Thank You- School Donations!

A HUGE Thank You to many Schools who have helped us with Fund Raising!

First I would like to thank the Roots and Shoots program in Shanghi China, Pinghe International School for their kind donation towards building a nice habitat for Issy the Spider Monkey...we are closer to our goal because of their efforts. They painted these tote bags before Christmas and sold them!

Thanks so much! I am using my Owl bag now and everywhere I go people ask me about it!!

Lincoln School here in Costa Rica, has been a great support! They have attended our educational programs and also collected newspapers, and donations. In Feb. for Valentines Day the first graders purchased nuts for all the parrots, and made these cute boxes decorated for the birds filled with nuts. It's such a joy to see the children so excited and enthused about our program! Plus, some of the other classes are signed up to attend.


Java our cockatoo LOVED the boxes!

Last year two teachers from Whitney M Young Magnet High School in Chicago came to visit The Toucan Rescue Ranch, they went home and started the first Skype program with students! We were able to speak with the students, show some of our animals and answer questions all via Skype. The classes went on to do some fund raising and also sent us a generous gift, towards the enclosure for Issy.

Thanks also to several of our Bed and Breakfast Clients for their kind donations, tours and also Cornerstone Builders in Atlanta, the Doyle Family and Di Lorenzo Family.

In other news it's breeding season and one of the little Emerald Toucanets gave us a huge scare the other day when we thought she might be egg bound...well later that night she laid this huge egg,

So we carefully transfered it back to the nest log and she seems to be fine!

The female Mottled owl has been laying eggs, I put one under a brooding hen and the hen cracked it. So, now with this egg I am going to try the incubator, but I really think they are not fertile since both her partners are lacking wings...I will keep you posted!

Little Georgie is finally weaned from milk but not his fingers!

Tico Times Article! Quilla is famous!

Quilla is a famous porcupine! She made the front cover of The Tico Times! They came to visit and spend an afternoon with us and wrote a wonderful article about the work that we are doing with the Rescue Program and the Bed and Breakfast it was so much fun to see the article and receive the huge surprise that Quilla was on the cover! We have had many calls and e-mails as a result of the article, so we are very pleased.

Indoor Rainforest at the California Academy of Sciences.

A few days after the article came out we were scheduled to be in San Francisco for my father's 80th Birthday party! We had a very nice family reunion and although the weather was cold and raining, made the rounds to all the famous restaurants and had a great time. We even were able to tour the California Academy of Sciences, where my mother is a docent and see their indoor rainforest and large aquariums.

One of the highlights of the SF trip was to schedule an extra day to finally meet Jenny Papka and her friend who run Native Bird Connections nativebirds.org in Walnut Creek. Jenny has been helping me with the owls for several years now and we finally met! It was great to see the birds in their care, the set up, how they are organized, the enclosures and tour the property! She does an incredible job with all the animals, and conducts great educational programs...she even has a few snakes she uses in the programs. Very brave!

We are so appreciative of her help with our owls...there are days I am e-mailing her morning and afternoon reports when a new owl comes into our program. Below are some of the lovely creatures she is caring for. We cannot decide on any favorite, they are all beautiful!

On our way home we stoped by The Dallas World Aquarium and Zoo. They also have been great help and I am frequently calling or e-mailing their veterinarian. They have helped me with baby toucans, diets and even my dogs! Their toucan collection is probably the largest in the world. They are constantly expanding and have an incredible collection of birds, fish and animals! Below are some
highlights of the very quick layover in Dallas.

Baby penguin born at the aquarium, baby monkey and a jaguar enjoying an ice block of frozen fish!



Back home now...I really missed everyone! It's a sunny day, all the birds are outside and the aracaris are bathing. I took a few minutes to walk down to our creek to see if I could find the little pygmy owl I had seen before I left, and sure enough he was there, with a mate!! I found two holes in logs where they might be nesting....so, I will have to keep a close watch on them...of course I am hoping that one of these owls is the little one I released a few months ago.

Aracaris bathing!

Jou Jou keeps growing!

Update!

Una is doing really well, it's hard to tell from this photo, but she now has many more feathers and her green is brighter! She talks non stop and the vet. has fallen in love with her, so she has found a good home with them!

