The birds are movin!

Last week, after waiting for several days, we moved the birds from pre-rehabilitation to their rehab cage. It seems like a simple step, but it really means a lot more in the grand scheme of things. These birds have been at ARCAS for over a year now. Many were illegally trafficked to become pets. Some already were pets; others were found injured in the wild. They all came to ARCAS, grew out their feathers, got healthy, and finally learned how to fly. They now are in their final steps to being released again into the wild as they fly around in their new and bigger cage with tree and huge, long limbs to imitate branches that we stick berries into (about 90% of their diet in the wild).

I was extremely excited for the move. I was excited for them to take the next step, and to see all the workers at ARCAS try and catch 90 screeching birds flying back and forth in a 30x100ft cage. We had to draw blood and inject vitamins for each bird, and the entire ordeal took almost four hours. But they are now in their new cage and on their way to being released in June. That release will take place in a Guatemalan National Park--the exact one still TBD--and will involve three weeks of monitoring and workers travel back and forth between the release site and ARCAS. Still work to be done, but another step in the right direction.

Remember that bird I let escape?

Just when you thought a story like that one couldn't get any better, it did. Things have been off to a decent start during my second round at ARCAS. It's been amazing seeing my friends that were here when I left, and a couple of return volunteers that are back have been tons of fun to hang out with, drink with, and enjoy general debauchery with as well. The downside so far has been a few animals have died. It always happens in waves, and a few monkeys died last week and it was pretty tough on everyone who had become quite attached to these animals even though they had been sick for a while. One spider monkey had a broken leg and she had to be isolated; alone she had become depressed and we had to groom her each day to cheer her up. She died of a respiratory infection. And we had received two howler monkeys confiscated from a circus, but after a couple days their injuries were just too series and they both passed away.

But onto happier times and hilarious stories: that pesky dove. Once again I had to feed it every day and had to make sure it didn't escape. I hated it more and more, especially when it was definitely trying to escape and I'd hit my head trying to rush in and out of its cage.

One day last week Alejandro, the director here at ARCAS, pulls me and another volunteer aside and says, "because you two know what's going on and understand what we do here, I'm going to tell you: those doves are never going to be released. They land on too many peoples' heads and are going to be killed, so we're just going to feed them to the margays."

Margays are like small jaguar/cheetahs. Smaller cats, but they hunt for their food. So after all the crazy adventures of capturing the bird, putting up with it in the cages, and all that jazz, we fed it to another animal we have here at ARCAS. My favorite part has to be the food board, pictured here. The doves are crossed out, and below you can read the reason why. RIP, inside the belly of a margay.