52 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • FEBRUARY 2020
ACTS OF KINDNESS
SAVING ANIMALS
FINDING OUR HUMANITY
When her husband found a baby
goat tied up in a cardboard box and
left for dead on the side of a road in
Matinecock, Manda Kalimian knew
what she had to do.
As soon as she got the call relaying
news of the discovery on Jan. 20,
Kalimian, founder of the CANA
Foundation, a Locust Valley-based
nonprofit wild horse rescue, jumped
in her truck and rushed to the scene
on Old Lane Road. She tried to save
it from freezing to death in the
20-degree weather that day, but it
was too late.
“A frenzy of baby bottles of goat
milk, heated towels, blankets, and
emergency veterinary care could
not save this poor 10-day-old baby
goat from the inhumanity that had
befallen him,” Kalimian wrote of
her experience. “He died eight
hours after we found him. The
only thing I can wrap my mind
around is that at least he didn’t die
frozen and alone in the dark and
he felt compassion around him as
he slipped away.”
Such discoveries are not uncommon
on Long Island. Nassau
and Suffolk SPCA investigators
routinely report cases of animals
— some wild, other domestic, occasionally
those typically found on a
farm — dead, neglected, or abused.
Such cases are often investigated
as animal cruelty, a misdemeanor
in New York State punishable by
imprisonment, a fine, or both. But
not all perpetrators are apprehended
and charged.
For Kalimian, who spends her days
trying to rescue wild horses out West
from being euthanized by the federal
government, the goat discovery
underscores her mission to try to
change some
people’s perception
of animals
as being
di sposable ,
like the person
who dumped
a baby goat
on the side
of the road
like a piece of
garbage.
“What happens
to a society
when they
have become
so callous and
self-absorbed
that they have
no regard for
the natural
world around them?” she asks.
“Where is compassion and a sense
of morality for even the smallest of
This baby goat was found near The Piping Club in
Locust Valley.
things? … It is the little things and
small acts of kindness that actually
matter the most.”
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