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  I headed back toward Panama City in search of a shower, a milkshake, and a room with a mattress. Eduardo stayed behind in Yaviza. I don’t think there’s any way he could have known how the adventure we’d taken had changed my life.

  Rescue (Cleaning) Mission

  From Panama City, I traveled to Panama’s mountain highlands to the town of Boquete. In many ways, this area is the anti-Darién. It’s popular with tourists and expats, offering golf courses, resorts, and restaurants, and its miles of coffee plantations keep the land tame and organized. The city sits at a high altitude—not quite a mile high, like Denver, but close. I wasn’t there to take advantage of any of the high-end amenities, however; I couldn’t have afforded any of them, anyway. Instead, I’d read about a place called Paradise Gardens Wildlife Rescue in a Lonely Planet guide, and I wanted to see if they’d let me volunteer for a few days.

  I’d tried to e-mail the organization ahead of time, but I hadn’t received an answer. So after riding two buses a total of about twelve hours from Panama City, I just showed up. The director was very nice and pretty and American, but I could tell she wasn’t new to Panama. Very tan, with blond streaks in her hair, she seemed to be living the dream here at the rescue. She looked me over and asked how I felt about cleaning enclosures.

  I didn’t hesitate—I figured nothing would get me closer to the wildlife in the preserve than mucking around in their habitats.

  I stowed my gear at a hostel in town and got to work that afternoon. My first encounter was with a creature completely new to me: a northern tamandua. These arboreal anteaters have white arms and legs, then dark brown fur on their bodies, so it looks like they’re wearing little fur vests. Crazy cute. These playful, active creatures don’t pose any harm to people, so I let the little female who lived in the enclosure stay to “help” me while I cleaned. This girl had been orphaned after her mother was electrocuted on a power line, then brought to the rescue facility, so she was used to people. And she was friendly. As soon as I stepped into her enclosure, she skittered off her tree and came right over to me, crawling up my leg and perching on my shoulders.

  For an hour I was her jungle gym, and in between bouts of cleaning I held still or moved depending on what she seemed to want from me. She ran up and down me at will, nuzzled my head, and hung off my back while I was doing the actual work of cleaning up her enclosure. I was soaking it all up, and in my excitement I was mostly focused on her adorable pinched face and her little furry-vested body. It wasn’t until after I stepped out of the enclosure and saw how the director looked me over that I glanced down at myself.

  My T-shirt was a patchwork stretched between hundreds of tiny holes. My arms and hands were covered with scratches. A lot of them were trickling blood. I’d observed that my new friend had long, sharp claws, but in my excitement to play with her, I hadn’t even noticed that I was getting the pointy end of them. I lost a good shirt that day, but I gained a friend of a new species—a trade I’ll make anytime.

  The T-shirt wasn’t the only part of my wardrobe I lost in Boquete. The next day I worked in the enclosure of a tayra, also a new animal to me. Despite his small size, if this guy had made a direct run at me on arrival, I probably would’ve scooted out of his territory in a hurry. A tayra looks like a little badger, with a narrow head and a muscular body that could rival the physique of a pit bull. It’s a bit intimidating. As they age, their heads turn gray but their bodies stay black, and I’m guessing that’s how they got the nickname locals sometimes use for them: cabeza del viejo—“old man’s head.” I can’t imagine that anybody ever called a cabeza del viejo Snuggles or Muffin. The one I was meeting was a non-releasable juvenile who’d been hand-raised since he was a baby. He weighed around twelve pounds, and his name was Tony. When I stepped into his enclosure, Tony’s body language was anything but the aggression or even ferociousness I thought I might encounter. His ears perked up, he tilted his head to look at me from one angle and then another, and then he jumped out of his tree and ran right for me, planting himself at my feet and wiggling, like a little kid who’s about to get an ice cream cone.

  Everything about this guy was saying, Play with me!

