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Chiquito's First Surrogate Mother Visits

3/17/2012

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Purple pin = San Ramon, Green pin = Siquirres
     Chiquito's first surrogate mother came to visit today.  She took the bus from Siquirres to Palmares, where her aunt lives - a trip that takes almost four hours without any stops.  Coincidentally, though, Palmares is just about ten minutes from San Ramon on the Pan American Highway!
      It was wonderful to meet Maria.  And using Alexa as a translator, I was able to fill in some missing pieces of the puzzle.
      Both Chiquito and Lolita were orphaned when their mothers were killed for food.  Theoretically meat is meat, but the ultimate ecological price is higher when a species is wild, endangered and reproduces very slowly.

      Chiquito was orphaned at about 8 days of age in March of 2010.  Not knowing where  to take him, MINAET asked Maria, a campesino woman without any children, to raise him.  He had no fur, fit in her cupped hand, and drank milk from an eye dropper.  Born around March 20, Chiquito is now turning two.
      MINAET gave Lolita to a neighboring family when she was orphaned.  Probably born in September of 2011, she was small and malnourished when we took her.  Her poop was white and looked like the 2% milk she was drinking, with a few white chunks.  Within a day of being switched to Isomil, a soy infant formula, Lolita was pooping mini tootsie rolls. 
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Maria offers Chiquito the red grapes she brought him.
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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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