My Animal Rescuer Friend In NC Has Been Devastated By Hurricane Helene

Sweet Bear Rescue Farm was spared no mercy

Sep 30, 2024

I’m posting this to help fundraise for my friend Lisa McDonald, a resident of Hendersonville, NC. I became acquainted with Lisa back in 2018 when I rescued chickens from the streets of New York City during the annual Kaporos chicken massacre—a superstitious sin-transferring religious custom wherein people swing around baby scapegoated chickens by their wings, say a prayer that claims they’re transferring their sins into the birds, and then they viciously kill the birds to cleanse themselves of their past year’s sins (more on all of this in a future article). Anyhow, some of the chickens I rescued in 2018 ended up going to Sweet Bear Rescue Farm and some of those chickens are even still alive, which is exceptionally rare for chickens of the “meat” breed.

**Cornish cross chickens rescued from Kaporos that I photographed at Sweet Bear Rescue Farm in April 2024.**

It wasn’t until last year that I was finally able to visit Sweet Bear Rescue Farm for the first time. This place feels truly magical and you can tell the animals who call this place home feel very content. Unfortunately Lisa has lost many of the original sanctuary animals over the last 1-2 years, but she still has some chickens and pigs as well as many cats. It’s pretty much impossible for me to imagine and comprehend the hardship of losing so many lives who you consider family and who you’ve poured so much love into.

Okay so onto the recent really bad news…

Sweet Bear Rescue Farm got hit HARD by Hurricane Helene. It no longer resembles a sanctuary.

Lisa told me that 20 trees came down on her property. She had a couple trees fall onto the roof of her house, which caused the roof to partially collapse and the second floor to partially collapse—all that leaving a pathway for rain to pour into the house and creating a situation that was unsafe for her and her cats. Also, keep in mind that Lisa doesn’t live with any other humans. A large tree fell onto the driveway, which blocked her from being able to drive off the property. She was left without water, power, and wifi. One of her sources of income, hosting HipCamp guests (basically an outdoors version of Airbnb) is no longer doable for the indefinite future. Fortunately, her and the animals are okay…

I am going to post photos of what has happened to her home and overall property below, but I’m asking all of you to please help however you can (donate money, order things from her wishlist, share this post or my post on Instagram about this). Lisa is not sure yet if she’ll be able to continue with running a sanctuary after this disaster, but I’m almost sure that if we can make sure she continues to get an outpouring of support she’ll be charged up enough to keep going.

Here is a link to the Sweet Bear Rescue Farm Linktree, which gives you all the options for donating. You can also join the mailing list on the SBRF website.