The opportunity to take a quick vacation south to Tucson and Phoenix was our first goal. We planned to explore the Saguaro National Park and a few other trails in these areas of AZ that we had not seen before. A secondary goal, based on our route through Kanab, UT, was to transport 18 pigeons to the Best Friends Animal Society.

Best Friends Animal Society is a leading national animal welfare organization dedicated to ending the killing of dogs and cats in America’s shelters. To help Save Them All, Best Friends works with shelters, rescue groups and our members nationwide. The facility in Kanab, UT, also includes a separate group, “Wild Friends” that provides wildlife rehabilitation services to the Southern Utah area.

Enter the pigeons … The pigeons we treat at WRCNU fall into a category that is somewhat in between wild/feral and domestic – pigeons are not protected under the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act as are almost all other birds in the US – they are considered an introduced, non-native species. Although they are not protected, and we do not have to treat them, when they come in injured to WRCNU, the goal is to treat and rehabilitate them just like any other species. (We also get many banded and lost homing and racing pigeons but that is a story that would take up many more blog posts!) We had gotten to the point in the last month or two that caring for the pigeons we had was affecting our ability to care for the other animals that came through our door so I was able to work with the team at Best Friends to facilitate this transfer – they had more space to continue with the care needed for these birds at “Wild Friends.”

Initially we had a “plan” to take all 18 birds in our car but space constraints warranted that we have a second car follow us. We ended up with 6 birds and a fellow volunteer, Shelby, ended up with 12. She dropped the birds off after our 5+ hour journey south and then drove another 5 hours back up to northern Utah, making for a very long day! Joel and I continued about another 2 hours south where we stopped for the night at Cliff Dweller’s Lodge in Lee’s Ferry, AZ.