By Monique Pool | Director
Construction and Moving
The sloths definitely feel that something is in the air (follow The Move). After we heard in the first week of the year that the landlord wanted to have his house back, and now suddenly had a fixed deadline, we started planning. And thus the sloths must notice that something is strange, since their usual environment is changing slowly as we have started packing things in boxes. Construction is no longer moving forward at a sloth’s pace. Rapidly containers are being finished, put in place, beams are erected and floors laid. Every time we turn up at Misgunst to release sloths, we see a completely changed Sloth Wellness Center, we see our dreams materializing. And we hope the surrounding lush green trees and this center will also fulfill the dreams of the sloths. However, we still have not achieved our funding goal, despite a generous donation by Dutch Postcodeloterij.
Rescues and Releases
As always we have had many rescues and releases since our last report to you. Volunteer Wynne who has been one of the forces behind the realization of the Sloth Wellness Center had hardly arrived back from abroad when a rescue call came. So we jumped into the sloth rescue van to find a sloth clinging onto the back of a cabin of a pick-up truck. The animal was healthy and we took him with us, after I explained, using the rescue van image, the work we are doing to the son of the person who had reported the animal. Although not all of our rescues ended in successful releases we feel reasonably satisfied with what we achieved over the past months. It is hard to recognize that we cannot save all of them, because we are not always receiving animals in perfect health due to acts by humans or their dogs. But our desire to really save animals is so strong that despite the setbacks of loosing some of our rescue animals as they pass on, we remain resolved to continue to do the best we can. The first rescued sloth of 2017, succumbed to his internal lesions caused by a dog attack. We all felt very sad around this episode and such a start of our new year. But more recently things have been going much better.
Malunde
One thing that really made my day was my encounter with Malunde, a six-year old boy from Sweden, who really knows how to draw. On a holiday from Sweden, he came with his mother and sister on a release, and within 5 minutes after witnessing the release he finished a drawing of what he had seen. Malunde will not ever need a camera. His mother recently wrote to me: “Such a fantastic experience! Malunde says that he one day wants to be like you, and help animals in need.” I am sure that with a talent like he has, he will succeed in that.
Johannes
A new phase in care was achieved recently when we received our new incubators that we received from our partner Welttierschutzgesellschaft so we could provide better care to infants. And the universe had the arrival of the incubators coincide with the arrival of Johannes an infant anteater. Johannes’ mother had been shot by hunters and the most essential thing he needed was TLC from us, and a stable warm environment. He had an abscess and with the help from anteater expert Roberto and our own vet Audrey, he received treatment and has been stable ever since. Please follow our facebook page or instagram for updates on how Johannes is doing.
With our first report in 2017 to you, we want to thank you for all your support throughout 2016 and cannot wait to welcome you in our Sloth Wellness Center soon.
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