The other day we were at the farm, the water apples were fruiting and everyone loves them! The tree was full of toucans, chachalacas, and next door were the monkeys! It was great fun to watch, and we collected up a bunch to bring home to our toucans here!

New Arrival! A very nice chesnut mandible toucan showed up in the patio of this nice family, who took her in and fed her. They called Minae and I went to pick her up. She is totally socialized, and is the first toucan that I have received in fairly good health! She probably was someone's pet and she escaped and was lost. She is adjusting well and seems to like the other birds, so we will integrate her into a flight soon.

Lin Loves the River...it was very hot at the farm!!

We also cut up a log that had fallen down to bring back home to make nest logs for the toucans.

These are the collared aracaris that were sitting up in my tree all day visiting our crew!

Three Toed Sloth at farm needed some help!

We have been so very busy here at The Toucan Rescue Ranch with our animals, guests, tours and volunteers! That I was in real need of a bit of a break, so I escaped to the farm for the day.

I was excited to see Karla and Lin our farm dogs, and take a nice walk in the forest with them. There were lots of different birds, parrots, oropendulas, 4 different woodpeckers and it was not that hot, so I was enjoying myself. I crossed both streams, and up to the corner of the property line when I came across this young Three Toed Sloth who needed a bit of help! She had climbed up the post of the wire fence and was just realizing she was in trouble when I arrived. I really did not want to touch her and upset her, so I "coached" her from the other side of the fence, I was laying in the mud, getting eaten by mosquitos and talking to her so that she would know that I was there and move away.....ever so slowly.

Once she made it off the wires, and under the fence she took a nice little siesta. You can see her relaxing here. She was so green from all the algae growing on her fur, and she was covered with moths! You can see one on her head in this photo. It was very tempting to start to pick them off, but such is nature. The moths live in the fur and eat the algae.

I had so much fun just sitting with her for quite some time, before she woke up again and decided with my encouragement to get moving and find a tree to climb, ever so slowly she started to walk towards the trees, selected one and climbed up on her way again.

Smiling and happy to be off again after a nice rest. Funny how she just happened to be in that spot the other day right when I was there...it made my day!

In other news...Jorge rescued some baby chicks today from the chicken factory, and a Great Curassow the other day...we had some great volunteers for 10 days, Jou Jou is finally spending her lively nights out on the porch in a large cage, she is doing great, and today we had 3 visiting Collared Aracaris here at our main house...which is very strange...I have a call into my biologist friend to ask him about these birds coming into this area...global warming, weird weather, changing patterns?

So, I will post again soon with some photos!

Meet the Dogs!

Rubita, Whitney, Shasta, Gypsy

When I first moved to Costa Rica, 8 years ago, I moved with 10 birds and 3 Shelties, Rubita, Whitney and Shasta. After several months of everyone telling me I needed some large watch dogs, we decided on the Dobermans! Gypsy, the red one in this photo, and Magic, the black one below! Recently we had a girls bath day, so the Shelties were all clean and we all hung out on my bed together...great fun for them, since they are usually outside!!

Gypsy and Magic are both Costa Rican champs, and we are very proud of them! They are the best watch dogs and think they are lap dogs like mini pincher's! The shelties are great because they are also great watchdogs and advise if anything is different in the yard or with the animals. The shelties love playing Frisbee.


Magic having fun!
After so many folks asked us for Doberman babies, we finally had 10 puppies! We sold most of them, but kept two males...(a big mistake) but we love them! Aragon, who is below sleeping, and Ace the black one. Since we now have three males, we had to get the puppies fixed, and this has been better, but they still fight every now and then! Aragon is so full of energy he is tall and thin, and on high energy food still!

Aragon sleeping....finally, he is sooo active! Ace, posing beautifully, he is so handsome!


