Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Ok, so there weren't any tigers but there were four lions (actually six, after the birth of two cubs), and a paddington bear look-alike who scaled the walls of his enclosure like a mini MacGyver. Only in Ecuador (or South America generally) could you volunteer to work so closely with these types of animals. I refer to the last two weeks spent at the Santa Marta Animal Rescue Centre. In previous posts I've erroneously referred to this place as an animal sanctuary, which it's not. Tucked away on a dairy farm and reached via a very bumpy ride in the back of a truck to high above the small town of Tambillo, this place works closely with the Ecuadorian police to rescue animals, many of which have suffered some form of abuse or have been kept illegally in domestic homes. If possible, once the animals have been rescued and often brought back to good health, the centre prepares them for release into the wild or at least to rehabilitation centres or zoos.

A quick tour of the place on our first day confirmed the type of work the centre does. There's Barbosa, a majestic ex-circus lion with one cloudy blue eye, blinded after it was whipped. There's Brenda, a beautiful jaguar that despises humans after her 'owner' continually poked and prodded her so she would growl for snap-happy tourists. You can see the animosity in her eyes as she stares you down while pacing in her enclosure, there's no way you'd come out of that cage alive! Then there's the amazing Galapagos turtles, one of which had his shell used as a shooting target, and by shooting I mean with a gun. And everybody loves the always-energetic Coatis that crawl up and kiss you on the neck, but you can't help but notice the one missing an eye. He lost his eye when his 'owner' got impatient and used it as a cigarette stub.

These stories were just a few of the terrible accounts we heard. There are other types of sad though, not the out-right abuse kind, but the stories of animals so far domesticated that they are beyond help and will never be released back into the wild. These animals include two woolly monkeys. Both arrived separately having been fed with bottles and kept in nappies. One even puts his hands over his face like a crying baby to get attention. There's also Leo and Pumana, two beautiful pumas that were kept as pets and can be pat through their enclosure just like domestic cats but cannot be contacted directly, as their idea of 'playing' could kill or seriously injure you - they are pumas after all. Then there are the countless talking birds, nick-named the 'hola birds'. They will never be released into the wild purely because they could threaten whole ecosystems by introducing Spanish/English words to natural habitats.

So it was an eye-opener from the first day and my first 24 hours was a mixed bag. Before cleaning out the mammals’ enclosures, I was an accidental witness to a donkey being slaughtered for the sake of a lion, something that happens a couple of times a week here. Luckily I didn’t have to be part of the machete-armed team that carved it up, as nobody has to kill an animal if they don’t want to at Santa Marta. I was then on ‘cub watch’, making sure the two cubs that were born hours after we arrived made it through the night. The centre owner was concerned they wouldn’t because they were the offspring of a circus lion which may have been inbred but, two weeks later, they are still going strong and the plan is for them to be airlifted to a nearby animal rehabilitation centre. I can’t say I’ve ever approached a new mother lioness in the middle of the night with a torch before, but I’ll tell what, you she will roar if you get too close to her cubs (which I had to in order to see they were still breathing). Now that was a tad scary!

During the week we’d work from 8am-1pm and then 4pm-6pm and had weekends off after feeding the animals on Saturday mornings. The days were long and the breaks cherished, particularly after sometimes hours of physical work deconstructing cages or lugging buckets of puma poo from their enclosure to a waste-pit 400m away (that’s some heavy shit…). We were lucky to have two lovely roommates - Iza from Poland and Andrea from Portugal - to share laughs, recipes and beers with. Iza was particularly taken by the popular Australian dish of ‘fairy bread’ – I’ll call it a dish (bread, butter and sprinkles). Bec and I produced it on ‘cake night’, a Thursday night centre ritual.

The highlights? I definitely had a few favourite animals - both woolly monkeys and the amazing Galapagos turtles, which were surprisingly full of personality and loved a rub on the chin. The contact had with the pumas was a once in a lifetime experience too. We also had a weekend in Banos, a gorgeous little town hidden in a valley three hours from Tambillo with a reputation for massage therapy, so you can guess what went down there. On one of our last days we had to say goodbye to around 45 animals, most of them birds but some of them a fair bit bigger. One lovely memory I have is of the delighted smile on local cab driver Danilo’s face when he was recruited to help an eight-man team heave a sleeping (tranquillised) lion up to his cab which was that day loaded not with people, but a zoo-worthy cargo. Imagine passing that taxi on the highway, another only-in-South-America moment!

Of course there were the downsides too, caring for animals you knew had not long to live, such as rabbits and guinea pigs, often menu items for the animals. Bec and I had a morning of chopping up the bottom end of a guinea pig we’d fed the day before. But I guess the snapper turtle we were preparing it for had to eat something, just like the lions, jaguar and pumas. We also volunteered to take shifts feeding a very sick rabbit that had contracted an infection during pregnancy and were there at 2am when she decided to fly the coup and go to bunny heaven, us still holding her. Then there was the misogynistic macaw, ‘Evil bird’, as named by previous volunteers. He hated woman and would attack any female that came near him. Evil bird, however, had no issues with men or police, and police sometimes have to drive their car a little way up the driveway before getting in, in order to get away from the bird, which always wants to come too. Maybe the police saved Evil bird from a wicked female owner, who knows?!

So you can see, Santa Marta is an experience in itself, so many charismatic animals with different personalities. I would recommend it to any animal lover who is willing to work hard and doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty…very dirty!