now, because that's a pretty upgraded
dog if I've ever seen it.But yeah, yeah, I see what
you're saying. You know, ifyou didn't have a place to go,
we kind of take that for granted. You know, it gets cold outside.

(09:35):
We have warm house. We youknow, we've got a car where
we can go and do things.We have a phone where we can text
our friends. And this dog,dogs, cats, you know, whatever
it is you may rescue, itis out there with nothing and they don't
know where their next meal is comingfrom and everything like that, so that
that can get rough. So wouldyou say that you enjoy doing this?
Is that something that you do?You enjoy it like rescuing animals? Yes,

(09:58):
I love doing it. It canbe challenging sometimes because you will have
like unexpecting things that will come upand so and it's like hard to like
make sure that they're getting everything thatthey need and to know that they're okay
and finding their homes. We haveto like get on Instagram or social media,

(10:22):
and so we first we post andsee if we can find the actual
owner right and after a couple ofdays, if we haven't gotten a response,
we change the post and ask ifanybody wants to take the animal.
Yeah. I think my wife hasseen some of your mom's posts, like
when you put animals on there onsocial media. I think she's seen some
of those and it kind of doesit. It kind of tugs at your

(10:43):
heartstrings for sure. It is ithard, like rescuing animals. Would you
say it's hard? Yeah? Sometimes? What makes it hard? What are
some things that you might say makeit hard, right, having to like
make sure that they're clean, likecleaning them up, and like you have
to do the outside with the hostand we aren't used to doing that,

(11:05):
right, so and you have tolike make sure that they're safe, like
like whenever we go to Mozillat andwe have to keep them outside sometimes.
Yes, like the cat that wehad, my mom's allergic to cats,
so we had to keep her outsideand so we were trying to keep her
safe. But she was a littlekittens, she'll see, it was like
wanting to run around and everything,right, and you have to like make
sure that they aren't going to runaway and get themselves in more danger sure

(11:28):
than they already are, right,and like it's just a lot of stuff.
That's just I'll bet, I betthere's a lot to it. So
I'm sure since you've been doing thisfor a while, because your mom told
me you've been doing this for quitea while, that you've got some stories
about some rescued animals, right thatyou could share. Okay, So why
don't you go ahead and just sharesome stories that you've got, Okay.

(11:48):
One of my favorites one it wasactually I think it was during COVID times.
We had just gotten back from mybirthday. It was like the day
after my birthda. It had justgotten back from a vacation. Um.
And so we go to lit outour other dog that we had gotten for
Christmas, like we bought her andwe are going to let her out,

(12:09):
and we see this dog in thedistance and it's a little it's a brown
dog. Is this is this aroundChristmas time? Uh? No it was
it was a while after Christmas.Um. We got her, like I
think, Liken, we got herlike a couple of Christmas is like earlier,
because we had had her for awhile. Um. But she keeps

(12:31):
like she wasn't even walking. Shewas crawling on her stomach and she had
ticks all over her Oh my gosh, like one really big one right next
to her eye. And she wasall skin and bones like you could she
had you could see her ribs,yes, because she was so skinny.
And so we were like took threedays to get all the ticks off of
her. And we had gotten herfood, um because our other dog already

(12:54):
had the food, so we justused some of hers and we had like
extra tins to put the food in. But a few days later, the
day after my party, she hadpuppies and I had my friends to day
to night. So we went outsideand we were walking two We were walking

(13:15):
down under the deck because we justheard my dog down there. We named
her Honey. Well it's not technicallymy dog. We had posted about her
to see if anybody wanted her,but she was under the deck and we
just saw her looking at her stomachand we didn't know what she had.
And so we get a little bitunder the deck and we see that she

(13:37):
had a baby puppy, right,and we so like I ran outside,
me and my friend and we hadto move Honey and her puffy down to
the barn. And they went andbought like a little kiddie pool so that
she could lay in it, andwe put like towels in it, and
once all of them were born,we bought this big old pin so that

(14:01):
we could fit them all in there. And so that was like a really
expensive Yeah, that's what I wasgonna ask, Is it like, does
it get expensive to do this?Yeah? It's like like especially whenever you
expect to have one dog and youget seven more, Yes, one dog
comes and then all of a suddenseven appear through the miracle of birth.
Yeah, sure, and so likePepe pads, we had to buy all

(14:24):
that. We had to buy moretins because we didn't have enough for like
food, and we had to buywhenever we moved them inside, we had
to buy this big old crate sothat we could keep the puppies in there.
Yes, and it was it wasreally hard to like keep them all
contained. And like before we broughtthem in, Honeywood like take them and

(14:45):
like bring them to the barn andwe would have to like run and get
them from the i mean under thedeck and we would have to run and
get them from the deck to bringthem back to the barn because she was
scared of us taking them. Butlike we have so much stuff the way
to buy and like vet visits becauseto make that they're healthy and make sure
and we had to make sure thatHoney wasn't chipped so that we could find
our owner. Sure, And soafter she had puppies, like all the

(15:11):
heart we had to get like heartguard and stuff like that to make sure
that they were gonna be safe andhealthy. So yeah, like bet Bill's
food, everything like that gets itgets expensive. Yeah, so I got
a question. So this this wasone that I came up that wasn't necessarily
on your list. And of allthe animals you've rescued, what's possibly the

(15:31):
weirdest um. So we it's nottechnically a rescue, but we were like
trying to help it. Um.There, a baby possum came up.
A baby possum. Welcome to theSouth for those of you that aren't down
here in the South, Yes,we have possums. Some people call them
opossums, but down here in theSouth they're possums. So a baby possum,