  He raced back to the trunk of his tree to watch my reaction. When I smiled and said, “Hey, Tony” in my best I’m-no-threat-to-you-pal voice, he rushed me again, this time bumping my leg with his head.

  That’s pretty much how our time together went. Tony would rush me, touch me like he was doing it on a dare, then run away. After a few passes, which he was clearly enjoying, he started nipping at me before he took off again. Little bites, clearly for fun and not to do damage. I was doubled over laughing at how cute all this pseudo-aggression was when on one “attack” he took a bite of my boot—a bite out of the good leather hiking boot that had carried me through dozens of miles of hikes and into and out of the Amazon and the Darién Gap. I inspected the damage and studied the tayra for any sign of actual hostility, but all I could see was playfulness. One of the other volunteers explained later that Tony had a few rubber toys and had probably just gotten confused when he’d tested the sole of my boot with his teeth; still, it gave me a new regard for the big bite force of such a small animal. And it left me with a damaged boot I’d continue to wear for the remaining weeks of my trip, yet another trade I was happy to make for the experience.

  It was at Paradise Gardens that I discovered a weird truth that still belongs on my Ten Things You Don’t Know About Me list: primates like me. Not all of them, but more than I could reasonably expect from a class of creatures who tend to be choosy about who they take to and who they don’t.

  One of the habitats at the preserve was for a pair of young capuchins who’d been orphaned and were being raised together. I went into their enclosure to move around some of their toys and equipment, trying to help ensure that they had plenty of mental stimulation. There is nothing cuter than a baby capuchin. They have these sweet, open faces—big eyes, big ears—on tiny bodies that weigh no more than a couple pounds. They are naturally curious, and since these two had known human contact all their short lives, there was nothing guarded about them. It took them all of a couple minutes to decide they liked me, and for the next hour or so they used their dexterous little hands and feet to climb up and down me, wrestle and roll around with each other, poke my ears and nose, pull my hair, and, when they got tired, rest their little heads against me.

  When I’d decided to volunteer at a rescue, I’d understood that I couldn’t expect—or even reasonably hope—to have the kind of interaction I wound up having with each of these species. And yet there I was, in my holey T-shirt and bitten-through boots, capuchins climbing all over me, camera in hand, having the time of my life.

  That was my first significant amount of hands-on primate time. When I looked back at the footage I’d shot, it was obvious that I’d been so distracted by how cute the monkeys were that I’d failed to do a good job of narrating and educating. It was mostly video of the monkeys paired with audio of me laughing and oohing over their antics.

  Sometimes you’ve just gotta be in the moment, and that was a moment I’ll never forget.

  Turtle Trance

  I was so hooked on the stunning landscapes and incredible wildlife experiences I had in Panama, I went back the very next year, trying to recapture what I’d seen and felt and learned. But that’s not the way nature or travel (or life) works. That second summer, I ended up in a small coastal town on the island of Bastimentos in the Bocas del Toro Archipelago, on my own, walking the beach for miles at night by the moonlight.

  One evening, I spotted something big on the beach. It turned out to be a turtle, and I hoped she was just resting and not injured. As I got closer, I realized that I was looking at a massive leatherback who was nesting. She’d cleared a pit around herself by digging in with her back flippers—kind of like making a snow angel in the sand. Then she rested in the middle of it and set about the work of laying dozens and dozens of eggs. Scientists don’t really understa
nd exactly what happens in the minds of these turtles when they’re nesting, but observation tells us that they go into a kind of trance. Once that happens, they rarely notice any outside disturbances. They do their work with total focus.

  For this reason, I felt it was safe both for me and for this leatherback mama if I approached her to quietly observe. I lay down a few feet from her on the sand. I took a couple pictures, but mostly I stayed still and silent, watching her lay her eggs. Her big eyes were open, but she looked past me and out into the night as if I weren’t even there.

  After about an hour and a half, she finished, gently covered the clutch of eggs with sand, and slowly made her way into the ocean.

