Alessandra Cepeda
Bird Rescue
Alessandra Cepeda became deeply involved in animal welfare during her time at Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC), from which she received associate’s degrees in education and early childhood education. While at BHCC, Cepeda assisted the Humane Society with animal-
In the following paragraph, Cepeda describes the scene at a storage unit containing abandoned birds. One of those birds was Samantha, shown in the photo with Cepeda.
When the owner opened the empty storage unit, we could not believe that any living creature could have survived under such horrible conditions. The inside was complete darkness, with no windows and no ventilation. The air hit us with the smell of rot and decay. A flashlight revealed three birds, quiet and huddled in the back corner. They were quivering and looked sickly. Two of the birds had injured wings, hanging from them uselessly at odd angles, obviously broken. They were exotic birds who should have had bright and colorful feathers, but the floor of the unit was covered in the feathers they had molted. We entered slowly and retrieved the abused birds. I cried at how such beautiful and helpless creatures had been mistreated. We adopted two of them, and our Samantha is now eight years old, with beautiful green feathers topped off with a brilliant blue and red head. She talks, flies, and is a wonderful pet who is dearly loved and, I admit, very spoiled. She deserves it after such a rough start to her life.