The most trafficked animal on the planet today.

This is the first night we let Balin wander on his own without being carried from spot to spot. This tires him out and he didn't try to go out on his own after just being allowed to find his own food. He fell into the creek twice and happily swam about till he found the hillside, which he easily scaled to get back to the bamboo grove where lots of ants live.In honor of World Pangolin day...let me tell you the story of what I learned from a previous pangolin I had the honor to raise with the help of Lisa Hywood of Tikki Hywood Trust.In our forest in Palawan, I watched this gentle creature digging into very hard earth, so hard I had trouble breaking clumps apart with my knife. This little creature dug with no problem, and I watched a seed fall where he dug, and as he dug for ants, this seed got buried, to await the next rain so it would grow. Later he dug into a huge fallen tree...he tore through the bark and it crumbled to the ground into hundreds of tiny pieces, and I saw a young seedling be covered with this mulch to protect the moisture in the soil so it would have a chance at becoming a tree. One cloudy night the full moon peeked out from behind a cloud, Balin sat on his haunches and had his paws together as he looked up at it, it looked like he was praying.These creatures are the gardeners of the forest as well as the controllers of the insects that would eat at all the plants that abound there. Balin, the little orphaned pangolin in Palawan taught me so much of its role in our forest as I walked with it while it foraged early evening till late at night for 2 months; when sated it would crawl up my leg to be brought back to its safe lair. It must be so with all pangolins, the gentle forest garden wizards, silently doing the job allotted them with none the wiser.They go about their job skillfully in the dark of night, so none might see the magic they do. For this they are rewarded with possible extinction because they will not defend themselves with aggression, they passively curl up into a ball and let their armor protect them. Alas, it does not protect them from us humans.Please teach all that can make a difference of the importance of these gentle little wizards of the forest. Who knows how many things will cease to grow without them. What trees are destroyed in any country they exist, will affect the global warming of the earth and affect us all.