Hungry Mosquitos and Poo Flinging Monkeys

Finally here and adjusting to the heat and the living conditions. I met Mary, my Rainsong Wildlife Sanctuary supervisor, as well as most of the volunteers. I've been living in a rustic lodgehouse with the volunteers for about a week now and we've been sharing our lounge with a cane toad, iguanas, some rats, and a baby scorpion. The days are humid and the mosquito bites are intense. I think I scratch myself more than the monkeys do!

In my first few hours at the sanctuary I got to bottle feed three baby mantled howler monkeys while learning about the history of the sanctuary and Costa Rica. I spent the first few days learning how to prep food for the animals and clean cages as well as give tours. The sanctuary has a wide variety of exotic and native species such as a white faced monkey, prehensile tailed porcupines, iguanas, white tailed deer, paca, guans, keel billed toucan, collared aracari, a variety of parrot species, and many more.

In the mornings, the volunteers and I walk down from our lodgehouse and feed all the animals and clean cages while a few of us warm milk for the baby howlers and bottle feed them. We get a 3 hour lunch break and then come back to work in the early evenings to re-feed some of the animals and give tours to the public. At night we get to hang out in our lounge together at the lodgehouse and talk about traveling and how many times the wild troop of white faced monkeys tried flinging poo down at us (YES! They actually do this!) It's been a long and tiresome week so far but I'm excited to get out of the dirty work, new beginner jobs and get into more of the hands on and interactive work!