Noah’s Ark in 2021: Woman makes trek from California to Virginia with nearly 100 animals in tow

Chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys will have their own crates. Sheep and goats will get their own trailer. Donkeys will share one with a 950-pound pig.

Katie Cook rattled off her loading plan earlier this week — one of the many challenges of transplanting her nonprofit Little Farm Rescue from California to Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

Originally from Virginia Beach, Cook says her heart longs for home and her spirit has grown weary of the west’s frequent wildfires.

But with nearly 100 animals in her care, just imagine the move.

Three thousand miles lie between her small farm outside Los Angeles and the new place in Machipongo — a journey that will take at least five days. And while that’s not exactly Noah’s Ark scale, at least the animals in his story were all agreeable.

Her lot tends to lean the other way.

“Our residents are the discarded, the abused, the neglected,” Cook said. Fearful or untrained, stubborn or cranky, “they’re not an easily managed crew.”

Volunteers will haul the menagerie cross country in four 30-foot stock trailers, but it’s a job just deciding who’ll ride next to whom, much less getting them all on board.

Take the 950-pound pig.

“His name is One-Eyed Willy,” Cook said. “He’s a sweet guy but you really can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do.”

To reduce road-trip squabbling, she tries to pair compatible traveling mates, a blueprint that’s been revised many times already.

The horses get edgy if they’re too close to pigs. The alpacas are OK with horses, but oh, wait — there’s two in the herd they just don’t like. And then there’s Pia, a mini horse who’s reliably “sassy” enough that no one should get stuck rubbing shoulders with her for long.

“I have to keep all their personalities in mind,” Cook said.

Not to mention their food, medicine and supplement needs. Cook, 42, was making good progress on preparations — filling labeled containers with rations and lining them up in her yard — until a thief struck Monday. Bins and supplies were swiped while she was fetching her two kids from school.

“That was a big bummer,” she said, “but I don’t like to dwell on the funk. I can’t focus on the bad stuff — there’s too much of it in just the nature of what we do. We get animals from really horrific circumstances. I just try to acknowledge it and move on.”

That was too hard to do in her first career. After Kempsville High and William & Mary, she went to work for the department of mental health in Washington.

“My niche was bipolar and schizophrenic adult, homeless men — a very tough field. I got so burned out emotionally. I couldn’t turn it off at night.”

Cook took a break, joining a friend in California where “one year turned into 20.” She found a new purpose in animal rescue, married and started a family with Lester Cook, a retired tennis pro-turned-realtor who “thinks I’m crazy but in a good way.”

He laughed: “In the best way. Since the first day I met her, she’s always had some lost dog or whatever that she was trying to find a home for.”

It blossomed after the couple moved from L.A. to a few acres in Ojai, northwest of the city.

“First it was a mini horse,” her husband recalled, “then goats, then chickens and it just blew up from there.”

Six years ago, Katie started The Little Farm Rescue & Sanctuary, a charity surviving on donations and volunteers.

Katie Cook, founder of The Little Farm Rescue & Sanctuary, holds a mini-horse foal that was born to a mother in a kill pen. The foal, almost completely blind due to his mother's malnutrition, is now a resident of the sanctuary, which is moving from California to Machipongo on the Eastern Shore in May 2021.

“I don’t take a salary,” she said, “and no one is on the payroll. And I’m wildly uncomfortable asking for money.”

They’ve managed “some incredible years in California,” Cook said, making a home for an ever-expanding population of “permanent residents.” Unwanted farm animals. Mistreated pets. The broken and imperfect. Mules and horses saved from kill pens or trucks bound for slaughterhouses in Mexico.

One-Eyed Willy was found wandering down a street in town — a bred-for-meat pig who’d apparently made a break for it.

One of his ears was missing a chunk where a farm tag used to be “and he had injuries that looked like he pushed through something — a fractured collar bone and his right eye was popped out.”

Willy has gotten much bigger since, no matter how hard she’s tried to manage his weight. His genetics were long ago modified to yield the most meat in the shortest amount of time. At 2½ years old, he’s well past the customary butchering age of 3 to 6 months.

“His body can barely support his weight now,” Cook said. “He’s a hot mess, full of tumors and growths. I don’t eat meat — we live an entirely plant-based life — but even for people who do, Willy is an example of what you get from factory farms, how unnatural it really is.”

The couple has been noodling a move for some time.

Space for the creatures in their “custody,” as Cook puts it — 19 horses, donkeys and mules alone — has grown tight but expanding in pricey Southern California was beyond their budget. On top of that, wildfires have forced them to evacuate three times in as many years, an exhausting scramble.

“We’re not like some family with a golden retriever,” she said.

Cook was featured in a 2019 episode of Hearts of Heroes, returning to Malibu with a trailer to save other people’s animals — including a 150-pound tortoise — while the tinderbox burned all around.

“It gets to where you start feeling anxious just smelling your neighbor’s barbecue,” she said.

So they turned their eyes toward the Eastern Shore, where her parents relocated years ago. Selling pretty much everything out west, they bought a 115-acre farm parcel on the bayside about 10 miles north of Cape Charles, where her mother, Dora Sullivan, once served as mayor.

A GoFundMe has so far raised $126,000 toward building barns and fencing.

Cook said she’s grateful, excited about having room for more animals and an educational component for the public that focuses on conservation and compassionate choices. She’s also relieved that she’ll no longer be “only making it home to attend family funerals. That’s not OK with me anymore.”

As for getting here, “the logistics are mind-blowing,” her husband said.

Hurdles included hoops with the U.S. Department of Agriculture — each animal needed approval to cross all those state lines — and mapping out exactly where to lay over each night.

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They’re aiming for horse farms along the route — places that offer overnight boarding — where the whole gang will be unloaded, checked and tended to.

There are eight daily medications just for One-Eyed Willy, who won’t swallow his pills unless they’re hidden in a banana.

Cook, her kids and the caravan plan to head out Saturday morning. Her husband left Wednesday with five dogs packed in the family car, sleeping at rest stops because “I don’t know any hotel that would accommodate us,” he said.

Reached on his cell Friday, he’d just hit Virginia, savoring the cool green of a spring morning after the long, dusty road.

When asked about their Noah’s Ark-type endeavor, he chuckled.

“That’s been our running joke for months. I kept saying, we should just buy a big ship and sail there.”

Otto the lamb's leg was broken in three places from abuse, an injury that took three surgeries to correct. He's now a resident of The Little Farm Rescue & Sanctuary, which is moving from California to Machipongo on Virginia's Eastern Shore in May 2021.

Joanne Kimberlin, 757-446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com