25 yo lives in cute tiny home on an animal sanctuary - Maya Higa

Hi there. Welcome to my channel, where I take you on tours of unique homes and showcase stories of people living alternatively. In this week's episode, we're featuring a tiny home that's a little bit wild and that's because it's parked on an animal sanctuary. Maya, the owner of the tiny home and the sanctuary is going to take us on a tour of the property, introduce us to some of the residents and explain why she thinks this tiny home is the perfect habitat for herself. But before we jump right in, and if you like videos like this one, where we showcase stories of people living alternatively, make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you know, every single time we publish a new episode. My name is Maya Higa. I'm the founder and executive director at Alvea Sanctuary and I live on site in the tiny house. I am a content creator. So I am a live streamer on Twitch and I make YouTube videos and I'm the executive director of this animal sanctuary. So I founded Alvea Sanctuary in 2021. We rescue non-releasable animals and do conservation education programming online with them to teach people about our natural world online. I started streaming in 2019 rehabilitating Hawks in California. So I started live streaming that and it was a really cool way for those people to build a connection to the animal that I had on screen. And so that's where the inspiration started for, for having the animal sanctuary is getting all these people acquainted and introduced to all of these species so that they care about their wild counterpart. When I bought this property and founded the animal sanctuary, I just wanted to live on site where the animals were. I've always liked small spaces. So it just made sense to buy a tiny house and put it in the corner out here. I've been living in this house for about a year and a half now. I definitely did not build this myself. I don't think that I can do that. I bought it as is. It was a model home on a lot with a bunch of other tiny houses. So I purchased it there and then they drove it to my property and just kind of plopped it down, leveled it, and then drove away. So it was actually really, really easy to buy. And then I was living ready immediately. My house is 380 square feet about, so it's 35 feet long by 11 feet wide. When I was picking a tiny house, I really wanted something that got a lot of light. So I was looking for a lot of windows. I think it helps a lot that I have pretty high ceilings. So it actually doesn't feel tiny to me at all. It doesn't feel like a tiny house. And then I was really attached to having a loft. I love small spaces and I love feeling like I'm really cozy and tucked in somewhere. So I wanted to be able to sleep in a loft. Challenges living with a tiny house. One, I'm already kind of a messy person. And when you have a tiny house, if you leave stuff out on the counters or on the tables, it just looks like you have so much stuff. All of a sudden it looks like there's stuff everywhere. That's annoying. I've had to cut down on a lot of my stuff. Otherwise it feels pretty normal to live in a tiny house. It's pretty easy. On the right over here is my living room. This is my favorite part of the house is these bay windows because there's just so much natural light and I don't close the barns ever. I just, I love it. I wake up to the morning light. It's great. I've got the couch, we have a little TV set up, my sewing machines here. This is the kitchen. Also was really important to me to have a decent size kitchen because I love cooking and it takes up most of the house, but that's a good thing. This is my countertop dishwasher because I can't have a full size dishwasher. So it just hooks up to my sink. It's really nice. I have a pretty decent size sink. I have a full size fridge here. I also did this mosaic backsplash in my kitchen that I'm really proud of. And then this is my bathroom. It's kind of small, but the shower is pretty big. I put this mirror up. There was like a small medicine cabinet mirror when I bought it. And then over here, I have an office or a streaming room. It's such a weird setup. I had two ferrets. They were both really old and one of them passed away and so I just decided to give the other one this whole room and this is where I stream, I live stream from that computer. But this room is all potty pads because I have this guy who has free reign of my office. So eight feet by eight feet of this tiny house is dedicated to this creature. It's okay. He likes it. He deserves it. I also have a pretty big window in here. I painted this room pink cause it's my favorite color. This is a piece of plywood that is literally screwed into this wall so that my dogs can't disturb my ferret mushroom. These are my dogs, Bella and Maverick. They live in the tiny house with me, obviously. This is my loft up here. So I sleep up here. It's pretty spacious. I do a lot of crafting. Oh, they're both going up. I do a lot of crafting. So I have all my crafting supplies over here. This is where most of my clothes storage is. So I have like little baskets with my clothes in them. So most of my clothes are up here. My hats are up here and my dogs sleep up here with me and I have glow in the dark stars on my ceiling. It's so nice when it's dark in here. It really, cause they're so close to you and it feels like you're immersed in space. Let's take a look outside. Out here. I've started building a sort of area to hang out, but I have motivation for like two days to do it. And then I dropped it. So it's now kind of overgrown. I installed these four by fours and I'm going to do string lights, but I still haven't hung them up. The rest of my yard is enclosed by this privacy fence that I had built for my dogs. So they can run around in here all day. And they have a dog