Meet Piper at Goat Daddy's Sanctuary in South Carolina

WISTV in South Carolina visited Goat Daddy's Farm and Animal Sanctuary in mid May of 2024 to meet Piper, a juvenile coatimundi.

(Screenshot from WISTV video.)


There's a great video of Piper being active with the news photographer and reporter in the enclosure while the co-owner talks about the coati's daily routine and care.

Piper is adorable in the video and very much exhibits the incredibly busy and enjoyably chaotic behavior of a juvenile coati.

What I REALLY like about this video is seeing that Piper's claws are all still fully intact (for those that aren't aware the majority of coati that come to an animal sanctuary or rescue facility were pets and typically have their claws (which is awful for the coati)/teeth removed. My stance is that if you have to maim an animal to have it as a pet? It shouldn't be a pet).
After watching the interactions with the newscaster, I'm pretty sure teeth have been removed. There's just no way that a tooth-intact coati would/should be allowed that kind of exploration of a stranger.

I love seeing videos like this that really demonstrate just how busy coatis are for much of their lives. These little goblins never rest when they're in go-mode.

Please check out the video here to watch Piper in action.

You can learn more about Goat Daddy's Farm and Animal Sanctuary here.

Wonders of the Animal Kingdom - Or how to eat everything in the animal kingdom according to a kids' sticker book.

I've been wanting to get back to this blog for a while. I have a lot of new things to post but would rather feed them out gradually over time than posting them all at once and then having another lull in posting to this blog.

Just a couple of days ago i was killing some time in an antique store in south-ish Florida and came across an old animal book titled "Wonder of the Animal Kingdom" (sorry...didn't look at all the who published/illustrated info).

The book was like a sticker book where you would collect dozens of different kinds of animal stickers and put them in the book in a space for the sticker next to the corresponding animal.

Of course I had to thumb through it to see if there was any mention of a coati.

There was.

Awesome.

Then I read the little blurb describing the coatimundi next to the sticker and my face went blank at the last sentence..."Its snout it large and its meat has an excellent flavor."

Wait...whaaat? "...its meat has an excellent flavor"?

Then I read the blurb above it about "119. The Hog" which stated in the last sentence about that particular animal that "All meat from this domestic animal should be thoroughly cooked before it is eaten."

After a couple more pages of similarly weird descriptions of animals I put the book back in its place under a bunch of other books that no one will probably ever buy and walked off.

Here are the cover of the book and the sticker and blurb about the coati.

Thanks for continuing to read the blog despite the massive gap in posts and I look forward to sharing more awesome things about my absolute favorite animal...the coatimundi.

The Collected Coatimundi - Is this really necessary?

 
  For some time now, I've had an acute fascination with a little known critter that ranges from the southern tip of South America all the way north into Texas and New Mexico here in the states. Often referred to as "South America's Raccoon", information on this creatures' natural lifestyle, behaviours, intelligence, language and history is seriously lacking!
With severe claws and four self-sharpening, inch-long canines that could rip human flesh open like wet tissue-paper, rotating anklebones, monkey-like tree gymnastics, a nose that can smell food buried at least twelve inches in the ground, an intelligence that verges on uncanny, an ability to adapt to almost any environment and an attitude that would cause a creature four times its size to just walk the hell away once its teeth are bared, you'd think I decided to blog about a species of chupacabra. Truth is, it might very well be.
In this blog, I'm going to take a closer look at what I consider one of the most interesting little animals I've ever had the pleasure of interacting with.
"You interacted with this thing?"
Yes on several occasions...and I'm still alive to tell the tale. That's the point of this blog, to tell the many tales of a little creature called a coatimundi (coati, nasua narica, nasua nasua).
Just what the hell is a, ay it with me...Koo-watt-tee or Koo-watt-tee-munn-dee or Koo-watt-tee-moon-dee?
Throughout my look into the scant research available on coatimundis (I'm not sure if that's the correct pluralization. Please correct me if it's not), I've come across some amazing stories, first-hand experiences both good and bad and even the ugly. I've been fortunate enough to find very interesting people who're studying the little crazies in the jungles of South America and have even had battles on Ebay for coati-themed artwork from other coati admirers. During all of this random mentioning of the coati throughout the last several years, I finally asked myself why I just didn't start a blog concerning all the information available about the animal. There're videos, audio, science papers and all sorts of ephemera out there. Looking for it is an entirely different thing altogether.
For those that know of the coati, I hope you enjoy some of the things I'll be sharing with you during this blog. Some of it you may already know while some of it may be brand new and, hopefully, exciting reading. For those of you that didn't know of the coatimundi until now? Boy, are you in for some interesting reading.
What I truly hope this blog will do is become not just another scientific, dry place to learn about the coati, but a light, breezy, informative and enlightening read about what I consider one of the planet's most interesting little denizens.
Until next time,
Take care,
Tijuana Taxi