Friday, August 3, 2012

Jungle Fever

I think all the bites/itchy/sweating to death is starting to get to my brain. I was responsible for feeding Twiggy in the morning and I had to show Michelle how to make the shake and feed her. After assembling the blender wrong three times, I finally got the shake made and fed Twiggy. While I was waiting to start the 6:30 monkey feed, I was putting sea grass in the frame and there was no wind so the bugs were horrendous. I think my whole body itched for about an hour after. The Wildtracks vet and several of her student were here to conduct routine check ups on the quarantine monkeys and assess the health of the four new howler monkeys. TB tests are conducted on eyelids for monkeys, so they all had to be knocked out. Teresa was the first to be tested and she looked so sad and small in Paul's arms when he was carrying her. If you didn't know she was just anesthetized, you would think she was dead. After all the testing was finished, I fed the quarantine monkeys. Richie was almost back to her normal self, but she was a lot more laid back than usual and didn't attack me as soon as I walked in the enclosure. Teresa was completely out of it and looked so sad and tired just hanging out in her hammock. We received another confiscated howler and we were supposed to get a spider as well, but the owners heard the forest department was coming and hid the spider. Three howlers came in together, so they are in quarantine together and they're all pretty scared of people still. They are all so skinny, it's terrible and they're too scared to eat. Duke was back down to one frame of sea grass, but hopefully he eats more tomorrow. We're supposed to receive more monkeys tomorrow and another monkey volunteer is coming, so we have more help to deal with all the new monkeys.

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