After a
couple of days of not much blog-worthy stuff happening here at the center, this
morning started off very interestingly! In my last blog post I mentioned that
we recently switched the enclosures for the kinkajous and olingo. Neela, the
female kinkajou, is currently in heat and, frankly, being an absolute
psychopath. A few days ago she bit one of the staff member’s hands, after which
his hand swelled to the size of a grapefruit, got an infection, and required a
bunch of stitches.
Anyway, this
morning we woke up to learn that both kinkajous, which are naturally nocturnal,
had disappeared during the night! We don’t know exactly how it happened- their
enclosure has two doors that you have to open to get in and out, and they were
both latched shut. Looking around this morning, though, we found a few gaps in
the fence; small ones, put probably big enough for them to squeeze through. At
breakfast one of the staff members explained to us that there’s a wild male
kinkajou that was rescued and released from the center (back when it was legal
to do that) that occasionally comes back around. They think he was around last
night, undoubtedly attracted by Neela being in heat. She probably saw him,
squeezed her way out, and then Daniel, the male, just followed suit.
By the time
breakfast was served at seven, Daniel had already been captured- he’s not
nearly as crazy as Neela. She, on the other hand, was still loose. She was
still hanging around the center, just hadn’t been contained yet. She spent most
of the morning climbing around the roof the animal kitchen, narrowly escaping
the employee’s net multiple times. Eventually, with the help of a sedation
dart, we got her back under control as well. Some of the staff spent the
afternoon trying to patch up some of the gaps we found in the enclosure, and I
heard that this evening the two kinkajous were put back in. We’ll see if it
works, but let’s just say I won’t be surprised if we wake up tomorrow to an
empty enclosure again.
After
tonight, I’m off to La Fortuna to spend two nights at a hostel there. Saturday
will be my full day tour of the Arenal Volcano area, including the waterfall,
hanging bridges, volcano hike, and hot springs, which are the four main things
to do there. Lunch and dinner are both included with the tour as well- it’ll
last over twelve hours! It’s been nearly a year since my last hostel stay, and
it’ll be my first time staying in a North American hostel, which should be
nice. This hostel is well reviewed, comes with free breakfast, and only costs ten
dollars a night- hard to complain about that.
I’m not sure
if I’ll make a blog post tomorrow from the hostel, or if the next post will
wait until after my big tour of Arenal- we’ll see! This post’s food for
thought: “Quit hanging onto the handrails. Let go. Surrender. Go for the ride
of your life. Do it every day.”- Melody Beattie
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