Kids Saving the Rainforest – August 2022

Hi Quepolandia Readers! It’s Dani, your spokeskid for KSTR, back again for another article!

I’m back in Manuel Antonio for the summer, and I am volunteering at Kids Saving the Rainforest. Today I am going to tell you about our Nursery and Rehab Center.

In the Nursery, we have several different baby animals. We have 4 baby racoons, 6 baby opossums, 2 mice, and a lot of birds! All the animals in the nursery are super gentle, loving and adorable—and they each get their own special care routine. The raccoons need to be bathed 3 times a week, to keep them clean and healthy—and they get special food like a smoothie, made just for them! The smoothie has carrots, papaya, and banana. Sounds good, right? We also feed them fruit salad, containing watermelon, papaya, banana, potato and other fruits and veggies.

In the rehab center, we have 3 baby squirrel monkeys who lost their mom, and we’re going to release them soon! We keep them separate from the other animals, so they have minimal contact with humans. We have a baby Capuchin monkey, named Afronzito, who lost his tail from a shock from a power line. He’s healing now, but we probably won’t be able to release him—because he’ll have a really tough time in the wild without a tail. He’s really skittish—so we want to get him more used to the volunteers, so we can care for him. We also have 4 baby macaws, who lived in the Gaia preserve, but they were abandoned by their mother, so we’re taking care of them at the sanctuary until they are old and strong enough to be released at the Gaia again!

All the animals in the nursery, rehab center, and in the sanctuary, get enrichments to keep them busy, and to keep their wild instinct. On Friday, we made a climbing course for a baby racoon out of bamboo and rope! The mice got enrichments too—we stuffed a piece of bamboo with peanut butter, raisins, and honey, and then closed the ends off with cardboard so they can work for their treats! For Afronzito we stuffed a Kong with raisins and peanut butter, and froze it—so he has to use his tongue to break into the raisins…his favorite part!

Any donations you can make at kstr.org will help us take care of the babies—can’t wait to share another update with you—thanks, and Pura Vida!