Every year at Yahoo, the founders (Jerry and David) buy a gift for all the employees. Jerry and David walk down the aisles and hand them out personally to many of the now 12,000 employees.

Usually it’s some kind of clothing item, but this year David showed up at my desk with an envelope. Inside was a “check” for $100 that I could give to any charity I wanted. Cool! Never do you have $100 that you can just give away without even wondering what you might have done with it yourself.

There are literally thousands of choices and I had no idea what to choose. I briefly considered The Human Fund. 🙂 The other night I was having dinner with my friend Tom and he mentioned that an acquaintance of his was involved with the Heifer Project.

Heifer? As in cows? Yup.

It’s actually pretty cool. They give animals to people in poor parts of the world that help them sustain themselves, kinda like teaching a man to fish… except the fish is a cow. Or a goat. Or a llama.

The catalog of animals you can buy is amusing. For my $100, I’m getting a flock of ducks ($20), a share of a llama ($20) and 3 rabbits ($60). The Heifers are a bit pricey at $500.

Personally, I hope they ship out some ducks from around here. Have you been to Redwood Shores or Oakland lately? These ducks and geese are make a total mess of things.

I wonder if, like sponsoring children in 3rd world countries, I’ll get letters from my mini-zoo. Probably not.