Monkeying Around

On Sunday, I was a little worried about which section of the zoo I’d be put on. After my mess up with the cat medication, I had every belief that I would be punished by being relegated to the farmyard or perhaps be put back on birds. It’s not that I would have minded being on either of these sections, but I have enjoyed being on different things recently. So when I found myself on primates – believed to be the hardest section for volunteers to get themselves onto, I was delighted, although a little worried about what the day would hold.

Last time I was on primates, Steve, the head keeper was called away and I spend most of my time cleaning windows – A fact which I did not neglect to mention to Glen who was in charge of the section for the day. It wasn’t that I wanted to make a big deal out of it; I just wanted to let him know that I hadn’t really been on the section before.

I spent most of the day with Tori, one of the other keepers on the section who set herself on a mission to ensure that I got to do really fun things.

My first task of the day was to clean out the indoor spider monkey enclosure; I have to admit this was a really unpleasant task. A woman at work once told a story about her twins managing to remove their nappies overnight and then used the contents as finger paints; I was reminded of this story while cleaning this enclosure. After a lot of scrubbing, I finally got it clean, much to my relief, I then spent a bit of time hiding pieces of mushroom around the place for them to find later.

The squirrel monkeys didn’t want to stay still long enough for a photo, this is about as good as I got, but they were pretty cute as they tried to steal the mushrooms out of the bowl through the bars. I then went to help Tori finish cleaning out the lemurs.

After break, I was set up doing the feeds. It took a long time to chop up the numerous bowls of fruit and veg but I never really mind doing this, although it does get a bit tiring chopping up your 20th apple of the day…

The highlight of my day was feeding the animals. First, we went and fed the ring-tailed lemurs, some of whom are pictured here. Out of all the food I had prepared for them, it turns out that lemurs (or the ones at Paradise at least) love grapes and I absolutely loved the chance to hand feed them. One of them opted to sit in the food bowl and steal the grapes out of it, another sat on my shoulder. While a third tried to pull him off again by his tail! They really were quite comical to watch.

Later I got to feed another lemur, a black lemur this time, who also enjoyed the grapes and sat on my shoulder; he often disappeared outside to eat them though; presumably just in case I decided to take them back.

The final animal I got to feed was the one I was hoping I’d be able to all day and that was Mr Jingles. Mr Jingles is the resident two toed sloth who lives in the rainforest section of the zoo. Tori very kindly fed all the monkeys, giving me time to try and hand feed him. Unfortunately, as you can hopefully see from the picture (the nature of his enclosure means it’s really difficult to get good photos) he was really comfortable and wasn’t going to help much by moving. Standing on tip-toes, I did manage to get him to eat a few things from my hand much to my delight. I should explain here that I absolutely adore sloths and I’ve been dying to feed him ever since I started volunteering at the zoo. An absolute delight.

To finish off the day, Tori and I cleaned out the indoor gibbon enclosure. They have 4 white-cheeked gibbons, which Tori absolutely adores. I can see why, they’re very entertaining to watch and full of character. I have a fair few gibbon photos now; this is probably my favourite of them all:

Facts of the Week

Ring-Tailed Lemurs (Lemur catta)

• Ring-tailed lemurs are native to Madagascar.
• They live in 'troops' of between 6 and 30 individuals, with one dominant female who will eat first.
• Ring-tailed lemurs are unique from other lemurs in that they prefer walking on the ground to swinging through trees.