On the tenth day, at 5:00 AM, Xuxa walked into the large enclosure behind the clinic. A crowd had gathered outside the gate: the bureaucrat, the officer, two armed security guards, and a vet from Manaus in a sterile white coat.
Dr. Lemos cleared his throat. “There are... regulations. Your clinic is unlicensed for wildlife of this magnitude. And we have reports of an ‘unusual attachment’ to the animals. A local official claims you refuse to release a cured tapir back into the wild because it is ‘depressed.’” XUXA A VOZ DOS ANIMAIS
For the first time in twenty years, Xuxa felt the hot sting of defeat. She nodded, not trusting her voice, and watched them drive away. The next nine days were a blur of motion. Xuxa did not cry. She worked. She made calls to every journalist, every NGO contact, every sympathetic politician she had ever met. Most calls went unanswered. The few that answered offered only sympathy, which is the currency of the powerless. On the tenth day, at 5:00 AM, Xuxa
Xuxa leaned on her shovel. “From whom? The loggers I reported last month? Or the rancher whose cattle are dying because he poisoned the creek?” Lemos cleared his throat
“Calma, pequeno,” she whispered, pressing a poultice of crushed neem and barbatimão bark against the jagged gash on a howler monkey’s flank. The monkey, no bigger than a football, whimpered. Its family had been scattered by a trap set for a jaguar. The mother had died trying to free him. “Calma. A dor vai passar.”
Dr. Lemos sighed. “The law does not recognize animal trauma, Senhora. Only viability. You have ten days to transfer your large mammals to a state-approved facility in Manaus, or we will be forced to seize them.”
And he chose.