Quarantining At The Sanctuary

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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