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Published: December 16th 2009
So the animal sanctuary is where we spend most of our afternoons at the moment, still chilling on the beach and eating lots and exploring Goa but this place is doing such a great thing, its nice to be part of it and help out.
Before they started up, all the dogs and cats were fed loads from November until March ( tourist season ) then left to starve alone when all the tourists left, there are horrible stories and cases of horrific deaths for them, they start to scavenge once we leave and keep the locals awake howling and steal their food etc, so they often get shot, poisoned, starve to death and in the most cruel way, stoned to death. It's really sad but it's a dog eat dog world in india, so instead of blaming the locals they are dealing with it humanly by feeding the animals whilst we are gone, nuetering all the females and many males, which in the long run will eventually cut out/ cut down the stray dog and cat problem. They also bring in any animal that are injured, weather it be snakes ( hehehe) cows, or anything and keep them in until
they are mended then release them back to the wild.
In the case of kittens and puppies, they wean them off their mums and rehome all of them that don't die of the many diseases around. We spend about 20 minutes each time in the puppy pens, 2 pens containing 5-10 puppies who are absolutely MENTAL!Tthey try to eat your legs your shoes you face your fingers..anything and it is seriously draining and you come out looking like you've been in a fight! Anyway Its unlikely but if any of you are looking to make donations at crimbo consider this place, its called the animal tracks, international animal rescue, Goa. My crimbo money has gone there because I can't take them all home with me and love them like I would like to!
We met the founder of this charity, a lovely vibrant man called John and he invited us to his and his wifes house, saying it was a house on the river, called the tree house and he was looking after some monkeys. Turns out he actually has an monkey rescue centre in his house! He has about 30 monkeys all whom have names and strong personalities, most
of them were found and confiscated from the beach where horrible men bruitally kill the mother in the wild then take the baby and try to sell it, they usually die pretty quick unless rescued so he's doing a really good job. He told us to bring swiming costumes and so we went along..took absolutly ages trying to find it, winding through roads and narrowly misssing nearly ending up on the highway!
We found it down a little lane off a quiet village and it had big green gates with a long drive way saying the tree house over it..looks like a mansion to me, we are met at the door my a lady called angela with a little monkey on her shoulder called pixie, it bares its teeth at me and goes mental, apparently unlike most monkeys in this ones case it means "hi i want to be your friend", so it jumped on my head, pulled my dreads and tried to eat my earings!
We changed into our swimming cossies and Russ got given a lead with medium sized maquack called Tufty on it. I got two with a baby maquacks on each called Baldrick and Preston! They
then told us to get in the pool and Baldrick climbed straight up my leg and pulled off my bikini top..little bugger, he then got on my head and dived into the water and swam under water playing with my anklet and pulling on my legs, he then got out sat on my head and bit my finger..frikking frikfrik did it hurt! bad monkey!
Russ's monkey didn't fancy swimming and sat at the side of the pool trying to pick imagenery knits out of russ's hair and sitting in the plants next to the pool eating them! Little preston swam a few times but I think Sasha..the bigger monkey in the pool scared him.
I was told that Sasha would kill me if I went near her..NICE! she is fine with men, but if a females comes near her they're screwed! So I entrusted my life to a man in the pool holding Sashas lead!
So very random day indeed!
The church next to our room has started playing english cristmas carols on loud speaker most days, its weird, I think there is about a 50/50 mix of hindu and christian out here, lots of churches and temples all smudged
together, but at least we get a bit of a crimbo vibe!
We have been cruising around on the most awesomely cool bad-ass bike for the last week but I'll leave russ to tell all about it as its his new little baby! Hope christmas excitement and merryment is high for all, loads of love from this sunny paradise 😊 xxx
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Joss
non-member comment
Sounds like you're doing a really good thing doing that volunteering :-) And here's a lil fact - Christianity reached India before it reached northern Europe with a little help from our Portuguese compares (i guess).