The first animal I met when I arrived was Herbie the tapir. He was a huge love, but hated being locked up. His enclosure was fairly large but completely barren because he had long ago stripped it of plants and they weren’t replaced, aside from the patuju leaves he was given to eat at each meal. His life centered around mealtimes and planning his escapes. In our first week there, he escaped three or four times. Each time, he was found happily roaming around and herded back home by a large group of people using bribery in the form of bananas. He loved getting visitors and would lick us constantly with his huge tapir tongue, but was visibly miserable most of the time. One of his escapes entailed using his immense weight to push over the fence and jump into the lake on the other side. He happily swam around, completely oblivious to the petrified cat on a leash whose territory he had entered. I only heard about this later, but it was apparently quite the entertaining but frightening scene – the cat fled from the person walking her, and the goofy tapir joyfully frolicked in the water. Puma and tapir were both caught and returned to their enclosures and a resolution was made to repair Herbie’s house.
But he escaped again the next morning and was escorted down to the large enclosure we had in quarantine. Poor guy did not want to enter but was lured in with his beloved bananas and the door was padlocked shut, leaving a despondent tapir inside. Herbie’s care was passed on to us in quarantine because of the nature of the area. But it still did not make sense to have him in an area reserved for the new and sick animals (though many of our animals didn’t even fall into this category) so it was just a whole contradictory mess. This enclosure was smaller than his original area, which was slowly being repaired, but he was at least kept occupied by eating all the plants. It had been an aviary was so adorned with lush vegetation. We watched each day as plants were devoured and trees knocked down and the jungle turned into a desert. Herbie seemed much content in this enclosure, as shown by his actually lying down to rest in his bed rather than constantly pacing. Yet he still wanted to get out, frequently jumping up on the fencing and extending his trunk up high, making a huge clatter as he banged around. In cages on the other side of the fence were most of our quarantine animals, including two small monkeys who were especially frightened of the new arrival.
It was not a good situation and we were relieved when a week later Herbie was finally escorted back to his original enclosure. I didn’t see him there, but I’m sure he was not happy to be back. We had quite a few discussions with the higher ups about ways to better things for Herbie, including taking him on walks, widening his enclosure to include a lake, or best of all, letting him free, but all we got in response were excuses – he was too stubborn to walk on a leash, he would disturb the cats if he was out, the lake belonged to the cat, etc. Although fairly domesticated, Herbie was still plenty capable of finding food and surviving on his own. He was such a sweet animal and I loved spending time with him, but it was so sad to see his stress and misery rather than the carefree attitude he showed during his rare moments of joy.
When Herbie was moved to the large aviary in quarantine, Chichi Richi the macaw was living there, and despite our protests, they were locked up together for the night. Chichi Richi was obviously aghast and spent the night squawking in fear and hiding at the top of her enclosure. Herbie was a gentle giant, but all that she knew was there was a giant in her house and that wasn’t okay. In the morning we moved the poor bird into a small cage in old quarantine where she had to stay for several days. We had been working already on repairing one of the aviaries in main camp so that we could move her there, but we still had a lot of work to do. After hours of patching up holes and weak areas on the ceilings and walls and securing the fencing to the ground, we cleared out the enclosure with the help of the house animal crew and they prepared it for their new addition. As I was working on the fence, one of the (nameless) macaws on the other side followed me closely to the point where I had to be careful not to grab his feathers with my fliers. He always wore a very curious expression, and bent his head down for me to scratch him through the fence. When I went in to visit him, he immediately climbed up on my arm and wouldn’t let me leave, jumping back up the moment I would attempt to put him down.
It was really rewarding watching Chichi’s joyous reaction when we released her into her new home after being traumatized by a tapir and then locked in a strange small enclosure. She had lived with some of the other macaws previously but with her dominance and aggression, stressed them out to the point of feather picking and not eating, so was moved to quarantine. Her new aviary bordered that of the other macaws and surprise, surprise, there were constant threats exchanged across the fence and the two males on the other side began fighting with each other, feather picking, and not eating. Tessa worked in house animals and after a lot of pushing, was given the resources to put a tarp up between the aviaries to reduce some of the macaws’ stress.
