Costa Rica's Kids Saving The Rainforest Update

ExploreCostaRica.com Titi Monkey

Amidst the blooming ginger, the rain-drenched, sun-dappled banana fronds, and the ebb and flow of the Pacific tide, "Kids Saving The Rainforest" is a place where my heart found a home in the jungles of Costa Rica.

My volunteer job of caring for three baby sloths fulfilled me in a way that gave my stay here a purpose beyond my selfish desire to escape the Colorado winter snow.

Each baby was brought to KSTR after being found abandoned and helpless in the Manuel Antonio National Park. In the Costa Rican Natural History book by Daniel H. Janzen, it says that the mother sloth will not retrieve her baby if it falls, since it would endanger her own life to come down from her home high in trees. Most babies will not make it back to their mothers and fall pray to predators.
Sloths have slow, Tai Chi-like movements and slow metabolism, allowing the three-toed sloth to only have to leave the safety of its tree once a week to defecate. After digging a hole with their stubby tail they deposit their waste and bury it to hide their whereabouts.

I held the sloth babies often, after careful washing of my hands and arms, sending them Reiki Healing Touch. Though my intention was to provide them with warmth and security I felt a deep peace in their company.

My care for these gentle animals involved feeding them a Goat milk formula every two to three hours with a syringe. At first they would take only one life-giving drop at a time. I would prop the babies over a stuffed St. Bernard dog that would get them accustomed to holding on to trees upon release, and feed them in an upright position so the milk would not go into their lungs.

Though each baby loved to sleep on my husband's and my chest comforted by the sound of our heartbeats, each sloth came with its own story and personality.
Yolanda was found still clinging to her dead mother who had fallen from a tree. Yolanda grew stronger every day as she graduated from goat milk to eating the fresh leaves of the Guarumo tree.

Then one day Yolanda took a sudden turn for the worst and died quietly in my arms. Her autopsy revealed that she had a liver disease. I was shocked! Yolanda appeared so healthy up until the night before her death. I realized then, that as much as I wanted these babies to live, that I had no control of the outcome of their lives. I struggled with this reality.

Amy arrived when she was a newborn, still with her umbilical cord attached. She had a deformed arm and was very weak. At first she could hardly lift her head. As days went by, she started to eat more and she seemed "special" to me. She often waved her paw in front of her face or sucked on her claws in a form of self-stimulating or calming behavior. She was slow to eat, climb or focus her eyes and spent many hours a day sleeping. Despite her frailty our hopes rose with each new day she survived.

Soon after the death of Yolanda, a new baby, Lauren, came as a friend for Amy. Lauren was a climber, and at first she would climb out of her box onto a large, stuffed gorilla that stood watch over their bed. We would hear her high-pitched call and take her down into our arms. She looked like a character from the movie "Toy Story" with her roly-poly belly and her coffee-brown eyes. She would reach up and caress our faces and snuggle up beneath our chins with gentle kisses. Amy loved her and so did we.

They both seemed to be thriving when one morning we found Amy in the bottom of her box, listless and weak, unable to hold onto her surrogate dog mother. After she died, an autopsy revealed that she had a collapsed lung and probably would not have lived at all, if not for us tapping her on the back to burp her after feedings. That action apparently helped clear her one good lung, allowing her to live a longer life. (At KSTR, when we first rescue an animal, we never know if we are doing hospice care or helping an animal be reintroduced to the wild.)

That was a hard day at "Kids Saving the Rainforest". Earlier that day a female Titi monkey, otherwise known as the endangered Squirrel monkey, died. She had been electrocuted on the electric wires, and was brought in the day before. That same day, one of the stray dogs that had been adopted, was hit and killed by a car that didn't even stop.

When Amy died, we could tell Lauren was lonely. Aside from the large stuffed St. Bernard dogs the babies slept on, we got her a small stuffed raccoon she could cuddle with, and we held her often. She ate an abundance of Hibiscus flowers and Guarumo leaves.

Sadly, just this morning Lauren died. I awoke sitting up in bed and said a silent prayer for her, not knowing yet that at that time she was taking her final breath. She too seemed fine until last night when she did not want to eat and seemed very weak .We do not have the results of her autopsy yet.
In my time here I have learned a lot about the ebb and flow of life. These babies taught me that life is a very fragile thing, and we never know what the tides going to bring in. So I greet each sunrise with the possibility it brings, and let go each sunset of that which does not serve me. I am grateful to have been a part of these three precious lives and will go back to Colorado with a sad but full heart.

Kids Saving the Rainforest is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1999 by two school children, Janine Licare Andrews and Aislin Livingstone. Their goals are to educate children about the preservation and protection of the rainforest, to ensure the survival of the titi monkey and to care for abandoned and injured baby animals until they can be reintroduced into the wild.

Anyone who would like more information on the organization can visit the headquarters located at the Mono Azul Hotel in Manuel Antonio. KSTR can also be reached on-line at  www.Kidssavingtherainforest.org or locally at 777-2592.