Colombian
Nurses Animals Back to Health
By INALDO PEREZ
See video
here
CALI,
Colombia Jan 11, 2007 (AP)— Through
the bars of his cage, an African lion named
Jupiter stretches his giant paws around the neck of Ana
Julia Torres and plants a kiss on her puckered lips.
It could be a kiss of
gratitude: Since Jupiter was rescued six years ago from a
life of abuse and malnutrition in a traveling circus,
Torres has fed and nursed him back to health at her Villa
Lorena shelter for injured and mistreated animals.
"Here we have animals that
are lame, missing limbs, blind, cross-eyed, disabled,"
said Torres, 47, who relies on donations and her own
modest teacher's salary to run the shelter in a poor
neighborhood in the southern city of Cali. "They come to
us malnourished, wounded, burned, stabbed, with gunshots."
Torres said her work
rehabilitating animals began more than a decade ago when a
friend gave her an owl that had been kept as a pet. Later,
when she asked her students to bring their pets to school,
she realized many families illegally kept wild fauna from
Colombia's biologically diverse jungles in their homes.
The number of animals under
her care grew, and today Jupiter is among 800 recovering
creatures at Villa Lorena from burned peacocks and
limbless flamingos to blind monkeys and mutilated
elephants....
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