(15:52):
Okay, tell me tell us aboutthat. Um. So we saw
it and it was just like superchilled. Didn't even like hiss at us
when we So we got kind ofclose to it, and it was just
like chill of them there, andit was just like laying in the grass
out in our backyard. And sowe sat out of food, like plate
of food. But of course wedidn't have like food that they would eat,

(16:14):
so we had to put like dogfood out there. Sure. Yeah,
And then we had like we tooklike a plastic cut and cut the
top off and filled it with water. Yeah. And so after that day
we sat out more food and hedidn't eat it, so we suspected to
that he just ran off. Yeah, you helped him along the way.
I've got a powsum story when Iwas when I was single, I was

(16:36):
headed to my house to go home, and it's dark. It was probably
like nine o'clock at night, andI pulled up and my headlights, you
know, hit my front door andI saw something bundled up at the bottom
of the front door. So Iwas like, Okay, somebody left me
a shirt or a jacket or somethinglike that out there. I figured a
friend came by and dropped something off. So I walked up to my front
door, stood up to it,put the key in the lock, and

(16:57):
just kind of put my foot downon whatever that was, kind of put
my foot up against it, andit went. Ah. It was a
possum, big, huge possum,and it just took off running. But
it like, let me walk upthere unlocked the door. If I would
have unlocked the door and opened itbefore I had checked at that possum,
probably we would have gone in myhouse and I would have had an even
better story than that one right there. So all the all the pets,

(17:21):
pets that you've had. Have youkept any of these rescue pets? Yes,
so the dogs that I was talkingabout earlier, Honey, we did
end up keeping her because we hadposted about her to see if she if
we could find her owner. Ofcourse, nobody responded, right and then
so we asked if anybody would likeher. So this lady did answer.
She said that she wanted her.But then whenever we tried to like contact

(17:45):
her or private chat her, yes, she wouldn't answer, and like we
couldn't contact to her. So weended up keeping, Honey, But we
were going to keep one of therunt. The runt we named him Finn.
I thought you named him run andthat would have been awesome. Fenn.

(18:07):
Finn's good too. I like it. Finn works, Yeah, but
sadly he passed away. He wasn'tgetting like fat enough because he's the smallest
of the litter, right, Yeah, yeah, that's the way it goes.
So but like all the rest ofthem, we gave to people we
knew. Only one of them wentto somebody that we didn't know. Yeah,
Willow went to my grandma. Sowe still get to see her a

(18:29):
lot, and Honey and her reallyclose, all right, that's Yeah,
they came from the same litter,so that's pretty cool. Okay, so
you know how this goes. Beforewe close it out here, you have
to do a shout out for somebody. So this is somebody, you know,
for those of you that have beenlistening, somebody that matters to you,
mean something to you, has helpedyou along. So we just want
to give them a shout out.And so, Nora Deane, who do

(18:49):
you want to give your shout outtoo? I'm shouting out to Honey for
being the best rescue pet in theworld. Honey, so your dog?
Yeah, okay, that is thefirst on the program I shout out to
an animal, but I think it'squite fitting. So Honey, this one's
for you. Here we go.So, Honey, congratulations on being such

(19:11):
a great dog. So, Nora, before we head out of here,
is there anything you'd like to sayto people about like rescuing animals or pets
real quick? I think it's likereally important and as much as you can
help them, even if it's asmall thing like giving them some food,
it would be great for them.Yeah, I think I think that's a
really good idea because you don't necessarilyI mean, I think it's awesome what
you guys do. That's so awesome. But just like even giving them something

(19:33):
to eat, maybe enough to helpthem get to somewhere where they'll find people
like you and your family who aregonna take care of them and protect them.
I think that's really great. Well, Nora, I appreciate you coming
on. You did a great job, an excellent job. She was like
all nervous and everything, and I'mlike, you can talk to anybody,
Nora Dean, You're gonna be fine. But as I look around the studio,
I'm kind of seeing that we havesome dogs that have arrived here.

(19:56):
So Nora's gonna have to get towork and maybe rescue some more animals.
So we'll let her get back tothat. And Norah, we just want
to thank you so much for comingon. Just a really cool thing that
Norah and her family have going onthere. And again, just so grateful
that she came on the podcast andtalked about helping animals and helping pets and

(20:19):
know, just helping those in need. It's always a great thing to hear
about. And we just are gratefulthat she was able to come on,
and we hope she gets to feelingbetter. We hope you can all get
to feeling better. And you know, I really thought about going back and
redoing that intro and making it soundmore professional, but hey, that's how
we roll every once in a while. You know, it can always be

(20:41):
perfect, can always be spot on. Sometimes it's just you know, a
little rough around the edges, andthat's kind of how it has to be.
So we just want to thank youfor tuning in again to episode six.
Yeah, it's six, episode sixof Hey What's Your Deal? And

(21:02):
we hope you know, if youhave any questions or want to reach out,
or you know, have some interestedin the podcast or interested in Gifted
and Talented Students as a whole,you know you can reach out to me.
My name is Michael Bridges. Youcan reach me at my email m
as in Man Bridges, b RI, D G E S at Alma
SD dot net. I'd love tohear from you, and I'd love to

(21:22):
talk to you about the Gifted andTalented community. My advice to you,
take your vitamins, drink your fluids, keep your head down, stay away
from the sickness family. All right, have a great week and we will
hopefully see you again on Monday.Thanks folks.