The latest news (04.09.15 – 18.09.15)
General information
We are running low on water again, luckily Douwe can pump up water, with the newly bought pump, so we will not be without drinking water. We are trying to save as much water as we can by doing the bodega dishes in the river and flush the toilet with river water.
Monkeys
Ramona, the baby woolly monkey’s health is not getting any better, neither worse. She does not eat as much as she is supposed to, and has only gained a tiny bit in the last two weeks. Ramona is now under care of mainly Olivia with some help of two permanent volunteers. She is not stable enough to be treated by too many hands. She is on a strict diet, and so far it seems to get her stabile. Now we hope her body starts to get the nutrients out of the food given. No medicine is given anymore.
Mica with Louie
Mica outside again
We released Mica (female capuchin), because the volunteer she followed has gone home. When she went out she almost immediately began to follow one female volunteer. We ignored her but that didn’t stop her from starting again, picking out a new victim. After two sleepless nights of her knocking on the walls of the volunteer house and kitchen we decided that we needed to put her back in again.
To be able to release Mica again we needed to try something different. So we gave her contraceptive injection to control her hormonal behavior. We released Mica two days after her injection, and so far she is doing fine. We will know after three months for sure if the contraceptive injection works. After three months contraceptive will not work anymore she might be looking for a partner again. Lets hope this time it will be Jordi ( male capuchin).
Mica is still taking good care of all the little ones (squirrel monkeys), carrying them on her back and giving them a lot of love.
Camilla (female squirrel monkey), who some months ago had epileptic attacks is doing great. She hasn’t got any attacks the last 3 months. She is always in the trees, playing with the other squirrel monkeys and still sometimes acts as the body guard of Olivia and Douwe.
Other mammals
Elmo eating
Elmo (male two-toed sloth), Rincay (male tapir) and Quintisha (female peccary) are all doing great. Rincay enjoys it when Willow (male woolly monkey) comes by and gives him an inspection on ticks. Elmo always gets lots of attention of everybody when he comes by.
Birds
The last two weeks the parakeets in the Igor cage (the newly build cage) are going out towards freedom more and more. There are only twelve parakeets left from the 215. We are hoping that the last ones didn’t get too used to life in a cage too much, and will go out soon. Outside there is now a lot more noise of parakeets flying around, so far they seem to do fine. We started using another outside feeding table, hanging in between the trees, so they can find at least some food, in case they still need to.
Pauki outside
Pauki the baby oropendola is growing quickly; we decided that it is time to train him for the outside life. We started training him in the cage where we would call him to come towards us for food, which he picked up very quick. After a few days it was time to go outside. This was very exciting because we didn’t know if he would follow or fly away. Luckily everything went as planned. We will continue the training, but of course the best thing would be if he will join a group of oropendolas that lives here in the area. But it will take some time to get him there, but Pauki is a smart one so we have good hopes.
baby bat feeding
We have a new arrival, a baby bat. Kayla was sitting in her classroom when she saw something small, black falling from the roof and she decided to have a look. The baby bat probably fell quite hard from such a distance, but luckily he was not harmed. We could determine it as an insectivore bat, but not the exact species. We will have to wait till he is fully grown and hope we have a photo of this species (as there are so many bat species in Southern America). He is under care of a few experienced volunteers because he’s so little so you could easily harm him. We feed him baby milk every three hours. With a tiny syringe so he doesn’t get too much milk at once. We’ll wait until he’s a bit older before we give him insects. And we hope that we can see by then what species he is so we can give him a more specific diet.
Reptiles
Pothos, the injured yellow-footed tortoise is doing fine, his wound is healing very well.
And he even gained a bit weight. He still has his own enclosure, we’ll hope that he can get back soon with the other nine tortoises in the reptile cage where he has a lot more space.
Construction
veterinary clinic in construction
Construction work is going great. The work at the clinic is advancing with so many volunteers at work. The hardest part of the construction is always the carrying. At the moment it is very hot and humid, so carrying sandbags (of about 25 kg), bricks, and cement (45 kg) is a tough job all the way from the port to the construction site (about 10 minutes) is not that easy. Bit by bit we are getting all the material over, and volunteers enjoy helping to build, laying bricks, measuring, sawing etc. etc. Here volunteers often have a change to learn a lot of new skills and find it often very exciting and enjoyable to see something being build up from scratch.
Volunteers
making pizza
Machiko and Geiler
Volunteers at Regalia
We did al lot of fun things with the group of volunteers. We went to the Regalia waterfall. The way there is just amazing as well as the waterfall itself. We needed to walk on some spots of the way because the water was just too low. We also had a night walk with Douwe and a forest walk with Machiko, both were a lot of fun. We organized a pizza night with the family and the volunteers and Douwe’s mother. We used the stone oven and the pizza’s where just delicious (thanks to our Italian volunteer Enrique). We enjoyed the rest of the night at the campfire.
