In this day and age, nobody is exempt from the scourge of crime. FreeMe's beloved bakkie was stolen on the 4th May from outside Hopewell Supplies in Harvard Street just after 13h15 in the afternoon, right in front of the car guard. It takes an amazing amount of cheek to steal a vehicle that everybody knows and with such distinctive signage and drive it away in broad daylight. All the vendors at the Falls saw it and happily informed us that it was driving towards Main Road, but the police could not find it. It is particularly distressing, as we had spent a great deal of hard earned donations fixing it and getting it sorted out, including a new engine, new shocks and brakes, and a new battery. To add insult to injury, we had just put in R 500's worth of diesel. Unfortunately, this severely hampers our efforts to rescue our patients. We are now reduced to only one vehicle again and with no bakkie, we cannot load anything bigger than a duiker, and while it was insured, we are not going to get anything like what it was worth to us. If anyone has an older second hand vehicle that they are thinking of getting rid of, please let us know and we can see if we can afford it. While we would prefer a bakkie, at this point we would just be happy to have anything to enable us to go on more than one call out at a time. We have very helpful mechanics that will fix things for us, so we are happy to do some work on it. Also everyone be vigilant with your own vehicles, and don't assume that because there are people around, that they are safe. Finally, if you would like to help, FreeMe will be running a huge raffle over the next six months, with wonderful prizes such as a Big Boy Scooter, trips to a game reserve, five tablets, 7 x Samsung TV's and 15 x R500 shopping vouchers. Tickets are R10 each, so please buy one or, even better, contact us and take a book to sell or a few for your business - you get one free ticket per book sold, and your kids can earn community service hours for fund raising. If you only enter one raffle this year, please let it be the FreeMe one.
News supplied by FreeMe Wildlife Rehabilitation (KZN).