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The Osa Wildlife Sanctuary has been permanently closed to the public.
Two spider monkeys in a green chair, one facing the camera, the other facing ocean water

Sweetie and Poppy go down to the beach everyday right around tour time. They miss the tours.

White dog with piece of white bread on face, with holes cut out for nose and eyes

“Pure Bread Dog”

Dear Friends of the Sanctuary,

These are trying times, we are all doing what is necessary to get through COVID-19 as quickly and safely as possible. I have seen many pictures and videos of what people are doing during this time of quarantine. It lightens my heart to see the ingenious ideas for making great jokes and puns. Have you seen the “purebred dog”? A little levity for the day never hurt anyone.

I find that I look forward to these homemade jokes, and videos to help me through the day. Which brings me to thinking that maybe our friends would like to see what and how we are doing during the time of quarantine.

As has many other people, I have started baking bread. I am perfecting an oil free whole wheat.

Quarantine…

Three of our employees have family living on the coast. They have moved their entire families out to their parents house quarantining with them. Luis, goes to town once a week for supplies and a family member goes along to purchase their personal needs for the week. Coming back from town one day I noticed grocery bags with names of our neighbors. I felt honored that the Foundation is helping our neighbors in some small way. Even if it is only saving them a trip to town.

Charlie lives inland with his parents during his time off, but he chose to stay with his animals. He is weathering the virus at the Sanctuary.

If we can help in any way with your home schooling projects, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We have a plethora of animals facts and pictures to help make a lesson interesting.

Environmental Enrichment…

Environmental Enrichment is an animal husbandry principle that seeks to enhance the quality of captive animal care by identifying and providing the environmental stimuli necessary for optimal psychological and physiological well-being.

Two young men look into the camera with a table of enrichment in front of them

Chan and Luis have been busy being creative developing enrichment…

Two young women hold half a coconut shell as they string chains through it, surrounded by jungle.

Marisol with intern Debo, creating a coconut wind-chime for the birds

Tito, Camila and Sofia, the capuchins, love the pineapple tops stuffed with peanuts and raisins and slathered with peanut butter.

Two capuchins look to a pineapple head, one reaching for it.

Tito and Camila

Capuchin holds pineapple head and licks fingers

Sofia

We actually stuff the capuchins food into these PVC tubes. They are drilled with holes to be able to put sticks through them to hold various large pieces of fruit. They have to pull the sticks for the food to fall down to the larger hole where they can pull the food out. This type of feeding is more to their natural foraging that would be done in the forest.

Capuchin stands on bamboo and manipulates hanging enrichment below her.
Capuchin sits on bamboo and manipulates hanging enrichment below her.

Lola, our resident ocelot gets her meat wrapped in banana leaves, we scatter them around the cage—Marisol calls them ‘tamales’. Lola is challenged to hunt for her food and to tear it apart.

6 small packages of meat wrapped in banana leaves in a metal bowl on a white background

“Tamales”

Ocelot sprawled on back on forest floor

Lola is exhausted after hunting for her food…

Collared Peccaries are primarily herbivorous, and have complex stomachs for digesting coarsely-chewed food. The castaña fruit is a sheer delight for the peccaries— like candy to a child.

Spiky green fruit broken open to reveal fibrous white insides

Castaña fruit

Two peccaries eating a castana fruit on the ground

Leno and Chanchito enjoying their treat

Sloth hangs upside down from fencing with head in metal bowl

You don’t need much to keep Big Gus happy

Charlie found a very venomous coral snake. He buried the head and gave the body to Boogie—enrichment of the best kind! Nothing is wasted at the Sanctuary.

Tayra stands over a dead red snake with black and yellow stripes

Boogie abandons an old shoe to eat a coral snake.

Marisol designed a very creative enrichment for Kinkers, the Kinkajou. One of Kinker’s favorite flowers are hibiscus and his favorite fruit is watermelon that is packed in the bamboo and drenched with honey.

