This is our dear Clementino. He is very bigand strong; he looks like a football player. He has all characteristics of a good lover: Presence, respect and tenderness.

 

Our ecological reserve has several lagoons humedal type. In other words, they are shallow with aquatic vegetation and wild herbs on the islets. Water flows gently except when there are strong rains. They are rich reserves of animal life, insects, batrachians, fish, birds, turtles and alligators.

The extension of these lagoons is not so big. They go from 100 to 300 meters of perimeter, and they are seven.

Experts on the matter (biologists, ecologists, etc.) are astonished by the great diversity that there is here, even more if they are compared to the national parks which are hundreds of square kilometers. The same thing happens with our forest which is relativelysmall if compared to the huge reserves of national forest, but the variety of ours in terms of wild species of plants (not trees) is difficult to overcome.

In relation to birds, we are proud of saying that we are the best “A la carte Restaurant” for the birds of the area; here they will find a broad menu.

This is why it is frequented all day long by a large variety of birds. Some of them like the menu and the environment so much that they stay here permanently. This gives lovers of bird watching a great time here in Asis. A problem that people who go to national parks for bird watching face is that there is a big amount of birds, but it is very hard to watch them, either because they are dispersed, come out only at certain times or people have to walk a lot to see a few. Alligators live here freely.

They are of the ²Caiman crocodiles” species which is smaller than the ²Crocodiles acutus”. It is not a natural aggressor of people. They become aggressive only if they are rounded up or attacked. They are unsociable, and in order to have visual contact with them, you have to do it when they are taking the sun or at night with a flashlight to locate them by the shine in their eyes. Since one of our goals is the education and the ethical awareness in relation to ecology, we needed to have some specimens more visible and available for the lectures that we give about this species. This is why we decided to choose one of our lagoons humedals to confine some specimens, but don’t you think that we went hunting them in a natural environment, they were rescued from an alligator zoo breeding place that was abandoned by its owners. A friend of ours had the humanitarian responsibility of picking them all up. He gave us six with the consent of the MINAE ( Ministerio del Ambiente, Energía y Minas).

The habitat from where we brought them was of about 8 square meters, and 10 animals were living there. Now 6 of them have about 1200 square meters.Four females and two males were born in captivity. When they came here they had their first contact with a natural environment with plants, fish, turtles, etc. It was the first time that they swam and dived. We were happy of giving them a possibility to restart their lives, and if they were able to think, they would be very proud of the contribution that people are making to protect their species and the environment.

 

Not very far away from Asís, in Ciudad Quesada, in the building of a radio station that is next to some empty lots with wild vegetation, a raccoon looked for protection in a hole in the construction site to give birth to its off springs. Two female and one male were born. However, being still very young, a month old approximately, the mother was killed by a car when she was looking for food for its babies.

The three little raccoons were saved by the friendly hands of the radio station staff. Nobody knows how many days they spent without the mother and without any food. We suppose that it was five days because they were emaciated. The MINAE (The minestry in charge of protecting wildlife in Costa Rica) allowed Proyect Asís to pick them up, and take care of them as they grow up and then send them back to their natural habitat.

Magdalena picked them up in Ciudad Quesada, and took them for a checkup to a veterinarian’s where they were given coconut milk to rehydrate them. When Jaime, days later, came back from Heredia to the Asís quarters, he took care of them. He is a vet and he has experience with motherless animals. First of all, it was necessary to give them a bath which they obviously disliked, but once Nancy dried them up, they cheered up again. We started feeding them with a lactic formula for children combined with soybean and honey, plus yogurt, lactobacillus acidophilus and egg yolk.

We used a bottle during the first days, and later we changed their diet to a more solid one by adding fish and food for puppies.
Due to the different responsibilities thatNancy and Jaime have in Heredia, which is 100 Kms from Javillos, they had to take the raccoons to the apartment that they have there. For this reason a cage-cradle was made to ease their transportation and stay in a place that was inappropriate for wild animals. By the way, this place full filled the requisites of comfort and hygiene. Jaime designed it according to his knowledge of animal behavior and raccoons in particular. He knows them very well since he had raised some before. They spent one week in Heredia and another in Javillos.

Here in the ecological reserve of Proyect Asís they would climb up a vine from their cage-cradle to the second floor and to the roof where they had small pools with water to play with.

When they were about 3 months old, they were allowed more freedom to start exploring the natural world. They were taken to a river and other rural areas to walk around. They did not travel to Heredia anymore, were give facilities to organize themselves according to their instincts and to begin their lives as autonomous raccoons. One of the first facilities given to them was to move from the house to one big tree that is in front of it. For this purpose a bamboo cane of about 15 meters was placed.

It was beautiful and symbolic to see them moving out because it was the moment when they started their road to freedom and to begin with the tasks that God has set for them by means of the natural laws that rule their behavior.

They began to sleep and play on that tree. Their living habits became nocturnal just like their species. We work with them during the day for obvious reasons.

The three of them have established a nucleus of mutual support. Since they lack maternal guidance, they move like a single unit and are codependent just like humans.

This makes them different from other raccoons that have been raised isolated and for which has Jaime played the mother’s role creating a dependence towards him; not only in relation to their hygiene, nourishment, and protection but also in their learning of things like walking through the forest, climbing up and down trees, looking for crabs under river stones and digging to find worms. Jaime used thick leather gloves to play with them in order to teach them how to defend themselves, specially their vital parts like the neck.

What he could not teach them was that there are unethical people that can harm them. As they were growing up and feeling more confident, they were encouraged to look for the road to the forest just as it happened.

Nowadays, our little ones come home to eat at night, but during the day, they are in the woods sleeping. We have seen some climbing up trees of about 20 meters high, and they sit down comfortably on the bases of the branches.

Even though they are not as dependent on Jaime, as the ones that were raised individually, they look for him at night because they know that if Jaime is up, he will give them a candy (for raccoons), and they play with his fingers by grabbing them with their little hands and giving them small bites.

They will leave for the woods one day and, here in Asís, we all expect that life gives us a new chance to save more animals and feel the same love for life.