Oonagh and the Kinkajou

My internship/service learning assignment while abroad is at Tueri, the veterinary wing of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, which is in the neighboring city of Cumbaya. I have some mixed feelings about having my work so far from home, and of the city of Cumbaya itself, but my post will be focusing on Tueri.

My volunteer work is in the wild animal department of Tueri – the police bring them wild animals, which were either found outside of their natural habitats, or in need of medical attention. The other day, a policeman came with a snake that was found in a banana shipment.

My work at Tueri is mostly focused on feeding and cleaning up after the animals. This got quite boring after a while, but I’m always excited by the new animals brought into Tueri. Some of the more interesting animals I’ve seen are an ocelot, a toucan (both the ocelot and toucan were mean), and a couple of kinkajous!

The kinkajou is a nocturnal animal, and very cute. I believe they are related to lemurs, and they look the part. In their cages, they have a cardboard box full of blankets for them to wrap themselves up in to doze the day away. The other day, as I was putting a bowl of food into the cage, I accidentally rattled the metal bowl on its side. A very grumpy kinkajou popped its head out from under the cardboard box. After a couple of minutes, it moved forward to investigate this disturbance (me) a little more. While it was super cute and adorable (the number of pictures of the kinkajou in my phone reflect this), it was very unhappy to have been woken up and snarled at me several times.