Hanging bamboo tube with hibiscus flowers around the sides

Kinker’s enrichment hanging in his enclosure.

Kinkajou with a piece of watermelon

He found his watermelon.

From this…

Three featherless baby macaws in a blue container

All three in the nest box — December 26, 2019 — Navi had just hatched that day!

To this…

Young baby macaw with some feathers starting to sprout, flanked by parents

Two are still in the nest box — January 2020

PHOTO-2020-01-16-06-54-42

To this…

Three young macaws in a crate

All three in the nursery — February 2020

To this…

Four young macaws look to camera in a large flight enclosure

Inside the Flight Cage — March 2020

Four macaws in flight enclosure, one with wings outstretched and oriented towards camera

Ready to go

And then, we literally threw them to the wind…

Macaw flying off into the rainforest

Out and about being free flying macaws…

Two young macaws stand on bamboo bridge in rainforest, looking at camera

Flew by hoping for a snack

Three macaws and one red lored stand on branches in front of tray of seeds

Eating with the gang

Andrés Tello Atencio, DVM

Andres has been busy, as usual, but we have had some situations that required us to again meet half way. Phoebe Edge, director of Osa Ecology once again offered her house. It has a private dock with ample room to socially distance ourselves during our emergency situations.

Paco, one of our oldest scarlet macaws is suffering from a head injury. We’re not sure just exactly what happened, but we found him on the cage floor in the morning. He probably has a fracture in the occipital area of the skull. He is somewhat limited on his left side and we suspect he is blind in his left eye. We need to give him time.

Vet hovers over scarlet macaw on a table with woman in foreground holding a blanket
Scarlet macaw on the ground of a carrier, ruffled feathers
Vet injects the side of a scarlet macaw wrapped in a blanket

We have been treating an isolated sloth for warts. Andrés removed some for DNA to be able to have a vaccine produced.

One hand holds the foot of a sloth while the other begins to remove a wart with a small razor
One hand holds the foot of a sloth while the other begins to remove a wart with a small razor
Tayra under anesthesia on back with shaved lower stomach revealing a small cyst

Boogie under anesthesia

Boogie also had to have a cyst removed from her stomach. We were all worried that possibly tumors had returned.

We have been having a heck of a time trying to keep her away from her stitches. We cannot use a cone like you would with a domestic animal.

What great neighbors we have!!!

Our good neighbors to the east of us, Playa Cativo Luxury Eco Lodge stops by to give us their extra eggs and their organic greenery from their gardens. Poppy loves her green vegetables, and so do I!

Christy lives above Cañasa across the Golfo from us. She is always very generous with her variety of bananas and pineapples.

Back of a pickup truck filled with bananas and pineapples

Christy gave us a truckload of bananas and pineapples

Three adults stand in shallow water in front of a small boat, smiling at camera

Christy, our good neighbor

The capuchins get a new pool!

A small pool surrounded by plants in front of a capuchin looking down from a bamboo bridge
A worker stands behind a small pool

Babies, babies and more babies on the way!!!

Baby squirrel monkey in front of adult squirrel monkey at food bowl, side profile

Little Luz with her mother

Side profile of baby squirrel monkey at food bowl

Luz all on her own

Little Luz was born February 2, 2020. Just this last week she has started to get from her mother’s back to eat on her own. We have also observed her out in the trees looking for bugs right along with the rest of the troop. The troop is very diligent about keeping an eye on her, 50% of all newborns are lost within the first six months—August 2nd will be a red letter day!

Two spider monkeys, one with a baby on her back looking at the camera, and a squirrel monkey with a baby on her back, stand around a food tray

That’s little Rooney on top of Ripley’s back and Little Luz on Mama Titi’s back

Juvenile spider monkey looks down from behind a tree with jungle in background

Riley, our first spider monkey born in the wild is out with his dad most of the time now. He will be 3 in October.

