Another sloth release and a rollercoaster month!

The weather has been very strange this summer, one minute warm and normal for the time of year, another day raining like rainy season, misting, and the last several days horrible winds and rain. Very atypical. We received an early morning call from the head of Sinac/Minae...he was on his way to our house with a sloth that he had just rescued from someones house. The sloth was probably trying to get out of the storm as well, and ended up in this house. The sloth was basically fine, except for these lacerations on his face that we quickly attended to. Interesting to note that all the director had to do was drive another 10 min. up the hill to the ranger station and could of released the sloth there himself...but there are several circumstances: tecnically you are not allowed to release animals into a National Park, and second, he was being driven by the messenger in a small sedan, and the messenger had to get back to work. Minae has very few cars for rescues and use by their staff. So we decided to take him to the farm to release once the weather calmed down and we could make it over the mountain pass safely...so for two days he hung out in a tree close to our creek.


We decided to paint his toenails red so that we could try to identify him if we see him again at the farm. I went yesterday and could not find him...so he is happily back in the forest!

This is the 6th sloth we have RELEASED!!

Fortunately this one was very easy.

During the stormy days our at home sloths were all worked up as well, keeping me up all night, traveling from carrier to perching tree to couch and never wanting to settle down. They hate the wind. One night Milo was very upset in his kennel, so I finally moved him to the couch where he is most comfortable and I woke up the next morning to find he had hauled everything that was on the couch on top of him and was at the bottom of this bucket all covered up. Milo is due to be moving outside in the next month when his enclosure is built...so hopefully he will adapt!!

If you look very closely you can see a sloth nose sticking out under the yellow stuffed animal!

Whimsey our large male keel billed toucan that is the official greeter of The Toucan Rescue Ranch now has a wife! We put him in the larger enclosure (inside a small cage) to get to meet the 3 young keel billed toucans, and this one chose him!

It took us a couple of days to figure out which little one kept paying attention to him, and taking food out of his mouth that he was offering in a very flirty way, but we finally did and now they seem happy with each others company! Hopefully in a year or two, when she is older we will have little toucan babies that we can send to the release program. We have several pairs of toucans that seem very interested in the nest logs this year, so we are keeping our fingers crossed!

Jorge Corrales on the left, our biologist friend and Landon Jones on the right.

Speaking of Releases, we have made contact with Landon Jones, a PhD student from the University of Lousiana, Fulbright Grantee, who is in Costa Rica for 1 1/2 years studying Collared Aracaris and Toucans in Turrialba. He is putting radio transmitters (like a gps) on the backs of aracaris and tracking them. We are working together and he will be of great help with our future releases. We tried releasing this aracari, but sadly he did not make it and was predated by some mammal. The research team found him after being out for about 1 week. We were all very sad, we are all learning as we go, as no one has ever released toucans before...but we have learned a tremendous amount and will be making many changes for future releases. The good news is that we now have a way to track our birds and this is a HUGE component of our program that we are really looking forward to exploring.

Landon is also studying seed dispersal in toucans, and having our captive population here will help him take some valuable notes and we can help with his study. Very Exciting!!

Happy Birthday Elena! In the middle of all our guests, tours, animal happenings and daily life here at The Toucan Rescue Ranch we actually hosted our first Birthday party for our friends daughter. I have to tell you, I was exhausted and very nervous, especially when they showed up with balloons and a piñata, but Jorge was a champ and hung the piñata away from the animal cages and everyone had a very good time!

My wonderful Aunt and second cousin came to visit and help me out after my arm surgery (from the sloth bite). They had scheduled their trip for Sarah's my second cousins 16th birthday, and they ended up staying with us hardly getting out and helping with all the chores and babysitting the baby sloths since I was not feeling that great. We managed to escape one day and took them on our favorite day trip: Riverboat on the Sarapiqui river. We have made this trip twice now and each time we have seen different things. Lots of birds, monkeys, sloths and bats! Here are some photos from the trip.
We saw two different types of these small bats, amazing, they make formations on the bark of the trees and move around to ward off predators!

