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Love...and the Will to Live

6/8/2013

2 Comments

 
PictureThe family that rescued Katira, and cared for her for nine days.
     On Friday afternoon I got a call about a howler monkey whose mother had been electrocuted on uninsulated power lines - something that happens all too frequently when they mistake the lines for vines.  The campesino family that rescued her said she was drinking very little, and they were concerned that the inside of her mouth was burned.
     My initial reaction was that I couldn't help, because I have no experience with burns.  And then, in a very "Celestine Prophecy" moment, I remembered that our future neighbor Mark, who is an ER veterinarian, had arrived the day before on a five week vacation...

PictureRoad sign 3 miles outside of town by a one-lane bridge.
     Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m. Mark, Alexa (my Tica neighbor), and I headed for Katira...a town so small it isn't in the GPS or on the folding paper road map of Costa Rica.  The drive took almost four hours through beautiful countryside and past Arenal volcano, which I hadn't seen before.
     Katira (named after the town) had burns on her face, scalp, tail, stomach, and one hand.  The pain in her eyes and sad noises she made were heart-breaking, and she couldn't open her mouth wider than the tip of an eyedropper...Mark believed there were adhesions from the burns, and that she might even have lost her tongue.

       The whole family bid Katira farewell at the door - except for the father, who wasn't present during our brief visit because he was afraid he would cry when she left.  Hopeful that we could save this baby who had probably been nursing when her mother was electrocuted, and bravely lived for nine days with the wonderful family that rescued her, we drove the four hours home to San Ramon...after a stop for pain medication (Tramadol) in the first town with a pharmacy.  
     We know the odds are against us all...
Picture
The family says good-bye to Katira.
Picture
Katira's burns nine days after-the-fact.
Picture
With Mark, an ER vet from Wisconsin.
2 Comments
Barbara Randall
6/9/2013 10:42:04 am

God Bless you all for trying! Maybe with pain medication she will be able to accept nourishment! "When will we ever learn"!

Reply
Joe Q Jackson
2/19/2017 10:00:32 pm

Tramadol? Poor baby! Not Morphine?

Reply



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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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