Chichi Richi didn’t used to be so aggressive and bad with other birds and people, apparently. She had been paired with Lorenzo, another blue and gold macaw, but Lorenzo fell in love with Sarah, one of the volunteers who runs the park. Lorenzo was allowed to roam freely, and Chichi Richi was locked up on her own, where she developed a resentment towards other brown-haired females and lost her ability to get along with other birds. Lorenzo was a very attractive and talkative macaw who spent his time around main camp following Sarah around but biting anybody else who came up to him. He was pretty funny to watch as he hung upside down from a clothesline but then decided it was more fun to chew on the socks hanging next to him.
He also kept us entertained with his constant chattering, repeatedly shouting hola into the kitchen during mealtimes or when someone walked by him. Tessa fed him daily and he started to follow her around a bit, but the rest of us had to keep our distance from him because he certainly wasn’t the friendliest. Though there was one odd afternoon where he climbed onto my arm and acted friendly for a moment, but then gave me the evil eye and I got Tessa to quickly move him away from me; macaw bites are no fun. People frequently took out one of the house animals to sit on the bench with them. Gordo, a green parrot, couldn’t fly but loved to hang out with people. He was quite the chatterbox as well with the constant ‘Gordo’, ‘hola’, and a lengthy jumbled phrase that I could never make out the words out.
He would lift his wings on command to show off his gorgeous features, and was usually quite friendly. I did get a nice bite on my thumb, though, when I reached out my arm for him to step up but he wanted to sit on someone else’s shoulder instead. Another sad case in house animals was Rudolpho the deer. I went in to visit him on my first day and he gave me a full bath, loving the salt on my skin. He seemed very happy and friendly that day, but I later learned otherwise. He had previously lived with Bambi, another deer who had been Herbie’s best friend, but had mauled her to death with his horns. Since then, he had been on his own and not given much attention or care because people no longer liked him. His enclosure shared a fence with Herbie’s and there were gaps in the fence, so he sometimes moved back and forth, at least getting some company from Herbie. I only heard stories of this from Tessa, but apparently he got pretty beat up by the fence one day and was covered in lacerations. We talked to the vets about it, but nothing was done and the poor guy took a long time to heal, partly because he wasn’t receiving adequate nutrition and clearly needed a salt lick.
In house animals were also a hoard of flying green parrots, three toucans, an aviary with several calm birds who couldn’t fly, four chanchos (wild pigs/peccaries) who ate our kitchen scraps, and two adorable pios (ostrich-like animals) named Matt and Damon. One night I put the pios to bed, which entailed herding the unwilling creatures into their shed – I got up behind one of them and used all my weight to push him in the right direction as he looked back and hissed at me like a goose. They were put in their house to keep warm and be safe from predators, though I never understood why they couldn’t just go into their shed when they wanted to, or why they were even there in the first place.
Aside from my quarantine creatures, the other animal I interacted with was Lazy Cat the ocelot. Since we didn’t work with cats, we were given a half day walk along with a cat. Lazy Cat definitely lived up to her name and didn’t want to leave her enclosure. Her walker attached herself to Lazy using a system of ropes and carabineers and tried to let Lazy lead the way, but that was hard when all she wanted to do was eat frogs or nap in the sun. At one point, she ran a bit along her trail, but mostly just lazed along and stretched out like a big house cat.
She also had the attitude of a house cat – she was very domesticated but moody and only did what she wanted to do. She crawled into my lap at one point wanting to be stroked, but quickly got mouthy and I had to stand up. She enjoyed chewing on arm hair, so I allowed her to trim mine for a bit until she got overly playful and started batting at my arms. The cats get fed once a day so after her afternoon walk, we wrapped chunks of meat in patuju leaves and hid them throughout her enclosure. We then stepped outside and watched her bounce around and find her treasures, climbing up posts and along platforms to reach her precious meal. It was a very cool experience to walk with her, but also felt a lot like I was just with a gorgeous large house cat on a leash. More on my take of the walking and keeping of wild cats later. That’s all for now – next up, quarantine animals.
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