Sketching the sounds of the night by the flickering light of an oil lamp.
Update on Chiquita
Chiquita goes in and out of the paddock by herself now!
She even goes into the adjoining fields!
How We Did It
I really thought it would take a lot of intervention to get Chiquita to behave like a normal horse again. I was wrong! Sometimes, it’s great to be proven wrong!
The first step was to to stop bringing Chiquita cut grass. Our caretaker was worried that she wouldn’t have enough to eat if he didn’t bring her cut grass. He found out that if he brought her outside on a lead rope, she would graze for a bit. But he had to keep her on the rope because she would try to get back into the paddock. We figured that if we kept her outside, eventually she would realize that it was nice to walk around and graze! After a few days of monotonous rope-holding, he realized he could just shut the paddock door and take her off the lead rope! Once she got used to being outside, the door was kept open during the daytime so she could freely go in and out of the paddock.
Malabulak
One of the first seedlings we planted are the Malabulak (Bombax ceiba) we received from Dr. Ed Gomez. He brought in a lot of seedlings to plant in our village, but the village never got around to planting them. So he gave them to us instead.
Malabulak sheds its leaves every year even as seedlings. It’s very stressful to see the seedling you planted standing completely bare-headed and looking exactly like a dead stick.
This year we noticed something new! The Malabulak is taking on a new, more adult form. It has branches! The green stems growing from the trunk are now brown and woody!
Mystery Solved – It is Is-is!
I found out the identity of the mystery plant growing by the veranda. It is Is-is!
I got confused because it starts out with long thin leaves.
It is a nice tree! Too bad it is growing right beside the veranda. I don’t know if we can transplant it.
Tonji and Sylvia's Wildlife Refuge 