PLENTY Spring 2020 Plenty Spring 2020-WEB | Page 11

a land of creature comfor
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Photos courtesy of Poplar Spring animal sanctuary
Poplar
Spring
Animal
Sanctuary
by wib middlet o n
...But The good life didn’t always
start out that way
I
t’s an unusually warm October day in Northeast Washington, DC, and
police are getting calls. The year is 1998. A huge, triple-decker live-
stock truck with North Carolina plates has been parked on a street
just off North Capitol for close to 24 hours. Inside scores of pigs are
screaming in fear. Packed cheek to jowl with little ventilation, their
stench has begun to waft through the neighborhood. The truck has been
abandoned, cab locked with keys inside. The police arrive. Animal Control
shows up. Everyone is shocked by the gruesome scene—some pigs are
dead, others have broken legs and wounds from climbing over each other.
In the pastoral countryside of Montgomery County—45 miles and a
world away—Terry Cummings gets a call at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary.
It’s Animal Control. She and husband Dave Hoerauf had recently cofounded
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