Friday, December 02, 2005

SOME ANIMAL TALES

SOME ANIMAL TALES

Here everyone comes bringing wild animals to see if we will buy them - monkeys, tortoises, the other day they even wanted to sell us a baby deer for US$50 .....  Apparently the Swedish missionaries who ran the dairy before used to buy animals and they sent them to Sweden or something, I don´t know.  Some missionaries!  Anyway, we have made a point of refusing to buy any animals pointing out to the people that the animals should be left where they were and that they are not a piece of merchandise.

One of our first experiences was on a Saturday morning when a man arrived on a bicycle with a bag tied to the crossbar.  We were going out for a walk with the dogs at the time and he stopped us saying that he had something that might interest us.  That was when we found out about the trading activities of the Swedes.  When he opened up the bag, out came a a baby ant-eater.  Beautiful.  Brown with a long pointed snout and paws with long curved nails.  It was sleepy and just lay curled up in your arms sleeping away.  Then it woke up and decided to have an explore.  It put its front paws on my shoulders and began to explore my face.  When it found my ears, out lashed its long thin rounded tongue right inside my ear - presumably hoping to find some ants in there!  Ticklish!  It tried a few times in one ear and then went around to the other one, but in vain, not much in the way of sustenance in there.  Giving up, it curled up again and went back to sleep.

It was raining, so we invited the fellow who had brought it into the house and offered him a cup of coffee (We are regarded as highly eccentric allowing peasants into our house!).  These chats are always interesting because you find out a lot about the people.  This young man had been abandoned by his parents when he was a baby, and he was brought up by one set of grandparents who made a great effort and sent him to school where he did well.  At the age of eleven he left his grandparents'  house to try and make his way in the world. He went to Cochabamba where he worked in a bus company, presumably carrying bags or some such task, and he lived on the street. He worked there for two years and the money he had earned he used to go to a radio mending course.  However, before he could complete the course his money ran out, so at the age of 14 he came to the Chapare where he has been working as a day labourer ever since (He must be about 24 now.).  He is now married with three children and he lives in his father-in-law´s house, but he had just managed to buy a small plot of land.  The problem with it is that, because he did not have much money, the only  land he could afford is on a slope and there is no area flat enough to build a cabin.  

Another animal experience came after an owl crashed into the side window of Robert's car as he was driving home from Santa Cruz one night.  He stopped and picked the bird up and brought it back.  It had a cut on its shoulder which I cleaned with hydrogen peroxide and put some antibiotic powder on it and we put it in a box till morning.


When morning came we got the vet who works at the dairy to have a look at it.  It was clear that it had a broken wing, so we set up an operating table out on the grass and the vet set to work to see what could be done. He had never operated on a bird before, but I must say he was remarkably competent.  When he made the incision, we could see that two bones were broken just below the shoulder.  The worst part was that they were not just broken but slightly shattered so that the break was not clean and the two sections of bone would not fit back together again properly. In view of this we decided to try and insert a metal pin inside the bones.  The only stainless metal available was electrolytic wire from the maintenance department, so we used some fine gauge stuff which just fitted in nicely. After that we glued the parts together using that instant glue which they also use in human surgery, cleaned the whole area, sewed it up and that was it.  All this was done without anaesthetic because there was no adequate anaesthetic available.  Can you imagine the pain?  At one stage the poor animal fainted and I thought it was dead but its heart was still beating.  From time to time I gave it a syringe-full of water and sugar which it seemed to appreciate.

I kept giving it this mixture every half hour or so and by the afternoon it seemed to be coming round.  The vet suggested that I should go to the chemist and buy some drip solution but instead of intravenous I should get the oral type for children and give it that.  I did - but it was fatal.  I am sure it was too strong because shortly aferwards the poor animal died.  

At first I was truly sorry, but when I thought about it I came to the conclusion that it was probably for the best.  Since the broken bones were so near to the shoulder, it would probably never be able to fly again and would have had to be kept in captivity. That would be fine as long as we were here because we could supply it with food of one type and another, but when we went away I am sure nobody would bother about the poor bird and it would end up dying of starvation.

