Experience the Jungle Life…

The staff member whose duty is to clean the Orangutancages was off to town, and no body will replace her, so I must clean the sick Orangutan’s cages  by myself.

While sweeping the leaves that they used the night before for their nest, Adung the naughty boy came, (he is 5 yo male orangutan). Only took 1 or 2 minutes for him to came down from the trees and grabbed my stethoscope which I used to check the sick orangutan before cleaning the cage that morning. He took it away with him back up to the tree top. Even tough it was futile, I still tried to chase him, I climbed up on top of Jodi’s cage, trying to be angry but I couldn’t  after I saw what he was doing. He was on the branch leisurely putting the stethoscope on his head just like a doctor would but upside down.  I offered him cassava (the only food that I had in my hand) but he wasn’t  interested. Instead, I could see him bitting and tearing apart the stethoscope, one of the most valuable piece of equipment we have in the clinic. He even didn’t care when I called up to him nicely, hoping he’d come to me, then an idea to make him jealous entered my  mind. I pretended to play with Jodi, the baby orangutan, and in a sweet voice I spoke to her. Adong got the massage & he came down from the tree, still playing with his new toy (the stethoscope) in his hand. He tried to jump on me, wanting me to carry him. I used that chance to grab the stethoscope, the torn stetoschope.

I would have loved to have carried him, but I knew I shouldn’t because that can make him much closer to me, human being, then it would make it harder  for him to go back to the wild.

So instead I shoe him away. Maybe he still wanted his mother to be with him like a normal unorphaned orangutans. They are usually around their mother until around 7 or 8 years old.

Poor naughty Adung.

I have been a week or so hatching my eggs on the tree in front of the kitchen in Tanjung Harapan post. I saw people many times looked at me. I bet they know me from the cook who works there everyday and she told everybody about me. In one morning to a short guy with a funny voice, I guess he must be an orangutan keeper. I see him carrying bananas, papayas, or other fruits every morning, the next morning to another people until the whole post knew about me. I heard a girl calling me “ugly face” and laughed at me when talking to the others about me. I remember she tried to take picture of me but I was away up too high for her camera. Ha.. It made me want to laugh.. Another morning the cook told a girl who always carried a baby orangutan on her arms, and she couldn’t believe that I am a bird, ugh.. Do I look that ugly..? She even shook the tree to see that I was alive, she thought that I am a branch because my colour is similar with the wood. I moved my head, then she believed that I am a bird. Offcourse I moved, I was surprised to know how strong she was for her size.

 I am not angry at all, I rather  enjoyed watching them doing their activities down there. Every morning the guys sweeping the ground around the post with a broom made from small branches, later in the afternoon the old guy napping on the shelter, babies moving around with their mothers, but they were different babies, the other baby with no hairy body, in the late afternoon I often heard them yelling from the field, they were playing volley, including the girl who called me ugly face. 

One afternoon I saw monkeys around the but I didn’t think that I was so unlucky to deal with the naughties one, he came to my nest to and took  my eggs.  I flew frightened and drop my nest on the ground while the naughty monkey eat the eggs. I was so sad, later I saw the girl who called me ugly face crying to know what happened to me, she picked up my nest and took it in her hands, she was impressed to feel the nest, it was soft and wonderfully made she murmured, and later she told me she would keep it as a treasure.  A little comfort for me to hear that.
Ok I will fly away now, my life should go on and I will come back again one day to lay my eggs here and watch u and your group again.

Check the album, my photo is there, …..with my baby.