Adorable mother and baby three toed sloth at our farm.Amazon Kingfisher

Sarah helped me organize our photo collection of many of our Released animals! It's actually amazing how many animals we have released...I tend to focus more on the ones that are here, and their care, but folks always ask about Releases, so now we will have this posterboard of Releases, it turned out really very nice!

A very Special Thank You to the Lincoln School first graders! Their 4 classes came to visit and at Christmas time they did some very special fund raising and are donating enough money to build the Sloth Enclosure for Milo!!! Hurray!! Thank you soooooooo much!! We are so proud of their efforts. They are continuing their support with old newspaper collection, old towels and sheets and nuts, and we always need for the parrots!

So, this past month we have had our highs and lows, and I will end with a very sad low. This beautiful Tamandua arrived from Turrialba about a month ago. I am sparing you the other side of her face, as it had a horrilbe machete chop, all across the nose, up to her eye and nasal passage. She passed away the next day from a ruptured pancreas. Seems like someone had her in very bad conditions and with a horrible diet. We could of healed the external wound, but the internal ones we were not able to heal unfortunately. I had written to several vets in the states and I am thankful that each one wrote back with extensive information on their diets...and for that I am grateful and will be ready when and if we ever receive another one.

Thank you all for your continued support and for following our blog, please pass it along, post on Facebook and share our work!!

Here's to a Happy Spring!

In Loving Memory

A month ago in the nearby town of Santo Domingo a mother sloth wandered into a neighborhood with large trees and realized she was off course. Local children that sunday found the sloth and decided to have some "fun" with her and stoned the mother to death. A man was passing by and saw what the children had done, he saw the mother two toed sloth laying on the ground and on closer inspection found a little tiny baby sloth terrified, clinging to her dead mother.
She also had been hit in the eye, and her head was swollen. He wrapped her up in his shirt and took her home.

That night he tried to comfort her by feeding her some milk...not knowing how difficult baby sloths are to feed he tried his best. Unfortunately she probably swallowed wrong and some of that milk went into her lungs. Monday morning he started to call different zoos and rescue centers and was rejected time after time...he then called the Minaet office of Heredia and told them: "if you don't come pick up this baby I am calling in channel 7" the local news. Fortunately they had a car that was working that day, and had gasoline (which is always a problem)..they went to pick up the baby sloth, wrapping her in their shirts to keep her warm and drove the short distance to The Toucan Rescue Ranch to leave her in our care.

As many of you know, we have raised 3 sloths successfully, little Georgie only weighed 400grams when he came in. Our guests named the little one Lily, and she weighed only 250 grams. Quite a challenge, but I was up to the task. Goats milk, feedings every 3 hours around the clock, constant checking of temperature and our little one was coming along.
She was very difficult to feed at first, and took about a week to get the hang of sucking on the syringe. Our vet Janet came up and confirmed what I was hearing in her lungs...trouble. We both suspected it was from milk she had inhaled while with the kind man who tried to feed her. Cough syrup was now a staple on her milk menu. A bad bought of loose stools from the cows milk one day, many days inbetween, and finally she was normalizing her bodily functions.

By week two she was gaining weight, her swollen eye was healing, but with a large cataract leaving her blind in that eye...but she was doing really well. We all sighed from relief and were very hopeful....but the lungs continued.
Another trip up from the vet, and still the same reaction...strange sounds in the lungs, but other than that all was well.

Week three came around and she started to reject food, and not gain weight. She was fussing and lethargic. Then she would be back on track and another day down. By the end of the week, Janet and I were both concerned...she came up at 8pm to see her one night, and by the 2 am feeding little Lily had totally collapsed. Once again I called Janet to come up, which she did, and took her back to her clinic for IV fluids. Having a vet that will come up at all hours day or night is a blessing....but that morning Lily passed away.

