A little rain did not affect the enthusiasm of those attending the 11th Annual Rockin’ Rescue over the weekend in the Weissport Borough Park.

With plenty of food, entertainment, the Pacemaker’s Car Show, and even an alligator named Apollo, festival organizer Donna Crum was grateful for everyone’s involvement.

“A lot of these vendors here have been here for all 11 years,” Crum said. “They follow us religiously, they stand for what they believe in. The bands come back here year after year.”

T

he three-day event was sponsored by the Blue Mountain Animal Rescue Society and the Carbon County Animal Cruelty Fund. One of the current funding goals is to build a temporary emergency shelter to house animals for a maximum of 72 hours until they can be transferred to a regular shelter.

“Our intention was never to be a shelter,” Crum explained. “We are ‘Plan B.’ We do the Wheelchair for Dogs program, Senior for Senior Adoption Program, seizure, diabetic fosters, feral cat shelter housing and also helping other rescues and shelters in their time of need. We run the Carbon Animal Food Pantry, and we also help the human food pantries, so we can get the food out there.”

Another rescue organization, Christina’s Reptile and Animal Sanctuary, had some special guests at the festival: “Apollo,” an alligator; “Gub Gub,” an Asian Water Monitor; and “Russel” and “Lucy,” a pair of sulcata tortoises.

“We rescued Apollo in 2009,” Christina said. “Police had found him in an abandoned house with no food, water, light or heat for an unknown period of time. Another rescue temporarily took him in, and we told them we would take him.”

Another goal for fundraising for Blue Mountain is to purchase an ammonia detector.

“We have been in four houses with over 50 cats this year,” said Crum. “One had 74 cats in it, one had 157 cats, and the ammonia level is very bad for everyone, let alone the animals, but also for the humans going in to rescue these animals. A lot of them are abandoned, and a lot I call ‘COVID casualties,’ because there were no spay or neutering clinics, no shelters are taking in right now because everybody is overfull, so we have no place to go. We are sheltering in place. That means we have to go back every day to these properties that have all these cats in it, or dogs. Every time we go in, we need to use new gear, we can’t contaminate or go to another property without changing gear. PPE is not cheap.

“We are trying to make changes with the laws as a legal advocate for a long time, and now our voices are being heard, but now we have to step up for them, the animals that we rescue, because it’s sad. We’ve been saying this for years, we need to be a voice. We need to get louder. And the humane society police officers in Pennsylvania need to get prouder of what they do. Not a lot of people are going to crawl under a building, or go into a house filled with urine and feces.”

Blue Mountain Animal Rescue Society volunteers get full training.

The group also offers a variety of educational programs. To learn more and to donate, visit www.bmars.org.