Four children, aged one, four, nine and 13 miraculously were found alive spending 40 days in the Amazon jungle after they the survived a plane crash which killed their mother. The world has since rejoiced, but the unsung hero, a six-year-old Belgian Shepherd named Wilson, remains missing.
According to the Daily Mail, Wilson has been missing since a few days before the children were located; it is suspected he ran away from his handlers, but his paw prints were found near those of the children. Wilson had remained with the children for several days before he went missing. The last sighting of Wilson had been on June 8, when one of the Civil Defense members spotted him about 130 feet away. For an unknown reason, Wilson didn’t respond to the officers’ calls and ran back into the jungle.
Wilson was one of two rescue dogs; the other dog Tellius, helped the 150 rescue officers search the area after having picked up the childrens’ scent.
The four children, Lesly, 13, Soleiny, nine, Tien Noriel, five and the baby Cristin, one, had been traveling in the private aircraft when it crashed on May 1. The accident killed the mother of the children, Magdalena Mucutul Valencia, the pilot and an indigenous leader from the Huitoto group. It had been on Friday when the words “miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle” had been repeated four times to indicate the four children had been found.
The rescue team, which had been codenamed “Esperanza” (hope) involved hundreds of rescuers, searchers, dogs and helicopters.
The eldest child Lesly, had cared for her younger siblings; she had previously watched the children while her parents worked or were away from home. She gave the kids flour and cassava bread along with any fruit she could find on the bushes. Lesly also confirmed that the children had encountered a dog, but it still remains unclear if the dog was Wilson. She said the “puppy was lost, but accompanied them for a while.”
Wilson is believed to have become disoriented during the rescue mission because of the complexity of the terrain, the high humidity and adverse weather conditions.
The children were brought to a military hospital where they are being treated.
Officials have not given up the search for Wilson according to their Twitter account.
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