| December
13, 2005 Dear Jade (one of the "Girls on Top" volunteers from Australia: Thank you so much for your e-mails . . . Here fortunately everybody is fine since the death of Bonzo—yes I was worried about all the animals, as I said—if Bonzo, being appaerently so strong could die so fast, what about the others?? So, finally last week I convinced one of the vets of the Primate Centre of Iquitos to come out to Pilpintuwasi and check out the monkeys Dra Nofre, a lady, came with her family on Saturday and stayed a few hours so to be able to have a look at all the five monkeys we've got now, including the baby Howler we received from a fisherman last week (he had killed and eaten the mother), and a small Capuchin monkey, which was left at the orphanage by a Hungarian Tourist who had pitied the animal and bought it from some street children. They had kept the monkey day and night on their shoulders .He was full of flees and quite skinny, but he's very lively and very cheaky with the other monkeys. Unfortunately the tourist didn't ask the name of the monkey so we call him Tony (Robler calls him Tony Piraņa, because Piranhas are what streetchilden who are little robbers are called). After checking the monkeys, the vet told me that they are all fine and healthy, none of them has a weak lung or heart, and that Chavo is so skinny because he moves so much and doesn't eat almost any carbohydrates. The vet also said that she has never seen any other monkeys in "captivity" that are in such a good state and evidently happy. Well, I felt as if a stone had fallen from my heart; Chavo is not sick, as I had worried because of his skinnyness. The vet told me to put Vitamin B complex into the drinking water of the monkeys, which might increase Chavo's appetite. With the two little monkeys there is a lot of care, feeding , checking where they are etc, so that I'm almost happy to hear that the strike at the university that started again at the end of November will go on for the next week—if not I wouldn't know what to do with my students. . . on the other hand, if I had known that there are no classes around Christmas, I would have accepted my mother's invitation to come to Austria for Christmas when she asked me in October. I'm happy that you got the drawings of the children from Padrecocha and that you like them. One real stupid thing happened to me last week: I sent a new photo to my nephews who had birthdays, and somehow when erasing the pictures from the computer, I lost all the photo sin the camera. So now I'll have to take lots of new pictures, which will be better with the camera I got from you. I have to hurry up now as I still have to buy lettuce for the manatee, but I'll write soon again. I hope everyone is fine. Love, Gudrun |
Amazon Animal Orphanage
Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm
www.AmazonAnimalOrphanage.org
pilpintuwasi@hotmail.com
063-23-2665
Padre Cocha
Iquitos, Peru