Angry Monkeys

I was talking to the animals, Doolittle style, and making a big big fuss over the female great curassow at Don Alvaro's wonderful animal sanctuary. And the little paca was sooo hurt and jealous. If ever there were an accusatory paca, this is it. I am pretty sure that had I been able to get into the enormous flight cage where it lived, it would have climbed onto my lap, demanded a belly rub, and given me what-for. 

Note the hands. I was smitten with this snooty little guinea pig on stilts.

Speaking of that flight cage: It's more like a hacking cage. About 10' off the ground there are several enormous holes cut in the chain link, and the macaws go in and out of them. It's like a big halfway house for them. If they want to feel safe, they go into it and shelter from rain under its partially covered roof. If they want to fly up and down the river or tussle in the treetops, they make their way out. What an elegant system, a system based on trust.

I was delighted to find great green and scarlet macaws enjoying the fruits of a palm right in Don Alvaro's garden. 

I always much prefer taking photos of birds in natural habitat, and these could possibly be useful for publication somewhere.

Extravagant, that's what they are. Flaunting their colors.

I loved watching them fly from tree to tree.

Soon, however, trouble arrived in the form of several wild white-faced capuchins. 

Monkeys suffer for our perceptions, having our anthropomorphism so freely applied to them. But I gotta say: the look on this monkey's face says it all. She was a real piece of work. She wanted the peanuts that Don Alvaro was offering to the macaws, and she resented their having any of them.

So she'd rush the big birds and race to the peanut bowl and grab double handfuls of the nuts and then gobble them down. Which was OK. But then, when the peanuts were all gone, she spent the afternoon racing through the treetops deliberately flushing the macaws for no apparent reason.  Showing off?

Planning an attack on a scarlet macaw which was minding its own business. She reminded me of a tiny catcher behind the plate. 

I had to smile when Mario said, "I don't like those capuchins. They are just nasty animals, always making trouble."

The macaws retreated to the palms to eat.

and continued their storm-trooper like passes through the yard. Cracked squawks and screams rang out continually, but they seemed perfectly in place, not dissonant as they are when echoing off the walls of a room.

Seeing the birds free to do whatever they pleased all day long was such a treat. I wished there were more places like this, where macaws could be free to realize their potential, to pick mates and perhaps raise young.

How I wished there were still tens of thousands of scarlets and great greens in Costa Rica, instead of just hundreds.

We primates are always finding something to be perturbed about. Even in Paradise.

A Peaceable Kingdom

Quite a lineup--five scarlets, one great green, and its hybrid great green x scarlet baby.

We're still at Don Alvaro's macaw rescue ranch.

A wild white-faced capuchin moves in to make some trouble. She wants a peanut, too. Or all the peanuts. Give me all the peanuts.

A great green macaw walks up a tree trunk. Its feathers shine with health. I couldn't believe the exquisite condition of these birds. Natural food, humidity, the society of others and freedom--they all make for healthy, happy birds.

Here comes a great green!

To see these birds bombing by at eye level is something I'll never forget. And catch the color of the reverse on the tail feathers--tomato red and blue reverses to gold and green.

Those who were brave enough to hold the peanut bin might get sat upon. Nancy loves it!

Photo by Jim Palmer

Conejo, or "Rabbit," was this donkey's name. He was the loveliest, most placid animal I've ever met. He moved quietly around the garden, like the macaws, free to go, but choosing to stay. And he came up to give a little love to pet-starved travelers like Kim.

Don Alvaro saw me feeding him some of the delicious pineapple he'd set out for the human visitors, and brought out the rinds and cores for me to give to Conejo. I gave him a whole core and the juice just flowed from his soft mouth.

If I could have packed that donkey in my luggage, I'd have brought him home. He was that lovely.

I saw a female great curassow hanging around in the big macaw flight. Noted that she'd been pinioned, a cruel operation that cuts the distal joint of the wing at the bird's wrist, rendering it flightless. Knew for sure that Don Alvaro would never do such a thing, and that he'd rescued her from somewhere.

I'd talked with captive great curassows in Brasil, and had a hunch she might be lonesome. I made a soft, low hmmmmm in my throat. She walked up to me and let me caress her soft face.

 And she answered with her own low humming.

Amy got to pet her, too.

and so did Kim

and Nancy A.

 The paca (a kind of long-legged forest rodent) was very, very jealous. He tried to interfere while we were petting the curassow. I petted him, too, but I was a little nervous about his extra-long incisors.

I did not pet the female jaguar, who was caged with a male. They had been killing cattle in Nicaragua, and were trapped and slated for death when Don Alvaro intervened.

Don Alvaro's farm is a peaceable kingdom, a place where animals have another chance. However sad its life was before coming to this farm, every animal there has clearly been treated with love from the moment it arrived. I could see that in the curassow's eye, feel it in her warm skin.

And it was magic.