I arrived 1 month ago in the belly of the Bolivian Amazon jungle, where I put up with biting insects, clothes that are never dry - let alone clean, mud and foot fungus so that I might help care for rescued wildlife. By the way it´s worth it 20 times over.
I start each day with my share of camp chores and then a solo 45 min walk along a trail flooded ankle to waist deep. My charge and I then greet each other with enthusiastic scratching and licking, I the former and he the latter. Yaguaru is a 120 kg male jaguar, rescued from a family basement a few years ago, to come here for a better life. He is playful, beautiful and can stop your heart with one significant look.
My goal here is to get him excercising more, and today marks the completion of 2 new runners or zip lines allowing him access to the river where he loves to swim. The project took much of the last 3 weeks and so a few big wigs came out today to see him swim for the first time in 6 months, buuuuuuut he decided not to swim. I suspect he was a bit excited by all the attention. He has not been "walked" outside his enclosure these past 6 months as he put a few extra holes in a previous volunteer. It´s okay though, he was French.
Ru and I struggle daily with the Alpha Male thing. He seems to think that having all those pointy bits, while being slightly quicker and larger trumps my larger brain and oposable thumbs.....I´ll keep you posted on how it all unfolds.
He has jumped me a couple times and has gnawed on the hand that feeds him fresh meat, but always playfully. I can make him yawn, he lets me pick ticks from his head(but nowhere near his abdomen), he eats grass from my hand ever so delicately which aids in digestion or make him vomit and he is quite afraid of lizards. He will never be released but maybe, just maybe, if he can learn to be outside with people without jumping on them too much, he will be "walked" again. Maybe.
I also spent 10 very excellent days "walking" with an 80 kg female jaguar named Amira, but that is a story for another day. It was really cool though.
Some of the things I am expected to do in an average day include;
Motivating a jaguar to run and jump.
Discourage a jaguar from running and jumping.
Anticipating when they are likely to pounce on you or to go running off down the trail, dragging you after a lizard or wild pig in the bushes.
Understanding how their behaviour will likely change given the change in wind, rain or temperature.
Finding new places to hide their food to encourage them to "hunt".
Finding new ways to make their day more interesting.
Finding crickets that one of our sick monkeys would like to eat.
Going out at night to retrieve a stuborn and "in heat" puma and her two handlers.
There is very little training and no literature to peruse but luckily these sort of things come quite naturally to someone who has spent time working with salmon such as I have.
Alas I have spent most of this month with two jaguars but also a bit of time with a puma and two ocelots. In all that time I have received two wounds and both of them from a miserable Macaw that I feed in the ealy morning. I am secretly hoping for a better scar which I can share with people as I get older. "Yep", I would say, pointing at the scar across my chest and neck. " That was a jaguar what got me back in 2010". Then I could retell the story over a pint of ale.
I have about 3 more weeks that I plan to help here before moving on. There is lots to do and volunteers have dropped from over 70 to about 30 in the last 4 weeks. More work but more rewards.
Until next time. Cheers from Ambue Ari, Bolivia, Roy