When I first started rescuing animals it was very difficult when one would die and I would not want to do a necropsy, however since then and in this case especially a necropsy was exactly what we needed. Janet found out that Lily only had one lung that was functioning, maybe from pneumonia when she was born...not sure, but because of that, her heart was working overtime and since she was growing her heart could not keep up and she died of heart failure. Totally natural and nothing we could of done to prevent it. I could put all the pieces of the puzzle together and realize just what had happened to her and it all made sense, as difficult as it was to accept her death.

I had a large tour coming in that morning, and had to focus on the other animals. I used to take Lily on walks around the property all wrapped up in her blankets. I took the walk alone that day, and have been avoiding writing about this, until my friend encouraged me to write her story. We are working with Minaet education and possibly Lincoln school to do an educational program about sloths and wildlife in the local schools in Santo Domingo. This will be very valuable and hopefully educational for the children. Milo and Millie will be great ambassadors for their species.

I find comfort knowing that Lily died warm and loved, not on the cold forest floor, or by the stones that killed her mother. As I write I am sitting next to the young keel billed toucans who are constantly begging for my attention to feed them....I allow myself time to think and miss Lily, but the little toucans need to be fed, the adult toucan that has been ill needs to be checked, guests are arriving, the macaws need more perches in their cage, the sloths need to be fed, supplies need to be ordered for Isadora the monkey's cage and the circle of life goes on at the Toucan Rescue Ranch.

We are setting up a "Lily fund" in honor of her to start fund raising for our Sloth Enclosure, and education program. Donations can be made via Pay Pal on our website, http://www.toucanrescueranch.com/. I am very very happy to report that with all your kind donations we are ready to build Isadora the monkey her large habitat, and Jou-Jou the kinkajou her new palace. Thank you so much, from all of us here at The Toucan Rescue Ranch.

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!

Adopt Jou-Jou the Kinkajou!

About four days ago, a man that Jorge knows at the farm called us to say that he had found a baby Kinkajou on the ground several months ago. He took it home and was raising it, but that he needed help and wanted to see if we would accept the animal. We talked about it and said yes, that was fine. I expected the Kinkajou to be healthy, and getting bigger and I assumed that is why he wanted to give it up, since it was no longer a baby, nocturnal and can be a real handful. So, you will understand when I prepared a large kennel, and sent Jorge up to the highway to a drop off point so that he could receive it. About an hour before they were suppose to meet, the guy calls us and says, "the kinkajou is very sad, not doing well at all"
I called back to clarify and ask more questions, but that is all he could say.



Jorge took off to go pick up the Kinkajou, returned home with tears in his eyes and said, "Look at this, how can anyone have an animal in these conditions, call the vet immediately!" I took one look at the poor little animal and decided we had to get her out of that stupid crate as soon as possible, so Jorge went to get some large wire cutters and we cut her out. She was in shock, freezing cold, and biting her tail, as she did not know what she was doing. I called the vet and said, please hurry she is more dead than alive...

We got to work quickly, she was wet and horribly soiled, we dried her off in the sun, tried to give some hydrating fluids and she was not doing well at all. Heating pad, more fluids and warmth for about an hour and she finally looked up and the color started coming back to her skin. By then the vet showed up and did a good check on her. We have started antibiotics and now have a protocol for the Kinkajou...our first.

All through the day she would sleep and wake up and eat a little fruit and each time she was looking better, so the initial scare of immediate death was over, and I was greatly relieved. She even bit me at one point when I touched her feet. As you can see in the photos, she has sores all over her feet and tail, from the wet and dirty conditions that she was kept in, so we are also treating these!



Last night I woke up at 3am to check on her and she had not eaten, but when I held her she did eat some fruit and was hungry, so that was a good sign.

And as you can see this morning, she is hungry and looking at all her food options! Still sleeping lots, which is to be expected, as well as the fact that they are nocturnal, but overall has made great progress.

