By Orna Rinat
The Freedom Sanctuary is named after Freedom, one sweet lucky calf who was rescued from a dairy farm to win a life of liberty.
This is his story:
Freedom was born on March 26, 2013. Like all the other calves at dairies, he was immediately taken from his mother, but unlike the others, he was not caged – because he was born crippled, he was tossed aside to die on a dirt path alongside the dairy. In the calves’ section, the calves lay in their tiny cages, calling out to mothers they would never see, trying to suckle on the bars of the cage, or lying exhausted and silent, with the rapid breath of newborns, lonely and looking around with their large, wondering, dark eyes, “raising their infant chin in wonder, struggling to understand,” as activist Santiago Gomez once put it.
And on the ground outside, lay the small crippled calf.
Omri Zvi used to visit this dairy farm in the Sharon area to sit with the calves. Omri, not so far from childhood himself, took upon himself a mission that not many veteran activists would take – to go there place regularly in order to try and quench a particle of these calves’ thirst for contact, to let them suckle hungrily from his empty hand; to be a constant witness of their loneliness, to look at the blind mechanized cruelty surrounding them, helpless to do anything except be with them. And then, to go home, leaving them behind, and to continue his regular routine while knowing that the only love and warmth they would ever receive throughout their entire lives would come from him, and to know what they didn’t – that on one of his subsequent visits, they would no longer be there.
“Omri became mother to those miserable calves,” a post on the ‘Let the Animals Live’ website relates, “and he talks about it with so much feeling and love. I cannot understand how one can hold and love a sweet tiny calf, all the while knowing that the next time you come that calf may no longer be there…”
On that Passover one year ago, when he came to the dairy farm as usual, he noticed the calf laying at the side of the path. He sat beside the lonely calf until late that evening, stroking and calming him. When he returned the next morning, he was horrified to see that the calf’s tail had been bitten off. A coyote had eaten his tail during the night. “It caused me awful pain to see him tossed aside and unable to move, laying there on his own. For two weeks, I would come every day and sit beside him, giving him warmth and love and filling the empty space surrounding him. I took some Jute cloth and created a brace for his legs so that he could stand, and I massaged him to pump the blood through his leg.” After a great deal of begging and grueling negotiations, the dairy farmer agreed to give the calf to Omri.
Looking for a home for Freedom
On April 10, 2013, Omri posted on Facebook, asking for help in finding a safe place for the calf he decided to name Freedom. Two days later, he took Freedom from the dairy farm with an ambulance from ‘Let the Animals Live’. When he came into the farm to take Freedom, Omri cried for the first time since he began visiting. He looked into the eyes of the calves that would be sent to the slaughterhouse the next day. “They looked at me and I at them.” But he could only take Freedom. They, the healthy calves, were doomed to death., They stayed behind. Freedom was rescued.
Freedom was moved to a temporary home, and Omri began looking for a permanent residence for the calf. For six weeks, he spent days and nights searching, all over Israel, and talking to over 150 people, but he could not find a place that met his requirements. Meital Ben Ari talked to Gary Yourofsky in an attempt to find Freedom a place at a European sanctuary, and they managed to find one that would take Freedom. Omri contacted the Head Veterinarian in Israel. At first, the official responded with hostility and mistrust, but something in Omri’s gentle but unflinching persistence penetrated. “Eventually,” Omri says, “he admitted that the story touched him and he would help me take Freedom out of the country.”
In spite of the Head Veterinarian’s agreement, the matter turned out to be extremely complex, and to everyone’s delight, a farm in the Sharon area was found. Omri overcame quite a few bureaucratic obstacles in order to register Freedom with the Ministry of Agriculture as his sole owner, so that nothing could be done without his approval.
For one calf
I look at Freedom standing there, after a walk down the path, a large calf weighing 200 kg. His hair glistens from the shampoo we gave him, and he lowers his head and puts it against Omri’s leg, unwilling to move. One doesn’t have to perform the sin of “humanization” to realize that Freedom is happy, and it’s not a wild stretch of the imagination to see that when Omri strokes one of the donkeys that comes up for a cuddle and Freedom starts moving restlessly and butting his head a bit, he’s unhappy.
Freedom is tired. His legs must be aching and we return to his plot. He pushes his head into my stomach and stays like that, incessantly wagging what remains of his tail after the coyote incident. He’s almost a bull, but acts just like a baby. In the clip below, you can see him playing tag with a donkey on the farm. Freedom runs, and you can see the joy in his gait, in spite of his crippled legs. Then he comes and puts his cheek against the donkey’s, and the donkey places his head on Freedom’s neck. Omri says that visitors are always amazed to see Freedom drop everything – even if he’s eating – and rush to Omri. They’re also surprised by how similar Freedom’s behavior is to that of a dog. “People don’t know. They just don’t realize,” he says sadly,” he’s very attentive and aware of every movement or sound I make. When I call his name, his ears perk up. He butts me so I will sit, and then he licks my face.” Omri thinks that Freedom can also tell when he’s about to leave, because then the calf puts his head on his shoulder.
And this may be one of the most important messages to arise from this unusual story, about the profound relationship man can enjoy with other animals. Omri saw Freedom for who he was. Not a product of industry, not one creature of thousands, but that one and only calf who could love him back, that calf who waits and remembers and doesn’t want him to go home, and for whom Omri was willing to sacrifice a large portion of his life.
Anyone who has seen newborn calves laying in their tiny cages, waiting, completely alone, for the next stages in their brief lives – fattening, transport, slaughter – realizes just how much bravery there is in this act of one young man, sitting there alone and surrounded by those doomed to death, who decided to take one calf and grant him life; the bravery required to face people who run industries of mass murder, and battle for the life of one, all alone, supported by no association or organization, sometimes even against activists who trying to discourage him by claiming there is no point in saving just one; the bravery in his decision that Freedom’s life was worth something, that because he had helped him stand on his feet – he couldn’t let him die. All this was done without knowing how he would care for Freedom, but knowing only that he would turn the world over for months to save one calf. “This act was so out of the ordinary, even for us, we who live and breathe animal rescue 24 hours a day,” the ‘Let the Animals Live’ website reads, “maybe because it simply doesn’t register, how one person can fight, against all odds, to stop the meat industry, for one moment, for one soul.”
Freedom won’t end up there
What can we understand from the manner in which Freedom pushes his head deep into Omri’s stomach and stands there, without moving, as if there’s nothing in the world worth moving for? I think about the trucks that come for the calves, and wonder what if such a truck came now. I see how Freedom doesn’t want to move and doesn’t want Omri to go, and try to imagine the truck pulling up, the people come out and yelling and beating. I imagine him trying vainly to resist, I imagine Omri breaking down, the blows and the electric shockers, the confused terror of this calf full of love and trust, who stands here quietly pushing his head into the soft stomach of the young man who saved his life.
The calves born with Freedom were taken. They are no longer alive. All the calves are like Freedom. They are all children who yearn for contact, who want to play and run around. They are social; they respond to music. They recognize those they know, and express their affection very clearly. They all want to suckle on their mothers’ teats, play, and move around freely. To live. And they will all end up there, in a place where only the blood-stained walls will hear their cries of anguish, where more than anything they still want their mothers.
Freedom’s mother will also end up there – perhaps she already has. Thanks to Omri, Freedom won’t end up there. And perhaps, vaguely, instinctively, he knows just how lucky he is. Obviously, he knows something.
