be kind to animals

Yesterday was the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi.

Not something people other than Catholics (and Anglicans) would know, or be expected to know.

St. Francis is the patron saint of animals and the environment. I don't know too much about him myself, only what I've learned from the little research I did today.

But his policy of being kind to animals, even to  a wolf,  'the fierce wolf that had ravished' the flocks of the people of some part of Italy 'because through hunger "Brother Wolf" had done this wrong'? 

That's got to make you think. 

Ours is a stewardship of the earth. 

#shadeofgreen- be kind to animals. Let them have their space. And may the tigers you befriend come to your funeral!
 

in memory of Ming, Simba, Rachel, Mumu, Kiko and all other beloved animals

(quotes from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06221a.htm)

App-solutely ingenious!

Another post about apps.
The best part about technology is using it to make the world a better place. The Internet is where millennials develop a collective social consciousness, if we want to.
Everyone I grew up with knows the story of Noah and the Ark. But I'll tell it for those who haven't heard it: Many thousands of years ago, God was unhappy with humankind. Nobody was behaving in the manner He expected of them. So God decided to flood the earth and clean it of all the sordidness. There was one man, Noah, whose life pleased God. Noah was given a mission: he had to build an ark, and take his family and two of each kind of beast and bird into that ark while God washed the world. It rained and rained. When it finally stopped and the land dried, God promised never to send another flood. The rainbow is a sign of that promise. (I knew catechism would come in handy someday.) Because they protected so many creatures, I like to think that Noah and his family were conservationists.
Project Noah isn't related to the Biblical character. Noah here is an acronym, according to the site. It stands for Networked Organisms And Habitats.
The site, and app, help citizens of the world aid scientists in the collection of data. You take pictures, upload them and identify the species. I think that is such an interesting idea.
And with the Western Ghats having recently been given the title of World Heritage Site, I think it is doubly important that we record as much as we can. None of Goa's wildlife parks are in this year. Sigh.
Thank goodness Project Noah is available online- they don't have a Blackberry app, so no smart phone business for me. Never mind- I can't wait to get started!
For more apps-for-nature, read this BBC article.