Six FCF members made this trip into a remote region
of the Ecuadorian rainforest to Playa de Oro Reserva de
Tigrillos . It was a wonderful trip, we had lots of fun and
got some work done at the reserve too. We had 6 people on this trip;
Leann Montgomery, Grace Lush, CJ Bakker, Sandra and Richard Nabetta, and
myself.  We all brought lots of supplies to donate to the reserve and
village. I had a metal ice chest filled with vet supplies that FCF
member Lisa Padula donated and I bought a lot of tools and building
supplies in Quito with FCF donation money. Grace donated a ton of
stuff--a 3 foot long solar panel and power pack, battery operated drill,
a battery operated saws-all or hand saw, lots of hand tools, toys and
supplies for the village school and daycare, outfits for the kids
marimba dance troop, mud boots for the kids, I can't even remember what
else she brought, it was a lot. We are hopeful that the solar panel
along with the power pack will be able to operate a small refrigerator
to help with food or medicine storage. It did charge up the tool
batteries just fine, we used the tools all week. CJ, Leann, Sandra and
Richard also brought some various items for the reserve and village
also. Richard is a dentist, so he brought toothbrushes and toothpaste
for the whole village. CJ brought along a satellite phone to test out
from the reserve also. It did work from the reserve, but she only could
call within Ecuador, because she did not know the proper country codes
to call another country. So she called our hotel in Quito and they got a
big kick out of being called from the jungle. She also called our van
driver in Quito and let him know we were all ok, and find out what time
he would be picking us up on our return trip. He said he could hear her
loud and clear and was amazed. So perhaps on our next trip, we can try
it again and see if we can call outside of the country. It should work
if it was able to call out at all, just a matter of learning how to use
the technology.

We toured the Playa de Oro village when we first arrived, and I was to
inspect chicken coops during the tour. The village has been having some
problems with wild cats and other predators coming into the village and
stealing free roaming chickens at night. Chickens are fairly new to the
village, so this is all new to them on how to deal with predators and
protect their chickens. But, it is a very important issue for them to
understand, how to live with predators peacefully and not to make the
situation worse by possibly starting to kill predators that enter the
village to protect their chickens. We want to provide knowledge to them
that they can solve this problem by better protecting their chickens,
and not by killing animals that may come looking for an easy meal. I
think they really do not like killing animals unless it is to be used
for a specific purpose such as food, and they are very open to learning
how to deal with such problems.  Rosa and Earthways has been working on
the getting the village to build better chicken coops for a few months,
and they wanted me to look over the coops they had while we were there.
I was to reward and praise the owners of very good chicken coops, to
help encourage others to build better coops. So whenever we saw really
nice chicken coops, all of our group pointed at it, stared at it, took
pictures, and made a big fuss over them. Proud chicken coop owners stood
by their coops to have their pictures taken of them. I left some money
with the village council to hand out to the owners of the best chicken
coops as rewards for good work. $3 is a lot of money to them, about a
days worth of wages, so reward money went a long way. I also left
materials and supplies for those who needed better coops and could not
afford the materials. The reward money and materials were provided by
FCF donations, as this is an important part of our educating the
villagers about co-existing with the cats and protecting them. It is an
action that instills the belief in them that the cats are very important
to us, which makes the cats very important to them as well.  The village
is organizing a community work day to use the supplies I left behind to
help get chicken coops built for anyone that owns chickens and needs a
coop. So when we return in November, everyone should have good chicken
coops, and this problem will be resolved. Once they all have good
chicken coops, Earthways is giving them a large amount of money for a
community project, but not until they all have good coops. I believe the
village plans to use this money from Earthways to run water lines from a
spring fed well into as many homes as they can with it.

