1980s Music Star Visits Mays Landing's Funny Farm Rescue

"See the people walking down the street, Fall in line just watching all their feet...they're walking in time, They got the beat."

That Go-Go's classic from the '80s came to mind when I saw Laurie Zaleski's post on Facebook that Gina Schock, the drummer who kept the beat for the all-girl sensations, The Go-Go's back in the day, had stopped by Funny Farm Animal Rescue in Mays Landing with a friend to meet Laurie and see the animals.

Laurie must be getting used to the attention after touring parts of the country to promote her nationally popular memoir Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals.

Since her book was published, Laurie was featured in interviews with the Washington Post, New York Daily News, New York Post, and ABC News, got a four-page spread in People Magazine, and had Lesley Stahl, the CBS News newsmagazine 60 Minutes correspondent visit Funny Farm to record an interview for the TV show CBS Sunday Morning.

Wow! Laurie is a star.

Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals details Laurie’s life of keeping promises, fulfilling dreams, and rescuing every type of animal.

The memoir tells how Annie McNulty, Laurie's mom, fled from a nightmarish marriage with few skills, no money, or resources, dragging three kids behind her, and accumulating hundreds of cast-off animals on the way.

From that humble beginning, many animals have been given a second chance at life and found a good home at South Jersey's Funny Farm Rescue and Sanctuary.

The story, in a nutshell, is that Laurie's mom Annie had a dream to run an animal rescue. From girlhood, Laurie was determined to help make the dream come true.

Thirty years later as a successful businesswoman, she did it, buying a 15-acre farm in the Pinelands. She was planning to relocate her mom and her caravan of ragtag rescues―horses and goats, dogs and cats, chickens and pigs―when Annie died, just two weeks before moving day.

In her heartbreak, Laurie resolved to make her mother's dream her own. In 2001, she established the Funny Farm Animal Rescue. Today, she carries on Annie’s mission to save abused and neglected animals.

Congratulations to Laurie and her team on all this continued exposure to the good work at Mays Landing's Funny Farm Animal Rescue!