Out of there!

I left my job as the bird and snake keeper 3 days early. I did so as I needed to extend my Bolivian visa. It was actually a bit of a relief to have left the aviary as to be honest, I was sick of the birds. Especially the when the macaws crow in unison. That is when you hear Carolyn and or me start swearing at them to shut the f**k up!!! It's hilarious as our friends at the puma site a few meters down could hear us but I tell you what, people that we speak to do feel sorry for us. As the decibel of the crows are LOUD! Especially when you are dealing with 11 macaws.

BUT, we do have our favorite. Both Carolyn and I love Pedro, a blue macaw whom would stick out his tongue at us to let us stroke, and I think he particularly likes Carolyn as he would even lower his head for Carolyn to pet! Unfortunately he is also very possessive, being the only macaw living in a cage alone. He would protect his feeding tray whenever we come to collect it, or would climb onto the door when we attempt to enter to clean his cage. I had to smack him lightly one time with a stick to make him move!

And one thing I must say about the macaws are they are quite intelligent creatures. For example when the monkeys arrive (usually around feeding time) they would yell "al fuera!" which means "go away!", probably coz their previous keepers use to yell it out all the time. A few of them, particularly Watson and Rosa would steal the locks from us when we leave it hanging on their cage. We take 4 of the macaws out for "walks" daily, we would place them on a custom made tree branches to let them walk about. And when they are done they would actually climb down the tree branch and walk their way back to their cages!

As for my snakes, the anaconda has been shedding it's skin for the past 5 days, and I have collected a piece of it for memory. But they are so lovely, I could almost say cute as I really like watching them. For example when I took Maria Lapaz, the boar constructor out for her "walk" the other day, she would slide along until she smells another animal. Such as a big bear call Baloo. It would freeze, stick it's head up in the classic cobra pose, reading to strike. And on Friday I had to teach Gareth, my replacement from the UK, on how to handle the snake, Maria Lapaz would not let him pick her up, due to the presence of Baloo, she coil herself so tightly that we couldn't move her. I tell you it took a lot of coxing and squeezing from my part to make her move so that I could pick her up!

As for the rest of the sanctuary, I must say I did enjoy the company. It's just a pity that most of the people I got on with came later. There were of course Carolyn my aviary partner and her bf Andrew (who is a mirror image of Dave from The Office) from UK, Doctor Phil (whom had a puma originally but twisted his ankle and was made to work at the quarantine instead) from the UK, Lucas from Aussie who works at the monkey Mirador, Sam the nutter Aussie and Fransesa from Chile who works with spider monkeys, Maran the German who works with Gato the puma, Allie from UK who works with the small animals, Daniele who works with Quirky the disabled puma and finally Ximena the local Bolvian whom worked closely with Carolyn and me at the aviary.

Overall working at Inti Wasi has been an interesting experience and one which I will not forget. My advice for potential volunteers are this aren't a democracy so you may not get to work with the animal of your choice, and do check out the rest of the community to see if you would get on with them, watch out for the alpha males (in our case... ISRAELIS!!!!!!!) and ALWAYS wear long sleeves to protect yourself from the savage sand flies!