Unfortunate loss at the wildlife sanctuary

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  Phetchaburi, Thailand
Thursday, July 3, 2008

Oh, something horrible happened yesterday.  About 8.5 weeks ago, a macaque that lives out in one of our fields had a baby called Sunday.  (I believe she was born on a Sunday).  The mom had the baby for 2 weeks and the staff here could see that she wasn't caring for her properly and almost didn't know how to care for a baby--so the staff took the baby away and gave it to Emma, the volunteer coordinator, to hand-raise for a while, until the baby got old enough to be put into Quarantine in an enclosure.  Emma had Sunday with her in her house, and had to nurture her and feed her every 3 hours including the night, and so on, for a month.

The day that I arrived here, 2.5 weeks ago, was the day that Sunday the baby was moved from Emma's house to Quarantine and while Emma was giving us newbies the tour, she actually cried a little and said that she was going to miss that baby

Hospital

.

Anyway, so I was walking towards the food house to get bananas for my pancakes when I heard a lot of commotion in quarantine--screaming, yelling, animals making noise, people communicating in Thai on the walkie talkies in urgent voices.  Emma came running towards quarantine and another volunteer was already there. 

It turned out that one of the staff hadn't properly locked baby Sunday's cage and she escaped, but she was attacked by a grown-up gibbon who was in a nearby cage.  The staff who gathered began yelling at the gibbon and using a hose to make him retreat and get away from Sunday's body (gibbons hate water).  A lot of damage had already been done--Sunday's stomach was ripped open and all of her insides were on the outside.  Her leg was also partially torn off and the bone was broken.  Nothing was actually perforated on her intestines or anything else that was hanging out of her body, surprisingly.

I didn't see any of the attack--I could see people's faces, horrified, eyes wide and hands over their mouth, as they were watching it, and I decided I didn't want to walk any further to actually see it.  I did, however, try to get the damn tourists away.  They heard commotion and all gathered around to come and watch the carnage and they were just getting in the way, so I motioned and pushed for them to move away.

It was just awful seeing Emma's face while this was happening and hearing all the screams, from both the people and the animals.  One of the Thai staff ran with Sunday to the hospital.  He was holding her in his hands and he walked by me--I don't think I could have even determined that the heap of a body was a macaque.  The vet, Dr Yo, operated on her and sewed her stomach up... they even had to use a defibrillator, so Emma ran around again yelling at everyone to unplug everything in the whole center using any electricity (I guess we don't have enough for both at the same time).

Edwin, the director, had to help with handling the problem as well, so he gave a baby gibbon (6 weeks old) that he and Noi have been hand-raising to Lucy, a brand new volunteer, and me to hold and feed with a bottle.  Lucy actually held her, I just helped.  We were sitting on a bench with the baby gibbon (who made little squeaking sounds and pooped on Lucy's shirt) when the vet and the other staff came outside the hospital with Sunday in a tiny laundry basket, covered with towels and blankets, and hooked up to an oxygen thing that they were squeezing. 

They were going to take her to an animal hospital 3 hours away to be seen and operated on by a bone doctor.  Unfortunately, only about an hour into the trip, Sunday died, so they came back.  Awful. 

The air about the center the whole day was just bad.  Everyone was upset about that.  Only a few of the more experienced volunteers were allowed in quarantine, so most people hadn't worked directly with Sunday, but everyone had known who she was and Emma's connection with her.

The attitude was just all upset.  Not so much at the staff who left the cage open, because everyone makes mistakes and really it doesn't do any good to blame her, but more in general, that we're here to help and protect these animals that have mostly been severely abused and hurt before.  That sort of pain and suffering isn't meant to happen here at all.  It's what we're working against.  Here, the goal is to take excellent care of the animals--keeping them safe, fed, happy, and enriching their lives with challenges and things to do everyday.

Rehabilitating them for the wild whenever possible is the goal, but all too often, the animals have been kept as people's pets or props in tourist areas in wretched conditions (pay 100Baht, take a picture with a drugged-up baby gibbon, elephants walking around the streets of Bangkok with their mahouts- pay to be able to feed them bananas...) for far too long to have any chance of being able to survive in the wild.

So, we put them here.  I'm glad this place exists.  I hate, hate hate seeing all the animals in cages, especially when they look so bored, but what's better, at this juncture?  At least they're safe and we do try to give them good lives.

And sometimes some of the macaques get to go move out to live in these big fields.  They're still enclosed, but the fields are huge.  And if the gibbon are well suited, they get to go live on one of the 8 islands in the lake in front of the sanctuary.  Mieow the tiger is getting a new, better enclosure a little deeper in the forest.  Those are all wonderful improvements for them.

I hate seeing them in cages, but I'd hate it more if they were all released and killed automatically because they have never been able to learn wildlife smarts.  Imperfect solution, big problem.  In the meantime, I only have one more week to volunteer here, so I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing to help them.

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