elephants and wolves and bats oh my!

In a valiant effort to control where my tax money goes, help the planet, and give my friends cool gifts, I have taken to adopting animals for them from the World Wildlife Fund and Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. All donations are tax deductible (YAY!) and the WWF comes with an AMAZINGLY cute and LARGE stuffed animal (how on earth do they make money with these animals?) certificates and pictures of the breed of animal you adopt. Each person has their own animal preferences so its fun to choose. The Sheldrick Trust I discovered because my friend Alena won free tickets to see BORN TO BE WILD in IMAX. It's Disney so I was BOUND to love it - but on top of it having the most BRILLIANT 3-D EVER - (I seriously was about to go swimming in the water) it made me realize how AMAZING elephants are. I had gotten clue before, but this movie really drove it home. The Sheldrick Trust is dedicated to helping all sorts of animals, but mainly orphaned baby elephants in Kenya, get healthy enough to return to the wild. The amount of research etc... that went into the trust (It apparently took 20 years to develop a MILK that could sustain the elephants!) is amazing. And, in my opinion, their donor program makes more sense. They do NO mailings - they want all their money to go to the elephants. Everything is done via e-mail. You don't get a stuffed animal or fancy gift basket - but opposed to nebulously donating to a random breed, you choose an exact elephant to foster - and then but you to view an on-line keepers log of that elephant! (And if its a gift - you AND the giftee get to view the log.) It gives you daily updated on the elephant and photos of the elephant being cute. (For some reason the baby elephants remind me of corgis - but everyone says I'm insane.) You also get fun watercolor painting prints via e-mail that various artists do of elephants. It's a very cool program. The more I read about it - the more impressed I am! Of course, most of my friends would rather have a cute stuffed animal - but I know ONE - whose birthday is in a mere 2 weeks - who would much rather have an elephant! And an elephant she shall get!!!!!!!!!!! I even found a baby elephant that has the same "birthday" (brought to the trust day) as her! HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAT! lol.