English language - essay writing - the body of the essay

 I volunteered in a reptile rescue for about a year and I witnessed animal neglect multiple times, the owner of the rescue would leave the animals in boxes with no water or heating and would never clean out their tanks. If the animals were to get water, food or heating it would never be because of the owner, it would always be because of the volunteers.

We started by volunteering one day a week, and the day before the shop was closed. Nobody would go in and check on the animals, they weren’t fed or given fresh water on those days. Animals weren’t kept on the correct substrates, animals were sometimes able to escape from their enclosures and nobody would be able to search for them properly. The rescue was rarely tidy and rubbish, boxes of food and stacks of hay were always piled up in different areas.

When the owner went on holiday, he asked us to clean out the tanks and refresh the water bowls and feed the animals. On our first day we went upstairs to the mammal room and discovered a 16 foot long Burmese python had escaped by pushing the glass out. He was coiled around the legs of the animal cages. It took a long time, and another person, to get him out. We found a dead bird under fresh newspaper which didn’t make sense to us, we found a turtle loose in a box. We couldn’t understand how the turtle had escaped a glass tank so the only possible reason for the turtle being out, was someone had left it there. My mummy discovered an escaped lizard in the parrot enclosure but it was too small and quick to catch. There were mice running around upstairs too.

When the owner returned from holiday, after we had cleaned the entire rescue, he mentioned how the rescue had received a one thousand pound donation a few weeks previously. My mummy thought it was possible that he’s used this money for his holiday so we stopped helping out at the rescue. The animal neglect was making me really sad.