BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— The founder of a Lake Region animal rescue said her organization entered a new phase recently with the opening of a pet pantry.
Jesse Shekels launched Twisted Oaks Rescue during the COVID-19 Pandemic to provide animal owners with free pet food.
“I started delivering with my son, who was eight at the time,” she recalled of the nonprofit’s early days. “I just wanted to do something nice.”
Shekels said the organization surpassed 30 tons of food deliveries to Lake Region pet owners in June.
Shekels recalled that as her outreach developed over time, she began to see the underlying causes of pet hunger and abandonment and changed the focus of her organization to address those issues.
“We do a nice thing,” she said. “We hand out pet food, but that’s a band-aid to the problem.”
“Overpopulation in the home was the number one reason people were seeking me to feed their pets,” she said.
She added that too many animals under one roof could result from people with big hearts who thought they were doing the right thing by picking up every stray they came across on the street.
“(They didn’t) realize that full-circle care doesn’t end with just bringing an animal into your home,” she said. “You need to provide it medical care and feed it correctly.”
Another cause of pet overpopulation is too many animals not spayed and neutered.
Shekels said the result of these two conditions is heartbroken pet owners overwhelmed with trying to feed and care for animals.
“We’re talking about 88-year-old people standing in line crying because they can’t feed their cats,” she said. “I mean, we saw a lot of emotional moments.”
Shekels said she started a spay-and-neuter program that she believed would address the real source of animal hunger.
Since partnering with Sheltering Hands in Ocala and other nonprofits, Shekels said her organization has spayed or neutered over 1,000 animals in the Lake Region over the last two years.
Shekels added that one female cat could produce 67,000 cats over two-and-a-half years with her offspring.
“It always seems to be our elderly population that ends up feeding the cats,” she said. “And so we’ve come up with programs to get in there and help trap some of the cats and get them spayed and neutered.”
Shekels added that she has also tried to make pet owners aware of the options and resources available to them.
“People make better choices when they have options,” she said. “When they don’t have options, they often do stupid things like putting their pet in a crate and leave it at the gas station with a sign on the crate that says: “Take me.”
Shekels said that the latest development for Twisted Oaks Rescue is the opening of Loki’s Lunchbox, which she describes as a pet pantry.
The new facility provides a centralized location where pet owners can get the food they need for their animals.
But Shekels said free food is only the first step in helping families at Loki’s Lunchbox.
“We work with families one-on-one,” she said, “talking to them about responsible pet ownership and the importance of spaying and neutering their animals.”
“The great thing about our new building: Loki’s Lunchbox, is how we designed it. Now our spay and neuter bus pulls right into our rescue on Saturdays,” she said. “We can take 12 to 15 pets per Saturday and spay-neuter them.”
Shekels said the bus is a state-of-the-art facility run by two University of Florida professors.
She said over 180 animals have been fed through Loki’s Lunchbox since the facility opened on May 18.
