Rainforest Presentation and Visiting Vets!

Once again Lincoln School first graders have been very involved with the Toucan Rescue Ranch.  They collected a truck load of old newspapers for us to use in our cages and they put on this tremendous Rainforest Production.  Unfortunately I could not load a video, but they told stories, sang songs and danced away to benefit the Toucan Rescue Ranch!!

The theater was packed, I attended with a toucan, an owl, Georgie the sloth and Twili the little baby sloth.  The teachers are incredible at Lincoln, so involved and truly supportive.

Thank you so much!!

We had a group of veterinarians visiting from Venezuela, and Minaet/Sinac asked if I could do a tour with emphasis on how to handle wild animals...so off we went enclosure by enclosure and demonstrated how to pick up a sloth if it is on the ground, how to pick up a porcupine etc.  It was great fun, and they were really very interested in our work!

We also received a call from the University Veterinary School of Heredia. They had a visiting vet from the states, Dr. Kay Backues, President American Association of Zoo Veterinarians who was visiting to give a course in Avian Medicine.  About 8 Costa Rican Vets and Dr. Kay came up to "practice" on our birds.  It was a great learning oportunity for me as well, and so incredible to see a true Avian specialist in action!

Necropsy Results on Sydney Sloth are in, she is the sloth that was found wrapped up in barbed wire, she died of a slow internal hemmorage.  It is always difficult when a rescue dies. We always ask our vet Janet to perform a necropsy so that we can learn and understand why they died.  In her case it is good to know and have an explanation.

Animal Updates Next!  New arrivals, difficult cases, and visitors: Jerry Jennings, toucan expert and Frank Todd, penguin expert! 

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!

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!

Introducing Gandhi-Mottled Owl

We have 11 Owls living here with us. Each is unique and has an interesting story to tell. Our most recent refugee is a Mottled Owl that was bought into my vets office with a very bad wing. Someone found him hanging in bobbed wired and his wing was severely eaten by some animal. No telling how long he had been hanging there, but fortunately they got him down and to the vets office. He was so weak when he arrived he was sitting on the bottom of the cage and I had to prop him up with a stuffed teddy bear. We started treatment right away with antibiotics and anti-inflammatory and lots and lots of fluids. He did really well and the second night got his appetite back and has responded well to our treatments. The wing did not appear to be broken, so we tried to give it a chance to survive...however after several days we realized that he had no feeling in the wing and it was drying up and needed to be amputated. So, off to the vets again for the surgery. He survived the surgery well and is making progress. We now have to set him up in a larger cage with several perches at different distances apart so that he can begin his physical therapy of hopping and learning to balance with just one wing. We named him Gandhi, he has such a peaceful demeanor.

We have another owl with similar history and so we now have a routine when this happens. Hopefully once he is doing better we can adapt him to the other Mottled owls and he can live with them and have some company. Socrates has only one wing and his wife Delphi, came in as a tiny baby.

I never envisioned myself taking care of owls, but after I gained the trust of our Fish and Wildlife officers, (first with parrots and toucans) whenever they would find any type of bird they would call me...so after hearing from several other sources..."no we don't take baby owls, they just die...or, no we don't want an owl with only one wing" I decided to learn all I could about owls. Fortunately I have help from a wonderful lady named Jenny Papka who rescues raptors in the states and she helps with every owl that comes in. Please help support her efforts as well. Check them out at http://www.nativebirds.org/ I am now known for caring for owls as well, but I can tell you that it is always with Jenny's help that these owls make it! Thanks Jenny!