Back in the day, master magician Harry Houdini thrilled audiences when, after being shackled, he escaped from a box that was locked, tied with rope, weighted, and submerged.
He’d be proud of his namesake.
This Houdini, a plucky little goat, escaped from a slaughterhouse and was found running through the streets of Lawrence, a village on New York’s Long Island. He was taken to a museum that intended to keep him with two alpacas and a flock of chickens.
That’s when John Di Leonardo—PETA’s manager of Animals in Entertainment Campaigns and the founder and president of the animal advocacy organization Long Island Orchestrating for Nature—heard about the four-legged escape artist. He talked to the museum about taking Houdini to a sanctuary where he would live with other goats.
True to form, Houdini successfully escaped from the museum several times, and the staff couldn’t find a way to contain him. Soon, he was heading to Chenoa Manor, a 25-acre sanctuary in Avondale, Pennsylvania.
Until his first daring escape, Houdini’s story likely wasn’t much different from those of millions of animals who are slaughtered every year. He had a respiratory infection and an ID tag in his ear, and he’d been spray-painted on his side, marking him as sold and set for the killing floor. But unlike those animals, not only is he living the good life, he also has his own personal—and vegan—veterinarian who runs his new home.
What You Can Do
Share this blog post with your friends, and urge them to go vegan so that they can save nearly 200 animals like Houdini every year. They can order a free vegan starter kit here.
