When a person you love dies, it's natural to feel sorrow, express grief and expect friends and family to provide comfort—but although people often feel the same feelings of grief when they lose a beloved pet, it might go unacknowledged by others. Know that your grief is normal, and it’s OK (and even...

At Black Beauty Ranch, titles like “caregiver” and “maintenance technician” don’t do the people who hold them justice, and they don’t capture the dozens of unique tasks the team carries out every day: figuring out how to get pine sap off a goat’s horn (rub it with peanut oil), learning how to “drag”...

The choice to spay or neuter your pet may be one of the most important decisions you make impacting their long-term health—and your wallet! Your pet's health and longevity The average lifespan of spayed and neutered cats and dogs is demonstrably longer than the lifespan of those not. A University of...

Coyotes go out of their way to stay out of ours: They’re partial to open areas but seek hiding places in cities. They’re naturally active in daylight but adopt nocturnal lifestyles when living near humans. They can follow traffic signals and cross roads after rush hour. They even try to “escort” dog...

Important considerations before getting chickens as pets

As a new homeowner susceptible to sales pitches from the garden industrial complex, I spent my early planting years salivating over glossy magazine spreads exploding with color and texture and promises of endless summers. “Flower porn” was how my husband described those lushly photographed...

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Buy a house with a two-acre property, let our energetic herding dog have the run of the place and spend blissful summer days digging side by side in the dirt with her. And it was blissful, watching Mattie carve out her napping spots behind the ferns and tall...

We zigzag from tree to tree, seeking refuge under the leaf umbrellas. Drizzle turns to deluge as we dash beneath a tall canopy to plot our escape. The sky booms. My dad takes my hand, and I look up to see if he shares my sense of foreboding. But he’s smiling at me, his eyes twinkling. He says...

Black Beauty Ranch offers a fresh start to the domestic and exotic animals who roam its 1,400 acres. Whether they were rescued from roadside zoos, research laboratories or the exotic pet trade, some struggle to acclimate to life as wild animals. While providing the necessities that support their...

Every morning, the teams at Black Beauty Ranch spread out across 1,400 acres to care for the nearly 650 animals who call the sanctuary home. It’s not an easy task. The sanctuary is home to around 40 species, meaning caregivers need a high level of knowledge about all sorts of animals. Insights into...

What does it take to keep the nearly 650 animals at Black Beauty Ranch satiated, medicated and hydrated? A whole lotta produce, plus a dash of creativity. Here’s how sanctuary staff provide balanced diets, guided by the veterinary team.

As the world stopped turning and the fires started burning this summer, there was a hole in my heart that only a chipmunk could fill. Shy at first, the distant object of my affection warmed to my presence, until one day we even had breakfast on the patio together: a coffee for me and a snail for Mr...

On summer evenings, my husband and I head to the darkest spot of our property to look for the light—in the form of fireflies rising from meadow grasses and twinkling their way into the trees. As the tulip poplars behind this spectacular display settle in for slumber, white yucca flowers open their...

They inhabit the ruins of a 14th-century empire in Africa, cling to 800-year-ol cliffside dwellings in Arizona, forage in old Indian temples and European churches and occupy the decidedly less grand crawl spaces of our modern homes. As the world’s only true flying mammals, bats know how to get...

How to spur wildlife-friendly projects in your community.

Many Marches ago, as I mindlessly contorted myself to pull a deep-rooted weed from the garden patch, my thoughts turned longingly to the smell of fresh basil that would eventually grace what I saw as a still-barren vegetable graveyard. This spot was not so lifeless as it appeared, I would soon learn...

Atiya Wells was 22 when a walk in a park changed her view of the world. Growing up, she thought of natural areas as places for family cookouts, “not really seeing the forest for the trees,” she says. But on a date with her then-boyfriend-now-husband, Kieron, she ventured beyond the picnic areas of a...