After the loss of Silva, Parker (the most recent baby Langur to arrive) was introduced to our young Langur troop, unfortunately, Evie one of the elder female Langurs in the troop was not so happy about the new addition to the troop. In the mean time, Puck, the eldest males in the troop was starting to show his prowess and attempted various attacks on both John and one of our staff members. A decision was made to redesign the pens and separate Puck and Evie as a couple and place them in one pen and remaining Langurs would stay together with Parker the new arrival who has settled in well and playing with the rest of the group. With the exception of Parker, the remaining Langurs are all still sharing some time with Puck and Evie, one by one as they visit the neighbouring pen.
We are regularly asked why do we give 24 hours attention to the baby rescued monkeys ? Why don’t we let a female monkey take care of the baby-sitting ? We did the test with Dixie, letting Ruby be her adopting mother. During the day, Dixie stayed happily in the pen with Ruby, Dennis and Lavender, while both Dixie and Ruby would spend the night in John’s bedroom. They got along very well, Ruby was happy taking care of her little one. Although in the middle of the night, Dixie would start screaming, John’s first believed Dixie was having nightmares, maybe recalling of the separation of her mother. But we finally understood that Dixie tried to suckle Ruby and Ruby was not having any of it so told little Dixie off. Despite Dennis being frightened of Dixie at the outset, we decided to take them both in John’s bedroom for the night. They are now great friends and Dennis is gaining more and more confidence. Lavender is happy to have a new friend to play with. Dixie still requires extra attention and food, but we are increasing the time she spends with her friends in the pen.
We have been busy getting ready for the monsoon. Changing damaged roof panels, installing polyethylene sheets on the side of each pen, adding extra barrels where monkeys can rest and keep warm and dry away from the rain. We also had to change some damages tiles on the Tree House roof as the wild Langurs that visit the area have a tendency of breaking them.
Blossom, the most recent canine arrival found a new home where he will get plenty of attention and have children to play with. As a reminder, just a few months back, due to long term mange, Blossoms’ head, neck and tail was totally hairless. He stayed at the Assagao rescued centre for some time but no-one was interested in adopting him. After curing his skin problem, his hair grew back beautifully.
When publishing an advertisement for adoption in the newspaper, we received a hundred calls in a day. It is sad to see how many people are interested in having a full breed dog despite the amount of sweet rescued dogs are waiting for adoption at the centre.
Baldrick, Manuel and Percy had a fight recently. Manuel ended up with a minor wound on the cheek while Percy had a deeper injury on his hand which required stitches. Baldrick has been contesting the authority in the Pen which we suspect is the reason for the attack, we guess that he attacked either Manuel or Percy and the second one came to rescue one another. Because the three monkeys are not being physically handled by the staff anymore, we had to catch Percy in a trap in order to bring him to the vet.
While Percy was recovering in a separate pan, Manuel was left alone with Baldrick and after a successive fight, we had no other choice than isolating Baldrick from the group and letting Percy back in with Manuel while he recovers. Papa, one of our resident cats developed an abscess which required a surgical intervention. A few teeth needed to be removed but after a couple of weeks of convalescence, he was happy to be loose with the eleven other cats at the Tree House.
