Great aunt Lesly and her younger brothers and baby sister are doing much better after they survived a plane crash and wandered for 40 days in the Amazon rainforest in Colombia.
Lesly Bonbaire, Soleiny Mucutuy, Tien Noriel Mucutuy and little Cristin Mucutuy – aged 13, nine, five and one respectively – are showing “satisfactory” progress after they were found hungry and dehydrated in the rainforest last Friday. “They color in and draw. They like to chat,” says a welfare worker.
However, the Colombian search and rescue teams’ search is far from over.
The search is still on for Wilson, a search and rescue dog who kept the children company during their ordeal in the Amazon.
Wilson, a Belgian shepherd dog, went missing on May 18 while he and nine other Belgian shepherd dogs were searching for the children with 150 army soldiers.
The children’s grandfather, Narciso Mucutuy, says that Wilson became his grandchildren’s “faithful friend” after he tracked them down in the dense rainforest, reports CNN.
The children “spent three or four days with Wilson and said they found him quite thin,” says Colombian military spokesman Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez Suárez.
The Colombian military’s top priority now is to track down Wilson.
“We have a saying that goes: ‘We never leave anyone behind’. Besides the four children, we will not leave Wilson behind either. But we are also aware of how difficult it is to find him in the depths of a hostile yet blessed jungle,” says Suárez.
RNews previously reported that Magdalena Mucutuy, the children’s mother, lived for four days after the plane crash on 1 May before finally succumbing to her injuries.
The young children initially watched over their injured mother before Mucutuy told them to leave her behind and go find help. Mucutuy was a native leader.
During their ordeal, the children ate seeds, fruits, roots and plants that they could identify as edible thanks to their upbringing in the Amazon region.
According to information, the older children are currently being treated for fever in a hospital in Bogota, while the five-year-old Tien Noriel is being monitored for a possible reaction to something he ate.
This boy was too weak to walk when he and his siblings were found in the rainforest.
Their baby sister, Cristin (1), has since been treated in the intensive care unit of the hospital due to her young age.
The children are expected to remain in the hospital for another two to three weeks.
