Trying to save small animals

And failing miserably every time! WHyyyy?? I just want them to live 😦

Poor little buddy

In the spring I picked up a dead (I thought) baby barn swallow and it MOVED so I got gloves, and moved it to a nest…Where it later died. ARGH.

Last week I found a dead mouse in a bucket of mine in my locker, so I dumped it out onto the muck pile and again…it MOVED. ARGH.

So I dithered greatly about it and ended up putting it in a small tissue box with some rags. It still wasn’t really moving, so I rode and then put Oats away and checked on it. Still not moving. I microwaved the rags and put it back with the warm rags and that seemed to really perk it up!

I caught a little video of my little mousie friend, but sadly the next day it had died. It climbed out of the tissue box when I left and fell off the bench and died 😦

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZB4kMzvAy28

Why do I try? Because somebody has to, even though they never make it…

Saving the birds

Yesterday was a pretty crazy day- so many incidents with wildlife!

In the morning I was working (as per usual now that I am working from home during the pandemic) in my living room, and BANG! A poor little hummingbird just splattered hard against my patio glass door. 😦 I was instantly up and looking for it, and it did not look good…It was flat on the ground, all its feathers splayed out, not moving.

Sitting up, but very dazed.

I yelled for my husband and we gathered the poor little hummer up on a book and I brought it some sugar water. I watched it (during a meeting for work, ha) and after about 15 minutes it started actually looking around at things, and then it perked up and flew off! 🙂 SO relieved. I was very worried about the little dude.

And then after work I had some time and the weather was pretty nice, so I went for a walk with my husband and dog, and I put my bunny out in my backyard for some fresh air. I went to check on him after the walk and to my surprise, a racoon was digging in our raised gardens!! I yelled at it and he took his sweet-ass time sauntering off, and I was pretty worried because my RABBIT was still out there too! Sheesh. Except…My dog saw the racoon and ran straight at it barking like Hound of the freaking Baskervilles…And scared the bejeezus out of my poor rabbit! He was terrified! He took off, so I had to chase the racoon off, catch the rabbit (thankfully contained in my yard) and chase off my dog from the raccoon. Chaos!!

There was fluffs of fur flying everywhere, so we were concerned that the racoon had somehow scuffled with bunny, but nobody had any injuries. Tucker bun did have a bloody spot on his foot, so we cleaned it up but there was no scrape or anything there today, so who knows?? He was exhausted after that, poor bun bun.

And THEN I had a jump lesson at the barn, which was great. I finished up and went to sweep out the crossties and found this:

Poor little thing!

Yeah, a baby bird kicked out of its nest. Not again 😦 I thought it was definitely dead, so I went to sweep it with the broom and it MOVED. OMG. I freaked out, called my husband, and put gloves on and picked it up. It moved so weakly… I couldn’t put it back into the nest it fell out of (in the window-well of a locked locker, behind a grate where the window was) so I found another barn swallow nest inside the barn, got a step ladder and kind of tossed the little baby up there. Hoping for the best for it!! I hope it survives.

So, that was a very exciting and emotional day for me. It’s so hard when it’s wildlife animals…I feel so bad for them. I want to help!!

Peru step 2: Iquitos and the Amazon jungle

Fresh off a Radiohead concert and the intensely dry heat of Lima, we hopped on a plane and flew to Iquitos. There, we would get picked up by our driver and escorted to a boat. The boat would then drive us 1.5 hours into the Amazon, to Muyuna Lodge, where we would spend the next 3 nights/4 days.

The lodge

I was tired, so tired by this time. We got to Iquitos (it’s a real frontier town, ha) and it was surprisingly cool but muggy. The boat ride wasn’t bad actually, loud and quite long but went quickly. The Amazon goes on forever…It’s stunning to think of it.

We pulled up to Muyuna Lodge and got settled. It’s a good lodge, nothing fancy but everything you need and nothing you don’t. Safe, clean and accessible. We even started our excursions that day, at 3pm after lunch. It started pouring rain, but we suited up and went into the jungle for our first jungle walk (I would later kind of dislike jungle walks. Too many mosquitoes, like clouds of them, you never saw any animals, and it was so muddy and wet it was a struggle to slog anywhere.)

It was kind of eh. We returned to our cabin, and passed out until dinner, which startled the heck out of us. WTF why is it dark out now?? After dinner we went on a caiman hunting excursion! I loved this, and we got to hold a baby caiman and then let it go. They were SO CUTE and strangely dry.

The next morning (and every morning is an early one, breakfast at 6:30 am and excursions at 7:15am) we zipped out to visit river dolphins in the Amazon, and go for a swim. It was so neat! We also saw a few monkeys and a ton of sloths. Wow!!

Lunch back at the lodge – and I have to say, the food at the lodge was great! Tons of variety, as much as you want to eat and I was never unhappy with it. The only issue I ad was that a lot of it was very egg-heavy, or if not eggs, mayonnaise? Neither of which I eat, ha. Oh well, there was ceviche, lomo saltado, beef, pork, stuffed peppers, stir frys, salads, potatoes, all the fresh Amazonian fruit you could eat on tap, good breakfast options (yogurt being my chief demand, ha) and much more. There was even desserts!

We had so many excursions and outings- three a day, actually. Morning, after lunch and after dinner. We even went fishing for piranhas and we each caught one! I was exhausted!! We’d just crash after the lunch one, after a vigorous game of ping-pong, ahha. No TV, no internet, no cellphones, no news and no problems.

Loved it. Though by the end, I was tired of the jungle (it was quite rainy haha) and mosquitoes, I do highly recommend checking out Mayuna Lodge. Three nights and four days is just perfect. 🙂