I've just had the most bizarre experience ever. A vet pal of mine Sheradan Harvey is here to volunteer in Iquitos for a month, & her friend Jeremiah Alley decided to come down to Peru to film a pilot documentary about vets helping animals around the world. So for the last 10 days Sheradan & I have been prancing about in front of the cameras trying to look like movie stars. Afraid I failed badly, but Sheradan did actually look relaxed & beautiful, well except for that time when she was really ill & the film crew ran after her as she was racing to the toilet to vomit! Poor kid! Nothing is sacred if it makes for entertaining tv.
We had some crazy experiences with the film crew. They came to Belen market & helped catch stray dogs for the mobile neuter clinic, & they got some awesome footage of Ricardo fearlessly catching stray dogs. Poor Sheradan was feeling sick BEFORE we walked through the meat market at Belen (our neuter clinic is above the meat market), but the smell of dead & rotting animals & the sight of various body parts was enough to turn her stomach inside out. She lost her breakfast & any inclination to ever eat meat again.
We took the crew out to INRENA (government holding facility for confiscated wildlife) & saw the horrible conditions including an ocelot that had been in captivity for 4 years & in a cage the size of a small dog crate for the last 2 years. This cage had NEVER been cleaned & this poor creature couldn't walk or barely even turn around. Good news though, the excellent guys at ZooPeru (www.zooperu.com) designed a cage 200 TIMES bigger & we all pitched in with some donations & got to work building an awesome spacious cage in the jungle. Volunteer horticulturist Al from San Diego Zoo created a mini jungle for the ocelot to prowl about in. The ocelot's reaction was heartwarming when we put him in his new cage, he explored, he sniffed, he WALKED for the 1st time in 4 years. Then when he found his water bowl which had been dug into the ground, he drank for 5 full minutes. After using his paw to flick out several leaves that had fallen into the water he lowered himself down & he squeezed his whole body into that water bowl & lay contentedly in his new swimming pool.
Animal charities always need funds but if anyone reads this & is in the position to donate money, please consider ZooPeru as this organisation really needs financial help to get wildlife out of horrendous conditions, & hopefully one day back into the wild where they belong.
