See incredible photos of a jail where inmates and abandoned animals find a second chance.
Mike Smith was out of jail for 10 days when he blacked out while drinking and was arrested alongside a busy street in Key West.
When he sobered up, he was back in jail. By his own admission, he was not surprised to be there. The blacking out had happened before.
"I’m done," Smith told himself. "If I don’t stop, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in prison."
He has no recollection of being arrested, half a block off Duval Street.
This time, Smith knew he would have to do a small stint before he could get a spot in a substance abuse program.
In the interim, he signed up to be a trustee at the jail, working on a farm that for the last two decades has become a corner of Monroe County where abandoned, abused, confiscated, and donated animals from around the country have found refuge behind razor wire.
It's a place where a miniature horse named Bam Bam grazes his days away on a pasture as men in orange jumpsuits muck stalls and make sure water dishes are brimming.
Snowflake the alpaca is shown here as inmate Michael Smith visits with Arabella at the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Animal Farm. All photos by Kim Raff, used with permission.
Inmate Orlando Gonzalez shows Boots the alligator to visitors during an open house day.
Curator Jeanne Selander holds Mo the sloth, the most well known animal at the farm.
Smith was amazed on his first day at the farm at the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Stock Island Detention Center.
"I figured it’d be just a couple of pigs, maybe," he said. "I didn’t know there was gonna be snakes and lizards and alligators and everything else."
21 years ago, out on the busy road that runs alongside the jail, a flock of ducks was losing its battle with traffic. In response to their dwindling numbers, a fence was erected, a pond put in, and a few picnic tables where the guards took breaks. But the sanctuary didn’t stay small for long. And as word spread through the "coconut telegraph" — the unofficial gossip tree that spans the Florida Keys — the jail’s animal population began to increase and diversify. There was a lot of need, and it turned out the jail was beginning to look like the place to fill it.
Attention-hound Misty, a Moluccan cockatoo, repeatedly says “I love you” to visitors.
Gonzalez crouches down with Fat Albert, who escaped from his owner's home and was found roaming a hotel parking lot before being brought to the farm.
Gonzalez and Smith clean out animal pens.
Curator Jeanne Selander — or Farmer Jeanne as she’s known — runs the farm with the trustees.
For the inmates, it’s a way to make daily escapes from the jail in order to feed and clean the animals and build their trust. Selander came to the farm almost 10 years ago with a background in marine biology. She was working for the Key West Aquarium with veterinarian Dr. Doug Mader when the job opened up, and he encouraged her to apply. She had a love for animals, but she’d never stepped foot in a jail and was apprehensive about working alongside inmates.
Selander and Mo visit with a crowd during an open house at the farm.
After landing the job, Selander, still unsure, visited the site with Mader as he did his rounds. "I thought, 'What a neat little place' and how much more could be done with it. After I saw how the [previous] farmer interacted with the inmates and that it was a safe environment, I thought, 'Yeah, I could do this.'"
On Selander’s first day, 25 animals were roaming around. Most of them were farm animals, and most were of the petting-zoo variety.
Gonzalez shows Boots to visitors during an open house.
Bam Bam grazes in an enclosure. He is blind in one eye and was abandoned on the side of a canal with five other horses in Homestead, Florida.
Smith cradles Thumper, a flemish giant rabbit, as Fat Albert waddles over, looking for attention.
