SPIDER MONKEY R & R (Rehabilitation and Release)
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The New Cages Are Finished!

8/24/2013

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Viewed from our front door.
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Viewed from upper lot. Old cages on left.
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Viewed from upper lot. New cages.
      It took months longer than I anticipated, but the carport and cages above it are finally finished (although both new cages still need another climbing tree or two).  
     The carport has electricity and water. There's a large slop sink against the wall to Paul's "bodega" or storage shed, and a septic tank under the carport that services the monkey cages and slop sink.
     The cage has four separate areas.  When you come up the steps, the door is in the middle and opens into a hallway that's the human cage, with the monkey cages on either side.  At the end of that hallway is a door to the transfer area, which has pulley-operated doors to both large cages...that way Paul can move a monkey into the transfer/holding location before he washes their cage.  The human and transfer cages are two-thirds the height of the other cages, so Lolita can actually climb and play above them.  Chiquito's cage is a rectangle, so he can't hang out over the human or transfer cages.  He's potentially too dangerous as a three-and-a-half year old male to give him, and the long reach of his arms and tail, more than one wall in common with human occupants.
     Come December and the dry season, we'll try to find an older female spider monkey to keep Lolita company, and Chiquito "entertained."  The baby howler monkeys might also be ready to spend their afternoons in the isolation cage beside Lolita.
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Lolita's cage is on the left.
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The human cage is in the middle.
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Chiquito's cage is on the right.
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    Picture
    In the jungle with the monkeys.

    Michele Gawenka 

       Jane Goodall has always been my hero, and working with primates an aspiration.  Africa wasn't in the cards the summer I turned 16, when my parents offered to send me to volunteer,  and there was only one class (in physical anthro-pology) when I wanted to study primatology in college.  
         Decades later my husband and I retired in Costa Rica, and this is our journey with spider (and howler) monkeys. 

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