New Parakeet Arrival

Today someone dropped off a brown throated parakeet. They, like the crimson fronted parakeet, are super common here in Panama and we often get them bleached and or with their tails and wings chopped off or broken. This little guy hasn’t had any of that, in fact he doesn’t appear to ever have been a pet. But he is super slow, confused, he got up on his perch but then he fell off again. And he hasn’t eaten, although he did poop. We have no idea what could be wrong with him, but perhaps he ran into a window and was stunned or has a head or internal injury. We will have to wait and see, and hope for the best. Good luck little guy!

Another awesome video!

Some people are really awesome. Some people come here and take awesome photos and send them to us (if you have awesome photos, send them to us! paradisegardensboquete@gmail.com). Some people take awesome videos and send them to us (same, same). Some people take awesome videos, edit them together, narrate and post them on youtube and send them to us. How. Awesome. Is. That.

Click here for Awesome.

This videos a bit old… the Hyacinth Macaws (the bright blue ones) are gone. Sumi the kinkajou is gone (the animal at the very beginning of the video, yawning with her long tongue). Han Solo the squirrel monkey is gone. The particular jaguarundi in this video is gone, but we have another one, just a cub, here now. But the message is still the same. We are not a zoo, we do not buy or sell animals. We are a rescue for animals who would not make it in the wild. We welcome guests and invite them to interact with the animals when it is in the best interest of the animals to have human interaction (for example the birds that will be here forever need talking to, Sam the Moluccan cockatoo loves getting his head scratched). We release animals as soon as they are able to survive in the wild. Anyway, great video, halfthrottle, and thank you so much for sharing it with us!

The Coati Kid

Argento, the baby coati here at Paradise Gardens, checks out a volunteer's ear... nope, no grubs in there!

Just over a month ago a baby coati (a coati kid, hehe, get it??) was brought in by some local children. He was tiny and adorable. We thought he was a she and named “her” Argenta, a few weeks later we discovered our mistake and changed the name to Argento. The two kids who brought him in explained to us his story: his mother was killed for meat and eaten for dinner by our family. Our parents wanted to keep him and raise him to eat. But he’s sooo cute. I don’t want to eat him!

definitely too cute to eat! No more baby coati steaks for me.

So, his cuteness saved him. He got bottle fed here at Paradise Gardens, and now gets fruit, veggies and eggs as well as the bottle. We also take him out the ravine where he gets to run around and use his long nose to root around in the dirt for bugs and worms. Yum! His favorites are beetles, but if they’re dead, or pretend to be, he won’t touch them. He is a climber, and in fact coatis are pretty much made for climbing. They have super flexible ankles and nice long, sharp, tough claws. The claws allow them to latch onto a tree (or in Argentos case, a human leg, his favorite climbing post) and the flexible ankles allow them to climb headfirst down a tree trunk. You know the cliché story about a cat stuck in a tree and the owner calls a fireman to come get the kitty down? Well cats can’t climb down trees well because their ankles aren’t flexible enough. Our kittens here love to climb up trees (they think they can get to the birds that way, they haven’t realized that the birds are not attached to the trees and can just fly away) but then when it comes time to come down they hesitate and meow, and usually try to take one step downward and then crash/jump the rest of the way. Good thing cats always land on their feet. Actually there are two types of cat with tree-descending ankle flexibility – the margay and the Clouded Leapord. Here at PG we have a margay named Lottie, more on her later!

Anyway, back to coatis. They are super adorable. That is my opinion but not only my opinion, pretty much everyone agrees with me. Argento (and all coatis) has a long pointy snout (a nickname for coatis is hog-nosed racoon) and its flexible and moves up and down when he sniffs. Adorable! As you probably guessed from the nickname, coatis are related to the racoon. You can tell when you look at Argento from his circles under the eyes, his coloring and his striped tail, although the stripes are much more subtle than those on a racoon (although some people really can’t see the similarity and ask if he is related to an anteater… nope!).

Argento learning to climb trees in the aviary

We have a whole troupe of coatis back behind the house, they live in the ravine and sometimes come up to grab snacks from the gardens. They (and Argento) love bananas. In fact it seems that all the animals here prefer bananas. Bananas for bananas. No idea why. Someday Argento will be released behind the property so that he can join the troupe that already lives back there. Coatis in the wild nurse for about four months (Argento is only about 2 months old) and then stay with their mothers for up to two years. Males then separate from the troupe and wander solo, only joining back up with the troupe for mating. Males will also eat the baby coatis, usually the mothers defend their babies from the adult males. Since Argento has no mother to defend him from the baby-eating male coatis we will keep him here until he is no longer a baby (up to two years, when he would naturally separate from his troupe, but really we will have to wait and see just how fast he grows and he will be released when he seems ready to not only forage on his own but also to defend himself against full grown male coatis).