Now, I just want to tell you a bit of the trials of having dogs in Costa Rica. Anything that has contact with the ground here gets parasites...so heart guard, parasite pills, injections and Frontline for fleas etc are a must every couple of months. For me this was all new coming from Nevada where the weather is so dry we never had fleas or parasites. We have to alter the meds to cover different parasites, so it can be complicated, I have a calendar. The other problem are toads. Up near the rain forest where we live, and actually in most parts of Costa Rica, the toads are poisonous. They hop into the yard, the dogs play with them and get squirted with a liquid. Just two days ago I looked out the kitchen window and Aragon was foaming tons from his mouth, like if someone squirted shaving cream in his mouth and all over the yard....Toad I scream, and go running out. We have the drill down, grab the dog, get help with tons of water for flushing out. Flashlight to check the pupils of the eyes for response...salt to make them vomit if really bad, and in the medicine cabinet an injection of Atropine if they start to go into shock.

Fortunately Aragon cleared up with the tons of flushing that we did :)





Now on to the farm dogs! Meet Lin and Karla. When we bought the farm, the man who sold it to us left behind Karla...of course he did not tell us that he was "giving" her to us...she just appeared at the property and had been sleeping with the cows. About two weeks later Lin showed up and he had marks around his neck from a chain, and they obviously knew each other and were happy to be together again...so Lin also became part of the family. Lin was so shy at first that we could not touch him, now he is a total lap dog! They came to us with tons of parasites, outside and inside. They each had around 15-18 bot fly larvae in their skin, creating ulcers where the worms were embedded.
I took my vet Janet to the farm and we did field surgery on Karla to fix her on top of a rickety old table with a sheet in the back yard of the property. I assisted. Then while she was out we proceeded to get out all the worms. Lin tolerated us helping him and we did not have to put him to sleep for the procedure, he was already castrated. I heard a horrible story of Lin's castration that I will not repeat, just to say that no wonder he hates some of the towns folk.

These dogs are totally free roaming and have never been totally kept inside, so we made the difficult decision to leave them free. We have a neighbor who looks after them and who feeds them for us.

One afternoon, about a year ago, we got a panicked call from our friend at the farm saying that Lin had been hurt and was very bad. Jorge jumped in the pick up, drove an hour over the mountain to the farm to pick him up and came home very upset. We had the vet come up to the house and we were ready to receive Lin. We were told that Lin had a bad habit of chasing motorcycles, and that earlier in the day he chased a guy, and the guy took out a machete and hit Lin with it. His intent was to kill Lin. As you can see from the photo, this is after a couple of weeks of healing. He had a cut from his eye to his nose, had lost tons of blood and was in very bad shape. Fortunately he is a quick healer and we kept everything really clean, and now as you can see in the first photo, he just has a small line down the front of his face. He has several machete marks on him..(he had been abused before we came to us). We have kept him fenced in and tried to do some training with him to not chase people and he is better.

I have a wonderful friend who donates dog food for Karla and Lin!! We always welcome food, and heart guard donations for the 9 dogs in our care!!
The good news is that now in Costa Rica we have an Animal Protection Society!! They have sent us letters that we posted all over town stating that it is a criminal act to abuse dogs or animals and now there are laws protecting the animals...Yeah!!!
When we go to the farm they are our constant companions, they love the cattle, take care of them for us and love to swim in the river and run free. Hopefully they will do so for many years to come!

Whew! We Survived!

We Survived Christmas and New Years! I had a bit of fun on Christmas eve that lasted for about 1 min. before Jou-Jou and Georgie wisely pulled these hats off!!

Every time the holidays come around, I take a huge deep breath and wonder how we will manage without our helpers for a few days, all the company, endless" bombs" and tons of fireworks!!

I am happy to report no casualties and we did just fine. We had folks here in the Bed and Breakfast non-stop and many people in for tours!!! It was exhausting and fun.

Then came the Costa Rican Family Christmas Party.....

40 Relatives (Jorge comes from a family of 10 brothers and sisters) came to visit from 10am to midnight! Fortunately I was up early to care for the animals and the sisters take over the kitchen and do all their food preparations and I did not have to make anything!

So, for those of you that have never experienced this type of affair, here goes:

Pork Chicharrones, Jorge's famous recipe Chef Rodrigo dancing with his spoon!

I am a vegetarian: Pork chicharrones are the highlight of Christmas, huge chunks of pork meat deep fried outside on an open fire. Tons of Tamales (also pork) wrapped in banana leaves, more food than you can imagine, that is all eaten! Music, dancing, Bingo, Piñata, more dancing, drinking, story telling, crying, more food and it's midnight! Whew!!