Another incident occurred shortly afterwards.  One morning as I took the dogs on their early morning round, they seemed very interested in sniffing under a tree.  I saw what looked like a piece of fur (all wet because it was raining), so I didn´t allow them to go in.  That evening as we came back from a dip in the river, Simon jumped down into the drainage ditch and then I saw a little animal lying on its side down there.  It had mottled beige-coloured fur, a long narrow snout, little hands and a long bare tail which was black at the base and turned white about half way up.  It was totally still and I thought it was dead.  Then I saw a little black thing with a pink snout lying some distance away and others squirming to come out of it - babies.  So I thought it was having its babies.  I took the dogs back to the house and came back down to investigate.  I jumpled down into the ditch and with a stick prodded the baby lying some distance away to see if it was alive or not.  It was, so I pushed it up to the mother.  At that, her little snout twitched from side to side and then it was clear that she was not dead.  More babies were emerging.  From time to time the mother joined her front paws together just as if she were praying and then lay still again.  I had a closer look and could see that she had a wound on her back.

At that point the vet arrived and he told me that it was a Q'arachupa (in Quechua) or sarigüeña in Spanish.  This is a kind of possum, belonging to the same family as Australian possums. They are small marsupials like kangaroos, which explained that the babies were not being born at that moment.  They had been born some time ago and the mother carries them around in a little pouch where they feed until they are able to come out.  Then she carries them around on her tail which they cling to as she moves.  They are arboreal in habit and eat small birds, eggs and other things they find.  In the trees they are swift but on the ground they are slow, which probably explains why she got injured.  I strongly suspect the night watchman's dogs: he is not supposed to bring them to work but he does and they rampage around all over the place.  Further inspection showed that she had deep teeth mark wounds on either side of her neck and a wound on her back.  The babies were crawling out of the pouch because she was moribund and they could sense that.  

Poor thing.  There was nothing to be done for her, so I got the vet to put her to sleep. I asked him whether the babies could survive on their own at that stage of development and he said they could not, so I told him to put them down too.  However, the following morning as I went out with the dogs I could hear the blowing sound which the babies make, and when I went to investigate I discovered that he had not done as I asked.  In a fury of righteous indignation fit to behold I grabbed hold of him as he came to work and gave him a lecture on the implications of the professional responsibility of vets which applies even when the task to be performed is not a pleasant one.  He won't forget that tirade in a hurry and now looks at me sheepishly every time I see him.


Then some people brought along a tortoise - quite large, about a foot across, although that is nothing in comparison to the huge tortoises that used to be found in this area.  They have virtually been hunted to extinction. I was not here when they came and the dairy workers wanted to kill it and make a soup.  Fortunately René, the manager, put a stop to that and took the animal back to his house to prevent it being sacrificed.

The last in this series of animal encounters occurred the other day down by the river.  It had just rained a lot and the river was in spate.  Lying by the water´s edge was an armadillo.  It´s body is about the length of an adult´s arm from the wrist to the elbow and its tail is of similar length.  Its head is small, about the size of the palm of a lady´s hand.  The body is beigey in colour and all along it are rings of scaley armour which protect it from attack. Armadillos are called tatús in the language of the Amazon tribes and this word has also been taken into Quechua.

23 Jan. 1995

This morning one of the drivers saw that a boa had been run over by a vehicle and he picked it up from the road.  It is 12 feet long with a body about 8 inches in diameter tapering towards the tail.  The head is small with two rather prominent eyes and the mouth with tiny teeth looks rather small but the head is virtually all mouth and when it wants to swallow something the mouth can articulate  to open wider and allow it swallow its prey.  Apparently the saliva "corrodes" the victim.  But in any case the boa would have broken your ribs by the time it wound itself around  your body.  This was a fairly small specimen: they can be up to 15m. long.  The skin is beautiful: yellowish with black circles.  They skinned it with a knife and razor blade and put the skin up to dry.  Then the snake was gutted just like a fish and they will eat it tonight. They say that it tastes just like surubí, one of the large river fishes here, and better than pacú, another of the fishes.  It is regarded as a great delicacy.  I could only think what a pity it was that such a beautiful creature had to be destroyed by a truck.

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