She is skin and bones, completely emaciated, so diet is going to be very important, not only for her development, but also for her fur....which is not soft, and lacking in spots. She should have a good solid coat of honey colored fur.



According to my Costa Rican mammal book, the word Kinkajou originated with indigenous people of Brazil. It is also know as a honey bear, and the Latin name, Potos Flavus meaning Yellow drinker.
They belong to the same family as the raccoon, have a prehensile tail and are arboreal.

So please "Adopt" little Jou-Jou for the holidays, we will send you a nice certificate, 5x7 photo and have regular updates on this blog about her! $100 donations can be made to pay pal, on the website, and e-mail me the address of who the Adoption Certificate should be made out to and sent!

A wonderful holiday gift, knowing that you are helping with her needs. Or if you have another animal in mind of course this would also be welcomed, you can "Adopt" one of the Sloths, Toucans, Parrots, Issy the spider monkey or Quilla the porcupine or one of the many owls!

I thought that maybe we would receive a phone call from the guy asking how she was doing, but he never called, just asked us to "save her" and I am happy to report that indeed she was saved, half an hour longer in that condition and she would of been gone for good. She decided to live and we are happy for her.

Thank you all for your support!

P.S. With the kind help of two friends of The Toucan Rescue Ranch, the amazon in the previous post is now having blood tests done and various other lab work to try and determine the cause of the air sac problems! She is currently living at the vets and everyone is falling in love with her since she is so friendly and talks non-stop! Thank you all for your support, it means the world to us and our animals!

5.9 Quake!

Friday night around 8:00pm I was sitting on the bed and it started to shake a bit, Jorge, my husband came into the room and I said "Earthquake!" He looked at me dubiously, then it got stronger and he said, quake! by then all the birds in the bird room were frantic, the whole house started to shake and we got up and opened the front door and it stopped! I ran into the pet bird room to calm them down, they were fine after a few minutes, a quick check of the sloth's revealed they did not even notice...of course, and then outside to the large flights where the toucans were frantic. It is a horrible sensation to stand there with a flashlight and try to get them to calm down when they are throwing themselves against the cages. We turned on outside lights and I went cage by cage, picking up stressed out birds and praying that come morning I was not going to find any dead. The key was to calm a group of four Swainson's toucans down because they were causing all the others to stress out. Mission accomplished I yelled to Jorge to turn off the lights. The macaws outside continued for a bit then finally settled down. I walked the whole property to check on the 11 owls and they all seemed to be fine.

The next morning as I lay in bed I listened for the familiar songs of all the birds and was relieved to hear the macaws screaming, and the toucans singing. A quick round at 5:30am revealed that everyone survived and seemed to be fine. "Gracias a Dios" Thank God, is what we say for everything here in Costa Rica!

Later in the day I noticed my little blind Rainbow lorikeet was not feeling well, not eating, so I reeled the cage inside and have her with heat and started antibiotics, just in case...I don't know if the stress from the quake affected her or falling in the cage from the startle. Today she is at least eating and looking a bit better.

My first year here in Costa Rica, years ago, we had a 5.5 quake in the night and one of the toucans was really stressed out. Several days after the quake he died of a very small hemorrhage that probably occurred when he hit the cage all stressed out from the quake....so one never forgets those horrible circumstances and of course tries to prevent them from ever occurring again.

In the wild the birds would just fly off into the tress I guess. Although I did not notice any wild birds flying around the other night. We did have 10 replicas all in the 2 and 4 range on the scale, so that is why the birds took time to settle down.

We have a new mealy Amazon parrot, who came in from the University Vet. School, will write about him soon! He is out on the porch screaming with the other 2 amazons...the noise, fun and stress never stops!

Sleepless in Costa Rica!

Meet Milo, he is a two year old rescued sloth who came to us extremely ill and had a long a difficult recovery... however now he is a thriving young sloth with tons of energy! Really energy.

