Please! We need your help!

R.I.P. Winkie…

With great sadness, we want to tell you that in early July, we lost Winkie to a puma that had been prowling in the area. We apologize for the delay in posting this. Our grief got in the way. Thank you for understanding.

Winkie had a love of fine clothing–none of which belonged to her. She was known to appear with her entire body shoved into one leg of a pair of shorts and her tail sticking out of the other leg. She favored the silky running shorts of the young volunteers, and she was not a good sport about returning them.

She is survived by her Caña Blanca troop members Sweetie, Poppy, Rosie and her niece, Riley, who has taken this hardest of all because Winkie was a doting auntie (much more so than Sweetie or Poppy). In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Osa Wildlife Sanctuary.

Friends of the Sanctuary,

Loss is an inevitable part of life at the sanctuary, but this was a personal tragedy for all of us. Riley could not be consoled. She whimpered for Winkie, who became her new sleep mate when Rosie began pulling away during the weaning process. A few days later, we saw Ripley descending from a tree with her five month old baby, Rooney. Since Winkie was no longer around to chase them away, Rosie and Riley ran towards them and into the trees for an exhausting play date. The troop is changing, and it seemed that things began calming down and looking up.

Then, just yesterday, Luis turned and saw that he was standing 30 feet from the same puma in the same general vicinity and at the same time of the day that Winkie was taken. Most distressing of all, our caretaker was once again on his day off! We must now be more vigilant than ever.

This is more than enough to fill a newsletter, but something else is happening: we are broke. Last night I dreamt that I was at the airport with a picture of Sweetie in one hand and a tin cup in the other.

Yes, it’s that bad.

The slow tourist season, a new 13% tax, and increased operational costs among other additional expenses have drained the Osa Wildlife Sanctuary (OWS) reserve funds to the
bare bones.

It’s been eight years since I’ve been forced to reach out to our sanctuary friends for special help, and those of you who know me know that I hate to grovel, but… do you remember the first moments when your boat pulled up to the sanctuary, and you stepped into our small piece of heaven? Gus, Boogie, Kinkers, and Lola—you saw our life saving work in action. Maybe you were lucky enough to meet Sweetie and some of her troop mates, too. On that day, you became a member of our OWS family, leaving with all those wonderful memories for the cost of only a $25 donation.

This year, please don’t wait for the holiday season to gift us. Make your tax deductible donation today by using the PayPal icon below or writing a check made payable to Osa Wildlife Sanctuary Foundation, Inc. and sending it to PO Box 171, Greenwood, Indiana 46142.

Good friends like you understand that successful conservation projects are long term and expensive. With your help we can get through these hard times. We’ve done it before, and we will do it again with a little help from our friends.

In friendship,

Carol A Patrick
President
Fundación Santuario Silvestre de Osa