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!
Next up is Bella, who I call “Grandma Bella”, because she’s pretty old! Bella is a Marmoset, and she’s been living in the sanctuary for a long time. Recently, we’ve made some new adjustments to her enclosure, so she can feel happy and safe. Now that she’s older, she can’t jump from branch to branch like she used to, so we added some bridges to connect the branches together! On “cold” days in Costa Rica (I know, crazy!) we give her a hot water bottle to lay on, so she can raise her body temperature without having to move around a lot. When I first started volunteering at KSTR, the second time I was there, I was going into her enclosure to give her diced food—she jumped on my shoulder! I tried to get her off, but she clearly wanted to hang out and rode long with me while I fed the parrots! Eventually, she got tired of the Dani Ride, so I took her back to her cage 🙂
Darwin is a spider monkey who was rescued from someone who was keeping him as a pet, and introduced him to people a lot. Darwin was aggressive towards people, and the pet owner asked KSTR to take him. Darwin continues to be aggressive towards people—but he has settled in very nicely at KSTR, and even has a roommate—or as I like to call her, a Girl friend (named Nina—who is also a spider monkey).
Next is a Capuchin Monkey named Arfonzito, who was electrocuted and had damage to his tail. After trying to save his tail, the vets at KSTR had to amputate his tail to save his life. He’s currently recovering at KSTR, and he is trying hard to learn how to live (and move) without his tail, so that he can go back to nature, where he belongs!
The rainforest has many big trees and lots of plants that take in tons of Carbon Dioxide and put out clean air. If the earth’s atmosphere contains too much Carbon Dioxide, it will raise the temperature of the earth by changing our greenhouse gasses, and will harm animals that rely on the temperature, like Polar Bears, Penguins, and other animals that live in cold environments.
Here is a picture of 2 of the Co-founders Janine and her mom, Jennifer, planting a tree. It was taken 17 years ago!
Today I want to tell you about a few of the injured animals at our sanctuary, and what we need to do to prepare them to go back to the wild. The two animals I want to tell you about are Patricia, an injured Heron, and Teo, an injured Titi Squirrel Monkey.
In my experience working with the animals in the winter, we do lots of fun and exciting activities with the animals. We decorate the outside of their cages (so the animals can experience Feliz Navidad, from a distance 🙂 ) And we give them presents! 
Have you ever seen those thick blue ropes hanging in the trees above the roads? Kids Saving the Rainforest builds wildlife bridges with ICE that cross above the roads in Manuel Antonio. That way, the animals don’t have to risk running across the street and getting hit. So, after seeing that close call with the monkey family on the main road to the beach, my parents donated a wildlife bridge in Valle Pura Vida (where the old KSTR wildlife rescue center used to be!) My mom says it is the best souvenir she has ever got.
The bridges are also great for another reason. Have you ever seen the monkeys run on the power lines? Well, that can also be very dangerous for them, as they can get shocked by high-voltage wires. If you ever see a loose wire- or hear it crackling when it rains, please call ICE so they can fix it! The KSTR blue ropes also help keep our little friends from being electrocuted.
First, we have the monkeys. Usually, for the monkeys, in the morning, we give them a fruit salad with Watermelon, Papaya, and other good fruit. In the afternoon, we mix the same fruit salad, but add some vegetables—for example we add sweet potatoes, carrots, and green beans. We give them these foods because all the animals in our sanctuary were at one point in the wild, and the food we’re giving them is like the diet they would have had in the wild. In case you haven’t noticed, monkeys spend a lot of time jumping from tree to tree, across branches. One of the reasons they are doing that, is to look for food—many of the fruits in their diet at KSTR grow in trees in Costa Rica! At the sanctuary, we had 3 squirrel monkeys who needed medicine. They did NOT like the flavor of the medicine. So, we used a syringe to squirt the medicine into a marshmallow, which everybody knows monkeys love! (We normally try to only feed our animals natural food that comes from their habitats, but when we need to get medicine into them, we sometimes use small treats.)
At KSTR, there’s a Capuchin monkey named Moncho, and he’s brown, instead of Black and White—but he’s still a Capuchin monkey! He sometimes gets mistaken for a baby, because he’s smaller than a normal monkey. One time, we were gathering spiders to feed the monkeys. (Monkeys love eating spiders, and catching and eating a live bug helps remind them how to be in the wild!). When we put the jar with 4 spiders in front of the enclosure, we saw Moncho eat 2 spiders—but when we took the jar to move it to another enclosure, it turns out there was only 1 spider left! Moncho snuck an extra spider! Fun fact: monkeys are very smart and can be very sneaky.
In the sanctuary, we also have a Green Parrot, and on his neck he has no feathers—because he used to be a pet, and his owners had a dog. One day, he got loose from his cage, and the dog found him and attacked him. After that, the owners called KSTR, and we took him in with happiness and joy. 