News Updates

April 2006 - A great friendship; rehab for monkey "thieves"

Brownie the dog and crow friend.

A message within the photos. A great friendship. All the three crows we rescued grew not to fly away but be with us as our own family members. All the other animals like them. The crows take rides on their backs and enjoy the whole situation. The crow that is considered a bad omen in India has proved them wrong by making friends with all. They show their intelligence and receive visitors with a peck on their cheek. Our crows like biscuits the most.

We have released 330 parrots so far but none stay with us although we tended them when they were very young. But we get great satisfaction knowing that they are enjoying the many fruit trees that we have grown and benefit from our environment. When we release them it is thrilling as we hear from them a great shout of excitement upon finding their freedom and then only hear their beautiful songs from far away....

But whether the birds stay close to us or not we are happy either way. We respect their kind of freedom and we are happy because they are happy.

The mobile thieves: humans exploiting the animal's intelligence.

Santoshi one of our accounts clerk reported to me that her father noticed a baby monkey was kept tied to a tree by the Dwarakanagar Traffic Police Station. The crime committed by the monkey was that he snatched a mobile phone a passersby who was busy speaking. On lodging a complaint to this nearest police station the monkey was captured and used as a pressure point to ask the "owner" of this monkey - a nomad - to return the phone or the monkey will not released to them.

But, alas the nomads were in no mood to get the monkey back as they had the more valuable mobile and never returned. We brought the monkey to our shelter and would be joining the other seven in a much bigger enclosure coming up within shortly. The next day a very similar case and with the same police station and so we now have two new rhesus monkeys.

Looks like these baby monkeys have been trained by the nomads to rob the mobile phones. Another example of how animals are used towards human greed, selfishness and comforts. Unfortunately, they will be like the other monkeys who are rescued from forced begging and will need to stay with us for the rest of their lives as rehabilitation to the wild is too difficult.