door to the house and, and all that. I don't do anything to trim down these plants and it looks really unruly. And that's because it is really unruly because I try to leave it as undisturbed as possible to attract as many pollinators and invertebrates as possible. I love bugs. I'm really passionate about invertebrate conservation. So it's habitat for caterpillars and moths and butterflies and beetles. And there's just a ton of native plants in here where they can hang out. And it looks kind of crazy because it's undisturbed, but that's how they like it. So that's how I like it. I have a swing out here and I sit and read here sometimes with all my bug friends. And then I have electricity. We ran all of our electricity here and water and internet. I have my AC unit back here. And then outside my yard, uh, is where the sanctuary begins. I lied. It's where my driveway begins. There's my car. The property that I'm on is about 15 acres, but pretty much all of it is for the animal sanctuary. We have around 35 animals here. We have foxes and monkeys and crows and donkeys and a cow and parrots and chickens and chinchillas and reptiles and bugs and a huge variety of species. I live in the corner of the sanctuary across from the foxes. We have two foxes, two American red foxes. Their names are Finn and Reed. Finn was confiscated from the illegal pet trade and Reed was orphaned in the wild in California as a baby and was raised by people. And so he's not able to take care of himself. So that's why they're both under human care. And we got them maybe a year and a half ago. Hi Finn. What are you doing? He is an American red fox, but he was bred to be this color for the pet trade. People want foxes that look different colors and have floppy ears and spots and short snouts. And really they just kind of want a dog. So it's really sad that people try to get them as pets. They really don't make good pets and it's really unfair to them. So we have them to teach people about the exploitation of these animals in the pet trade and also to teach people about the exploitation of these animals in the fur trade. This is our tortoise enclosure or the start of our tortoise enclosure. We have a four year old Salcata tortoise. And so we're building this out for her because right now she's that big, but she will be like that big. So she's going to need a bigger space than what she currently has. This is the crow enclosure. We have two American crows, Abbott and Coconut. They were born in the wild in central Texas and were blown out of their nests by a storm. And then they were raised by people and they imprinted on people. So they don't know how to take care of themselves in the wild. And that's why they're here. Hi boys. This is the inside of the crow enclosure. This is the outside of the crow enclosure. They have quite a few perches and then they get enrichment items every day. So puzzle feeders and toys and Kongs and things because crows are super smart. So anything to keep their minds working keeps them happy. Monkeys love cameras. So when we go in there, don't be alarmed if they jump on you. So this is the marmoset enclosure. We have a common marmoset and a black tufted marmoset. Their names are Appa and Momo. And we rescued them from a neglect situation. Someone bought them as a pet and then didn't take care of them properly. They had to get rehabilitated here with us. And now they live here to teach people about the exploitation of monkeys in the pet trade. Good boy. There he is. So this is Appa. He's a common marmoset. You want to see my phone? He's a common marmoset. When we got him, he had very little use of his back legs. He had metabolic bone disease. He had dental disease. He had vitamin D deficiencies. And he was rehabilitated here. And now he has a full enclosure that has outside space and he can run around. And he's doing much better physically and I hope mentally. And then this is his friend, Momo. Momo is a black tufted marmoset. They're both Brazilian primates and they are monkeys. They're just very small monkeys. Momo has had more than half of his teeth removed because his dental disease was so bad when he got here. Now he's doing really good. He eats really well. He gets around really well. He's pooping. Oh, wow. Great demonstration. Hi. What are you doing? Oh, his nails are so scratchy and weird. Should I go? Boing. Appa is very interested in being around people and interacting with people. Momo, not so much. So they have this outdoor space and then their whole inside space is pretty much the same, just indoors with A.C. and heating because they don't live in Texas naturally. So we got to control their their climate a little bit. Thank you, boys. It's nice. They spend most of their time here in the winter. They don't really like when it's cold because they're from Brazil. So it gets heated in here. Hi, buddy. They have little dog doors. Actually, I think they're cat doors. In the summer when it gets really hot, too, they have A.C. in here. So they'll hang out in here. They sleep in here in these little bubbles and they have blankets in there. So they cuddle up in their domes. We have three buildings here that were here when I bought the property. We have one house where an animal care staff also lives. We have a nutrition house where we do all of our diet and enrichment prep. And then we have the studio, which is where I work every day, where we have all the streaming equipment, the tech, the cameras, the microphones. I started Alveus because I've been passionate about conservation. And I think one of the most powerful ways to get people to care about our natural world is to get people connected to it. And I think one of the best ways for people to get connected to animals is through live streaming and seeing as much of that animal as possible and seeing its personality and its