BS stands for Before Sloths came into my life, all of our rescues were birds that would go to sleep at 6pm and that was it! I had the night off to cook dinner and watch some TV or read a good book...well, that all changed with the nocturnal two toed sloths!

Many of you know that sloths only go to the bathroom once every 3-4 days in captivity, once a week in the wild. So, we have a sloth pee poo calendar...and last night was Millie's night. While I was waiting up for her to go 11pm, I started to flip TV channels and came across one of those terrible kid shows where the nanny comes in and saves the day ...so I watched for a bit, while I held Georgie, trying to get him to sleep. The kids were really terrible screamers and refusing to go to bed and keeping the parents up all night. I hugged and kissed Georgie and said, "I'm so glad I have you!".... Millie finally went, came inside and it started to pour down rain.

Well, when sloths go, they get tons of energy and especially with rain storms, they are awake and looking for shelter...now, of course the sloths living with me in the house have shelter, but none the less, they are active.

So, my sleepless night started with Millie waking me up at 2am making noise in her kennel, then Milo was up, then Georgie. So, I got up and Milo was the most active, so I got him out and put him into his daytime sleeping bucket, full of blankets and stuffed toys and went back to bed. We do this about once a week and he goes right back to sleep...not last night! I could hear him up and wondering around the couch, and then making noises with his claws on the plastic bucket, like he was trying to go back to sleep, so we did this back and forth thing several times...I laid back in bed around 3:30am thinking about the screaming kids and thought the only difference is that Milo is not screaming...Thank Goodness!...but I am awake just like those poor parents!

Up again at 4am then again at 5am I gave up trying to sleep, made some coffee and came to write! Good thing we grow our own coffee and I have a ready supply to keep me going with the sloths...now that is a joke...I need caffeine to keep up with the sloths!

Of course now he is sound asleep and looking like a little angel, and will sleep all day while I have everyone else to take care of! Good news is tonight I will probably sleep, that is of course unless Georgie or Millie decide to have an energy boost!

Progress with young rescued toucans

About a month ago, these three young toucans were decommissioned from Minae, our Fish and Wildlife, they had recently been stolen from the nest and were being kept poorly in small canary cages...yes, canary cages. One had a very badly bruised wing and on the same side she could not use her leg and foot. With treatment she is now recovering the use of her wing and using her leg and foot! We still have her in a smaller cage so that she does not re-injure the leg, the other two are out in nice large enclosures and are doing really well. Two of them are Swainson's or Chesnut mandibled toucans and the other is a Keel Billed toucan. You can see the pale colors are turning nice and bright and they have gained much needed weight, you could see and feel most of their bones when they arrived.

My husband Jorge is over on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, about a 1.5 hour drive away picking up 150 lbs. of Papaya to feed all the toucans and parrots, and of course Issy the monkey. He goes over to our farm, then on to the papaya plantation! Please help us support these guys with a donation using Pay Pal on our website!! http://www.toucanrescueranch.com/

Thank you so much!

Problems during the night!

Two nights ago the dogs were really barking, and I heard the toucanets and small parrots flying around in the enclosures (which they should not be doing at night!) so I got the large flashlight and went out to see what was startling them. On the cage wire was a small opossum trying to get in to eat the birds. With all the commotion and light he took off. Now we have had problems at night before with opossums and I did not want another night time fiasco. So, last night I got a live trap out, set it up with bait and put it behind the cages. Again I heard noises and sure enough, this morning I had the little guy in my trap!

Now, most folks here would say, just kill it. But he is a living creature and deserves to have his life, just not eating my birds or on our property, so I took him a few miles away to a nice wooded area with a creek and let him go :)

Georgie 9 months!

Georgie is 9 months old! He is a rescued two-toed sloth that has been here since he was about 1 week old. He is growing up, getting bigger and doing great. He is a fearless climber! We have nick-named him King Kong at night, since that is when he is more awake and quite a handful.

He is still on his goats milk formula with solid foods as well, and this is how I start and end each day, feeding Georgie.