Spider monkey with obvious stomach eating at a food bowl

We don’t have a ‘due date’, but we don’t think it will be too much longer for Rosie and baby #2…

Construction projects…

We stopped all construction projects until we have a positive cash flow again. What funds allocated for our special construction projects may need to be put into the food column. We are still able to keep the animal diets with high nutritional levels through a variety of fresh foods.

Before we stopped our construction projects, we bought enough bags of cement to keep our concrete worker, Oliver busy until the 3rd of April. He knows he will have a job to return to once we are back to being able to safely give tours.

A worker stands at the bow of the boat facing the camera while two others bring bags of concrete onto the beach

When building out here, you have to think outside the box. The concrete truck doesn’t pull up and pour concrete down the chute. We can buy only a few bags of cement at a time because of the weight. Look how we get our materials out to the Sanctuary and in land to the site.

A worker stands behind a half-finished concrete floor with jungle in the background

Oliver, our concrete finisher. He makes a very nice finish.

As you can see above, Oliver has completed half of his pour for the day. The cement is on top of the sand pile where water will be added and mixed with a shovel. He makes a very smooth finish.

Saving Chacho Update…

Side profile of the head of a dark spider monkey

Chacho – Photograph compliments of Oscar Redes of AKUMAL.

In our 2019 IN REVIEW newsletter, we talked about saving Chacho. Lisa and Larry asked me to join them again for one last observation of Chacho at his new home at Akumal Monkey Santuary. The Sanctuary is about an hour’s drive South of Cancun, Mexico.

The Sanctuary graciously opened their entire facilities to us. We were able to be a part of the staff helping with routine chores and go wherever we wanted. It didn’t take me long to know that Chacho was in the perfect place. The caring staff decided to put him in a cage with eleven juveniles that look adoringly at him as alpha. Alex appointed himself as Chacho’s lieutenant! We called Chacho the “benevolent alpha” as he is so calm and laid back with all that youthful and rambunctious energy surrounding him.

AKUMAL is an amazing Sanctuary. If you are ever in the area, it is a must see experience. We are all in the same boat of having to support our Sanctuaries without tourism, our main source of income. I know they are doing their best. I know that any donations sent their way would be put to good use and most appreciated.

Carol ran a marathon!!!

Two women walk along a road, one looking at the camera

Helen and I at mile 23

A woman in a pink shirt is sat in a chair on a lawn

Finished!!!

Carol here… Last June I decided to run a marathon to combine it with a fund raising project for a better electrical system at the Sanctuary.

I entered the Jekyll Island Marathon scheduled for January 19, 2020. This was my first marathon and I trained with a book titled THE NON-RUNNER’S MARATHON TRAINER by David A. Whitsett, Forrest A. Dolgener, et al. By the time I ran across the starting line I had already run over 600 miles in preparation to make a personal best.

My friend, Helen joined me at mile 23. She later told me she thought I needed some help, and I did. She told me of her childhood with her nannies and the last three miles passed by very easily. I ran at a snail’s pace, but I finished and I wasn’t the last either.

Our current events told me to hold off on a fundraising project and to just run the marathon again next year. I look forward to January 2021 and I will train again to be prepared to once again go to Jekyll Island and run the marathon. I’m shooting for a better time. Anyone interested in running with me? Come on down! They also have a 10K and a half-marathon race. It was a lot of fun!

Sweetie misses you…

Front view of a spider monkey with one arm up and the other arm across her body
Spider monkey with her hand under her chin

So do we…

We know times are hard for many. When times are good again, please don’t forget about your friends down here at the Sanctuary.

We are sure that we will emerge from this situation strengthened. We have not wavered from any of our commitments that has characterized us: prioritizing the safety, health, well being and excellent nutrition for all of the wildlife we have in our care.

Our successes like the four macaws out flying free are your successes, too, and we will need your help to keep them happening.

Pressing the PayPal icon below will allow you to make a tax deductible donation. If you prefer, you can donate by check made payable to OSA WILDLIFE SANCTUARY FOUNDATION, INC. and send too P.O. Box 171, Greenwood, IN 46142-0171

—————Please stay safe and virus free————–

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