Bingo and Dancing!

The outside birds did well with all the fireworks from all over the valley this year, I am happy to report that none of them went flying into the cages with night- frights and all was well.

On a sad note, Christmas eve I had to call the vet in an emergency because Minae showed up at our gate with a juvenile Tamandua, ant eater that had been attacked by a dog...but within the hour she had died of internal injuries. Then a few days later we had reports of a young white faced monkey needing a home, but the people that found her never called back, so we are not sure what happened.

Finally, it has been misty raining here for days, but the good news is that we had some real birders in the Bed and Breakfast from Germany, and they were so happy because in the rain the birds come to the feeders, so they sat for 4 days on my porch with binocs and bird book in hand to see these beautiful Mot Mots that came every day, along with a whole variety. This year the birding in Costa Rica has been great.

Update!

Here is our update!

The Amazon parrot has a new name, Una, one of the students from Whitney Young School in Chicago is doing a science project on parrots, so she named her, because she said "she's the One!"

Una is still living at the vets office. She has had parasite tests and fortunately these turned out negative, so that is good news. She still has not had x-rays or blood work yet because of the state of the air sacs, so we are waiting to see if we can actually perform these tests! Her feathers are coming in and she is finally eating more variety of foods in her diet, so progress is good.

Little Jou-Jou the Kinkajou is sleeping all day, like the nocturnal creature she is, and eating well at night and running around the house and following me everywhere. She is still very skinny, but overall she is improving, she has increased her weight a bit, and the sores on her feet are now healed and she is much more energetic! She is also accepting goats milk and pedialyte which is good for her development. Yesterday morning, I put her on the sloth perch so that she could do her morning necessities, and start to use her prehensile tail, and I walked into my bedroom for a few minutes. When I came out, I noticed our huge Doberman Magic sitting up from his bed...(yes, they sleep inside, ) and I thought that was strange, it was very early...so I looked down and there was Jou-Jou trying to climb up on Magic's bed! Thank Goodness Magic is such a great dog and used to the animals, he has never harmed any of them! And so now of course, I keep a much closer eye on Jou-Jou when she is awake! I also wake her up and take her for a walk outside daily, and let her practice her climbing!

The weather has been horrible for about 2 weeks, wind, very cold (for here) and misting alternating with heavy rains. Most of the pet birds have not been able to go out, or the sloths. We took advantage of this to put up new perches in the outdoor flights and we re-perched the sloth play tree as well. One evening it was nice enough to bring Millie out and as you can see, she approves of the new branches on the perch.

We have been having fun watching the progress of these two hummingbird babies in a tall tree by our house. They are Rufous-tailed hummingbirds and have progressed well and are getting larger every day! The other night it was very windy and wet and we noticed at dusk that the mother had not come back to sleep on top of the babies, so we were very concerned. I climbed up on a tall ladder to check on them and they were fine, so we decided to leave them there and make sure Mom returned in the morning to feed them. The book states that mother's feed the babies every twenty minutes...so I put my raincoat on the next morning and sat out there with my binocs waiting... I must of just missed her, because I had to wait the full 20 min. and sure enough there she was, flew in to feed and back out again! We figured out that the babies are now large enough that the mother does not fit in the nest with them!

Hummingbird nests are incredible, made out of lichens, moss and spider webs, so that they are elastic and expand with the growing babies.

Lastly, as many of you know, we have written a book all about Millie and her rescue, "Millie the two-toed sloth" this is available on Amazon.com...so please keep this in mind for the holidays! I recently found these great stuffed animals to go with the book, the macaw, toucan and sloth!! So if you are interested in purchasing one of these to give with the book please e-mail me and I can send you the details!

leslieparrot@yahoo.com

I know that several of you readers are indeed Dog People! We have 9 dogs, 4 Dobermans, 3 Shelties and 2 adopted mutt farm dogs...I have been thinking about blogging a bit about the challenges of the farm dogs and our dogs here, let me know if this is a blog you would be interested in! Thanks!

Happy Holidays!