An animal lover has been sharing her home with 90 different rescue pets and some of them sleep in her bedroom as well.
31-year-old Adri Rachelle from Atlanta, Georgia, has named all of her 90 different rescue pets after the Lord of the Rings characters like Bilbo Baggins the mule, Gandalf the goat, Frodo the spaniel and two cats named Boromir and Faramir.
Rachelle says, “I’ve always loved animals. I don’t think anyone is surprised that I’m living like this, when I was a kid, my room was full of stuffed animals because I couldn’t get the real ones. They do all have names and 80% of them are named after Lord of the Rings,” she says. “I’m a little obsessed with the books and the films. Technically we haven’t run out of Lord Of The Rings names, but I really have to search for them now.”
She has 22 rescue pigs, 12 dogs, eight chickens, six cats, four parrots, four horses, four peacocks, four rats, three hairless guinea pigs, two goats, two ducks, two cockatoos, two cows, two mini cows, two alpacas, two ferrets, two geckos, one tegu lizard, one bearded dragon lizard, a mule, a hamster, a rabbit, a tortoise and a python. She has also constructed a special 10-foot-wide bed so that at least four of her animals can pile in with her at night.
She says that her pigs sleep with her in bed, and the dogs and cats join her too. She has also set up tree branches in the headboard so the birds can sleep near her as well. Her daily feeding routine is 40 minutes a day and cleaning cages and enclosures takes another half an hour.
She says, “I like to make sure everyone is settled in and then I’ll feed the dogs their breakfast and I’ll feed myself if I’m lucky. I give the rest of the animals breakfast around 10, fresh fruits and vegetables, hay and pellets for the horses, and all the pigs get bananas. I can go through and spot clean all the cages and enclosures in half an hour. I just put on a podcast and do it.”
She says she has spent$10,000 on animal-proofing her 11,000-square-foot guest house so her pigs, birds, and guinea pigs could live inside, as she says, “The birds like to chew everything so we took out all the molding, the baseboards and carpets and child-proofed all the cabinets,” says Rachelle. “Now they can fly free and not be locked in cages.”
She even rigged the home with cameras so she can always keep an eye on her beloved animals when she’s not home and credits her parents Larry Jacobs, a retired natural resources specialist, and Cynthia Selby, a retired nurse, for her animal-loving nature.
She says, “My dad would go out every year to count endangered species like bald eagles, frogs and snakes,” says Rachelle. “My mom was constantly taking in stray animals like baby birds, kittens and dogs. We raised chickens, rabbits and ducks. Growing up, I probably had about 20 animals, I’ve always been that way.”
Ten years ago, she started taking in rescue pigs and her menagerie grew from there. Although her family wants her to concentrate on herself a little more than her pets, but Rachelle said: “There’s nothing I’d rather be doing with my time or money than looking after animals.
Apart from sharing her animal-loving life on YouTube, she is applying for nonprofit status so that she could turn her home into a sanctuary and be able to rescue more animals.