Bathing Baby Howler Monkeys. Venecia and Marisol take a shower in the kitchen sink.
Spider Monkey R & R (Rehabilitation and Release) has branched out – pun intended – to the rescue of orphaned howler monkeys.
Enter Venecia and Marisol, guesstimated to be about six months old and two-and-a-half months old, respectively.
Venecia was found on a road in the small town of Venecia. She had cuts above one eye, on her arm, and at the base of her tail which have all healed nicely without intervention, and she’s been an easy keeper since she arrived.
Weaned or at least refusing goat or soy milk formula, she’s a hearty eater and has gained weight steadily on fruit and lettuce.
She has been sleeping through the night in a cage in our bedroom since she arrived a month ago, and getting her exercise on my deck plants.
Marisol comes from the interior town of Puerto Viejo (there are two towns with that name in Costa Rica) where her mother was shot, and she’s named after the campesino woman who raised her for a month.
She still drinks formula and refusing fruit, and is much more demanding. We wear her 24/7 or she cries, but she too sleeps through the night…between us in bed.
Both of these monkeys will eventually be released from our property, which borders a river and hundreds of hectares of secondary forest where wild howlers live.
In the meantime, we get our cuteness fix on a regular basis, and bath time is a favorite (for us, anyway).
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Written by Michele Gawenka. Michele explains that: “Jane Goodall has always been my hero, and primates have always been my passion. But Africa wasn’t in the cards when my parents offered to send me to volunteer the summer I turned 16, and there was only one class (in physical anthropology) when I wanted to study primatology in college. The pieces of the puzzle fell into place decades later when my husband and I retired early in Costa Rica, and this is our journey with spider monkeys.”
You can visit Michele’s website at www.SpiderMonkeyRehab.com and check out The Ten Monkey Rules and the Spider Monkey Trivia.
Please Help Michele Rescue Monkeys Like Lolita and Angel!
It’s clear that Monkey Mom Michele and Monkey Dad Paul Gawenka are doing this for the love these incredible monkeys – it certainly is not for the money which they have been spending to try and provide an environment where they can rest and recover before they are released…
After we published our first article in this series, I and a few other VIP Members paid some money into Paul Gawenka’s PayPal account (pgawenka@yahoo.com) to help with the costs for a new enclosure…
Michele and Paul don’t have some fancy ‘charity’ that you can contribute to but they’ve given us their personal guarantee that every penny that you may give goes towards helping the animals – they don’t want a dime for themselves – so please log into your PayPal account and follow my lead and send them a US$100 to pgawenka@yahoo.com
Andrew Makarik
to@welovecostarica.comAndrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.
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