  The moment had none of the danger of my trip to the Darién, none of the fun of my time at the rescue preserve. It was a different kind of magic, peaceful and almost surreal. Yet another unforgettable experience I could carry home from Panama.

  5

  Costa Rica

  Costa Rica might be small (just about an eighth of the size of California), but it’s a giant when it comes to wildlife. It’s arguably the most biodiverse country in the world, home to an estimated 4 percent of all species on the planet. Unlike so many nations with amazing wildlife to share, Costa Rica recognizes the value of its incredible natural resources and looks out for them. More than a quarter of the country is designated as national parks, forest preserves, or protected lands, and the government tries to make it possible for people to see all of it. This country has been ahead of its time in recognizing that it has a vested interest in protecting and sharing its natural beauty.

  Because of Costa Rica’s small size and diverse landscapes, it’s possible to visit tons of different ecosystems in a short time. In a week you can experience volcanoes, mountains, waterfalls, beaches, deciduous forests, cloud forests, and—my personal favorite!—epic jungles. The amazing variety of landscapes and environments lends itself to equally amazing opportunities to encounter native wildlife. And that’s what was on my mind when I arrived for the final leg of my two-month sojourn through Central and South America the summer before starting veterinary school.

  The birds alone were enough to take my breath away. In a lot of destinations, it’s easy for me to overlook the animals in the air because I am so intently focused on the reptiles and mammals on the ground. In Costa Rica, though, birds don’t take a back seat to anything, and there is zero chance of overlooking them. This is a place where the scarlet macaw, the toucan, and an otherworldly-looking green-and-blue beauty called the resplendent quetzal roam free, perching in the trees, flying overhead.

  The first time I watched a pair of scarlet macaws pass right above me and land in a treetop fifty feet away, I just stood there, eyes wide and mouth open. It was like seeing a rainbow flapping its wings. Or fire flying. Seeing a bird like that makes you rethink color in the natural world, especially for someone who, like me, grew up thinking that cardinals and blue jays are colorful, and that a robin’s breast is “red.”

  Nothing but Noise

  I snapped awake at five a.m. my first morning at the Costa Rican shore and jumped out of bed, still half asleep, taking a minute to place the source of the earsplitting sound I was hearing. It sounded the way I imagine an actual hellhound sounds: gruff, bellowing, tooth-rattling. I looked around my room, then out the window, and finally outside the door, expecting the culprit to be right there, shouting into the keyhole.

  Turns out, that noise is just part of daily life when your neighbors are a troop of howler monkeys. They weren’t right outside my door. In fact, they were about two hundred feet up in a tree about three hundred yards away. The amount of noise these guys can put out is mind-blowing. They can be in the trees a quarter mile away, and when they get going it sounds like they’re screaming straight into your ear. They are the loudest land animal in the world, capable of howling at levels that exceed 140 decibels. For reference, that’s louder than a chain saw. Louder than a gunshot. Louder than a foghorn. It’s loud enough that if you were close and had prolonged exposure, you would suffer hearing loss.

  The secret to a howler monkey being able to generate such a ridiculous amount of sound is in its anatomy. Humans and primates have what’s called a hyoid bone in our throats. In people, its main function is just to anchor the tongue. For the howler monkey, though, the bone and the air-filled structure around it work as an amplifier. A howler’s hyoid is more than twenty times larger than other, similar-sized primates’, and it’s curved to help make his every grunt, growl, and howl resonate far and wide.

  Years later, when I actually got to lay hands on one of these creatures as a veterinary student working with zoo animals, I was amazed at how huge his larynx was. Picture a pug with a softball tucked under his chin and you’ll get the idea. That one feature was out of all proportion to the size of the monkey’s body. At first glance, I thought it was some kind of massive, rock-hard thyroid tumor, but then the vet I was working with reminded me that we don’t call these monkeys “howlers” for nothing. I instantly flashed back to being rattled out of bed that first morning in Costa Rica. No doubt some distant cousin of the little guy on that exam table in Peru was at that very moment shocking the eardrums of a new visitor to his territory along the coast of Costa Rica.