The reserve's current ocelot resident, Missy, who was in such bad shape
when I was there in February, has improved drastically. I almost can't
believe it's the same cat, she looks so good! She put on a lot of
weight, and is now at a very good healthy weight. She is more active,
and her fur looks great. She's come a long way from living in a wooden
crate since Rosa found her this past November. I believe she had lived
in a wooden crate for 4 months by the time Rosa found her, and she had
fur missing in spots, and just was in terrible health. She still does
not care to hunt for food, but prefers a bowl of chicken meat. So we're
not sure still if she is going to be able to be released in the future.
I stood within a foot of her while she ate her meat, and she never once
hissed or growled at me. She just does not seem to have a fear of humans
that she will need to live and survive in the wild. We certainly don't
need to release a cat that will go visit the village with no fear of
humans to steal their chickens. She is still a young cat, so perhaps in
time she will "wild up".

We did get her cage enlarged on this trip, so that if she cannot be
released, she does have a larger enclosure to live in long term. We used
FCF donation money to buy the caging materials and we also had to hire a
couple guys from the village for a few dollars a day to help out. With
the daily heavy rains, it really cuts down on how much time you can work
outside productively so we needed the extra help to get the cage done
before we left. We also found out that they build a lot differently than
we do since they do not have the tools and materials available to them
like we do at home. So we had to learn their way of building cages, and
it was very interesting how they do things. They have extremely good
craftsmanship, even without modern conveniences. Of course, we also
incorporated our tools and techniques into the cage, so it was a
learning experience all the way around for everyone. It was pretty funny
for a couple of women to demonstrate to a group of men how to use a
drill and other power tools though. And some of our concepts for the
cage design were pretty far fetched to the worker men, despite the fact
that the designs are pretty standard in cages back at home.

Missy's current cage is built into a corner of the lodge building.
inside the lodge.
So for the new cage, she has a solid wood wall on the lodge side, and
the two walls we added, are made with solid rows of large bamboo canes
standing upright. So the three new walls of her cage addition are
essentially solid to give her more privacy. The fourth wall of the
existing cage wall is the  common wall to her old cage. The bamboo canes
were probably 6 to 8 inches in diameter, and not perfectly straight, so
she can see outside past the bamboo through the small cracks and gaps,
while staying concealed behind them to anyone outside. We framed up the
roof with some bamboo canes for support and fence wire, so it is
basically open to see the sky and will let the existing trees grow
through the roof. We treated the bamboo with a water sealer to help make
the bamboo last longer in the humid climate. We didn't get to see her
released into the new area, as it needed just a few finishing touches
when we left, but they will have it finished soon, and she will soon be
exploring her new private space. I suspect she will start spending a lot
of her time in that new end, since it does afford her a lot of privacy
away from people.

The little tamarin, Pico, that we took to the reserve in February was
doing very well also. He's become quite spoiled and tame to my surprise,
  as the last time I saw him, we were having to medicate him and look
after some of his wounds. So back at that time, he mostly screeched at
the mere sight of a human. It is kind of a catch-22 with him, we want to
release him, but he is a social animal and needs interaction.  So while
he is at the reserve getting healthy, the only interaction he has access
to right now is with humans. He also cannot be released alone, or troops
of other tamarins will kill him if he is alone. Rosa is planning on
looking for a roommate or two for him on our next trip to live with him
so he won't be lonely and can have the proper interaction he needs. Then
perhaps the whole little troop can be released together. He's healthier
than when I last saw him, but still needs some improvement. I left some
vitamins for him and that should help some, and we left instructions to
improve his diet. They built him a enclosure on the lodge porch, and he
loves for people to come into his cage and visit him. He would climb all
over you, talk to you, and loved to be scratched all over. Towards the
end of the week, we had given him so many treats, that he started
demanding them from us. And he can put on quite a racket if he doesn't
get his way! Enma, the lodge caretaker, called Leann his "Gringo Mama"
from Kentucky, and said that she (Enma) was Pico's "Negro Mama" from
Ecuador. He's become a very cultural little monkey I suppose.