favorite foods and its name and its behaviors. And so I became really passionate about that model. This is where a lot of the educational programming happens. So we have cameras here, we have lights here, we have monitors. And then I'll usually be behind this table and teaching people about all of our animals. This is Georgie. Georgie is an African bullfrog. He is a star. Second largest frog species in the world. They're big frogs. This room is kind of a mess because we're redoing it. But this is where we will have all of our reptiles and insects set up. Our insects are in here. We have a millipede. We have isopods, scorpions to teach people about bugs, which is one of my favorite things to do. OK, so the other half of the animal sanctuary is pretty much all this way. So this is the pasture. This is Stompy. Stompy is a common emu. This is an Australian bird. When I got him, he was only 14 days old and now he's two and a half years old. He's a grown up. Very sweet. So he was born at a zoo in California, and his mom didn't sit on his clutch of eggs, and so he was incubated by people and raised by people and then was shipped here to be a part of our education program. He's so funny. I love emus. This is Jalapeno. Jalapeno! We rescued him from a feedlot, essentially. He was going to slaughter either for pet food or for traditional medicine. They use donkey hide to make medicine. This is Serrano. He was also rescued from a feedlot in Central Texas, so he was on his way to slaughter as well. But now he lives here and he takes naps in the sand. Hello. Over here, we have Winnie the Moo. Winnie is a Red Angus beef cow. We got her from a beef operation in Oklahoma, so she would have been slaughtered for beef. She was raised for beef. But now she lives here instead to teach people about the environmental impacts of the agriculture industry and how you can use your consumer choice to help our planet. She is a fan favorite. She's a very sweet cow, and she just had her second birthday party this past week. She's two years old. But normally a Red Angus beef cow would only live a year and then would be slaughtered for beef. So it's pretty cool that she's here. My favorite part about having an animal sanctuary is giving all of the animals that we have here the absolute best quality of life possible. I'm really passionate about having quality enclosures and quality enrichment, which is giving them the opportunity to practice natural behavior. So like foraging, enrichment and toys and and stuff like that. That's the pasture. Across from the pasture, we have the parrots. Oh, boy, parrots. Yes, hello. Hi. Thank you for that exciting entrance. OK, thank you. This is the parrot enclosure. We have four parrots. All of them were surrendered pets, and we don't know how old each of them are, but they're here hopefully for the duration of their lives. This is Mia. She's an African gray. And then this is Siren. She's a blue front of the Amazon up there. So we have the parrots to teach people about why they don't actually make very good pets, because they live a very long time and they can be very loud and they can chew through wood and bite really hard and scream really loud and cause hearing loss. And they are really cute and they do dance and are fun. But they're just really, really hard to commit to as a pet. Can you sing? Can you sing Happy Birthday? Nope, she's leaving. Birthday. Good job. Birthday. Happy birthday. Birthday. And then we have macaws over here. This is Miley. She's a Catalina macaw. Which is a hybrid between a blue and gold macaw and a scarlet macaw. And then this is Tico coming over. Tico is a blue and gold macaw. Tico was dropped off in a box outside of a SPCA in California, Humane Society, because someone got her as a pet and then realized that they couldn't have her as a pet. Most people cannot do it. And then they end up in rescues in places like this. We're filming. Can you say hi? Can you say hello? Hello. That's nice. Thank you. Happy birthday. That's nice. Thank you. These are the chickens. Much lower liability. We have three chickens to teach people about the ag industry and about food labels. So like the labels to look for on your egg cartons and your meat that you're buying from the grocery store and stuff. Also just teach people about how smart chickens are, partially about agricultural emissions as well. This is Oliver. He's a rooster. He was in a reject rooster cage at a feed store. Somebody bought him and then he was a rooster and then they decided they didn't want him. So they brought him back to the feed store to be sold for whatever. Oliver, Nugget and Henrique. So we are expanding this year. We're rescuing two wolves from another facility. And so we're building them a really large enclosure. My house is 35 by 11 feet. Their enclosure is 220 feet by 65 feet. It's a pretty serious project. We're hoping to transfer them here in mid-April. So that'll be a big project for the sanctuary. The biggest that we've ever taken on, for sure. One thing that's really important for us as a planet is just to consume less. This applies to a tiny house. One of the problems that we have is a lot of things are disposable to us and we're not reusing as much as we could be. And we're consuming way too much stuff because our natural places that are getting torn down to make these disposable products is taking away natural habitat for so many of our world's species. Habitat loss is the number one driver of extinction around the world. My goal is just to teach as many people as possible about conservation and about these animals. Thanks for watching this week's episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you'd like to learn more about Maya and her animal sanctuary, check out the links we have in the description of the video. And I will see you soon with another unique home tour.