  The Devil in the Boat

  One of the things I most wanted to do while in Costa Rica was witness a sea turtle release. I got my chance by volunteering at Tortuguero National Park, on the Caribbean coast. Tortuguero gets its name from the thousands of sea turtles who return there every year to nest. (In Spanish, tortuga means “tortoise.”) It’s the largest nesting site in the Western Hemisphere for green sea turtles, and also a destination for leatherbacks and loggerheads.

  Historically, a local nickname for the people who’ve been protecting these turtles for decades is los celadores—“the watchmen.” I took a boat ride out to join the volunteers who dress in dark colors and walk the black beach at night, watching over the turtles, helping tag them, measuring them, and counting their eggs. As a group, the conservation teams and volunteers don’t just do research—they also create a presence that deters the poachers who are the single biggest threat to the turtles’ survival as a species. I felt cool and purposeful and even important at the thought of being, even for a single night, one of these guardians.

  The Sea Turtle Conservancy has been working for the protection of Costa Rica’s turtles for more than fifty years. In that time, its members have helped produce a 500 percent increase in the nesting population.

  In the world of sea turtle conservation, the only thing more exciting than seeing a massive mama haul herself up on the sand to dig a hole and lay her eggs is witnessing a hatching. I was lucky enough to be there to see it happen. One minute you’re standing on a quiet beach. But under the sand, dozens of tiny babies are starting to wake up after close to two months in the ground. Mother Nature equips them with a tiny temporary tooth they use to break through their shells. Once they’re free, these little creatures (a few centimeters long and less than an ounce heavy) dig up through the sand to the surface, poking themselves out flippers first, then heads, followed by their back halves and rear legs. They orient themselves toward the moon’s reflection on the water, start madly swinging those flippers like wind-up toys, and waddle across the sand and into the sea. To help ensure their success, we even had some volunteers standing in the ocean with big spotlights to mimic the moon and guide these babies to the water. Light pollution can seriously confuse creatures driven solely by instinct—just like it confuses the insects who swarm helplessly around outdoor lightbulbs.

  Because green sea turtles lay around a hundred eggs at a time, once this process starts it snowballs, with one turtle becoming two becoming ten becoming a hundred or more, all racing toward the water. I stood on that sand completely in awe of the entire process—a witness to the world’s smallest, cutest parade, entirely conducted on pure instinct.

  Watching the turtles go, I hated to think about how few would surv
ive. From every clutch of eggs, some hatchlings never make it out of the sand. Others get disoriented and don’t find their way to the sea. If the weather isn’t warm enough, some die of exposure. And the list of animals that prey on sea turtle hatchlings even once they do reach the water is about a mile long: crabs, raccoons, lizards, crocodiles, snakes, wild cats of all sizes, boars … you name it. For a species that has just a small club of powerful predators as adults—sharks, killer whales, jaguars, and humans—the hatchlings are shockingly vulnerable until they grow several times larger. Only about one in a thousand of the hatchlings that start their lives on Tortuguero or other beaches around the world will survive to full adulthood, reached at around age twenty. The rest never have the opportunity to mature and reproduce, making it no wonder this species is endangered. Those that do, however, become quiet masters of the sea, living as long as one hundred years or more, as part of the cycle that brings these turtles back to the same stretch of Costa Rican sand year after year to mate and leave their eggs under the protection of the celadores.

  When my ferry from the park arrived back at the town dock the next morning, a small crowd was gathered around one of the tied-up boats. A fisherman, apparently the owner, stood at the edge of the water, cursing and waving his arms at something in the bottom of his boat. He leaned in, then leaped back, shouting again. I climbed onto the dock and peered down to see what the fuss was about, hoping this was an animal I could help out.