The camera traps are having quite a bit of difficulty working in the
conditions down there. The reserve is located in an area that has been
claimed to be "the most humid place on earth". Three of the four cameras
were unoperational when I arrived. The major problem we have got to deal
with, is that the film is deteriorating while in the camera and that is
what is breaking the cameras. What happens, is that the film has a layer
of emulsifier on it, and I think that it is not rain water getting
inside the camera, but the humidity is causing the emulsifier to break
down and liquefy. Then the wet emulsifier is getting all inside the
camera, and it gets all over the spindle that rolls the film up as
pictures are taken or rewinds it. Then it gets down into the mechanical
part that turns that spindle and dries and hardens. Then the spindle
will not turn, so the camera cannot take a picture, rewind film,
nothing. It's simply causing the mechanical parts of the spindle to burn
up. Plus the pictures that have been taken are ruined. Some of the
cameras had taken pictures before breaking, so I pulled all the film out
of the cameras, and I will try to develop it. I am not very positive
that I can salvage much of the film, but we'll see.

The only way I know how to prevent this in the future, is that we should
probably take the film out of the camera after about every 10 days
whether pictures have been taken or not. We have been leaving a roll of
film in the camera until at least a dozen or so pictures have been taken
in the past. It will waste a lot of film, but the option is that
pictures will get ruined from the emulsifier breaking down and cameras
become unoperational, so that's a waste too.  Since the batteries are
not lasting long anyway, they are changing batteries about every 10-12
days anyway. So it will not be so difficult to get into a routine, every
ten days, pull out all the film, and change all batteries at the same time.

On the remaining camera, it was operating, but I caught it just in the
nick of time. Mauro brought it in the day before we left, and it had 12
pictures on it. I tried to rewind the film, but it would not rewind. I
had to go into Mauro´s tool shed, and open the camera, and manually pull
the film out. So I don't know if the film got ruined or not because of
the small cracks in the walls letting a little light in. But the same
problem was about to happen to this camera, the film was all wet, some
of the emulsifier was liquefied (so I know some pictures were definitely
lost because of that), and the spindle could not turn. But it had not
been stuck long enough to burn out the mechanical part yet. So that's
pretty much the low down on the cameras. One of our trip members, CJ,
has an electronic repair business, and she offered to take the 3 cameras
and try to repair them for us at cost. We're afraid if we sent them back
to the manufactor or elsewhere that they would be very expensive to fix.
So we thought we would give CJ an chance to get them repaired at cost
for us, and save a little money. If not, we will have to send them back
the manufactor and see what they say. CJ is pretty confident that her
company can get them repaired for us very inexpensively though, so we
are quite thankful to her for offering to try the repairs. We plan to
get them repaired and carry them back down with us in November.

I will get the film from the cameras developed in a few days, and see if
any of it can be salvaged and what we end up with pictures of. I left
the remaining camera set up near the lodge, as there is a wild ocelot
prowling around the lodge at night. We heard him calling the very first
night we arrived at the reserve, but he was so sneaky under the jungle
cover that we never caught a glimpse of him. We did see his tracks
during the day though. We heard him nearly every night. We tried to stay
awake late into the night to catch a glimpse of him with my night vision glasses
that I brought, but the sounds of the jungle nights never failed to lull
us to sleep earlier than planned every night.  We also had some sneaky
kinkajou's that would climb up to our windows at night and chatter at us
almost all night. But when we got up to try and look at them, they would
scamper away or hide from our view.

We also did a lot of fun things while at the reserve, but I will let one
of our trip members write up an article about their experience and what
it meant to them for our next edition of the FCF newsletter. We enjoyed
a nice long hiking trip to a beautiful water fall, a long cold rainy
boat ride upriver to see some unusual scenery, lots of naps in hammocks,
lots of laughter at dinner, sitting on the porch at night in the dark
playing pots and pans for drums while singing songs and dancing,
watching the village children's marimba dance troop, touring the
village, wonderful foods, funny experiences in the city and lots of
shopping in the Indian crafts markets. We had so much fun and bonded so
well, that some of the reserve staff cried when we left. It was truly a
wonderful experience, and I hope that anyone who is interested will try
to make it on our next trip in November.

Tracy Wilson
 
 

TRACY  WILSON