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Sanctuary Stories
From Kill Pile to Piglets of Pride
At Woodstock Sanctuary, Marsha and Harvey get a chance to live at a place where they will inspire thousands to live more kindly
Before Marsha and Harvey became Marsha and Harvey, they were just two tiny, nameless piglets, doomed for death on what Rachel McCrystal describes as a “kill pile,” at an auction house in Pennsylvania. McCrystal is the executive director at Woodstock Sanctuary in New York State, where she and her team care for nearly 400 animals saved from the food industry (plus one llama), and host more visitors than any other single-location sanctuary in the country. It’s also where Harvey and Marsha are now, safe and sound.
Woodstock Sanctuary prides itself on having multiple missions, not only focusing on animal advocacy and promoting veganism, but also, as McCrystal says, “marching in alliance with other social justice movements.” This includes having a diverse board of directors, collecting food donations for people in need, and marching in Pride parades, “to do our little part to make this movement a little more inclusive,” she says. So when McCrystal got a call about those two little piglets, rescued on the first day of Pride month, June 1st, she knew exactly who they would become: Harvey Milk, after the first openly gay politician in the US, and Martha P. Johnson, the transgender rights and gay liberation activist.
“They were both runts of their litters. Both were under five pounds. Nobody wanted them because they wouldn’t be profitable, and so they just toss them on this pile.”
As McCrystal explains, “a kill pile is where they put all the animals who can’t sell at auction. It tends to be either sick animals, elderly animals,” or in the case of Marsha and Harvey, “they were both runts of…
