Simon at Sepilok

Up til 1am last night watching Chelsea take another 3-point step towards back-to-back titles. Eat your hearts out Arsenal...

As i went to bed it had just started raining again and i remember thinking maybe i was premature in calling it the end of the rainy season after 3 sunny days. Sure enough, i woke up to torrential rain and soon realised it had been non-stop through the night. Once again the waters were rising around us and the poor orangutans had the dismal prospect of another day stuck indoors.

Fortunately though by 10am a few breaks had appeared so Naru, Annekara and Rosalinda were allowed out into their "outdoor" cage for the rest of the day. We also managed to take Sogo Sogo, Eniro and Gengi out to the sheltered rest area on the lake for some fresh air and exercise.

At the end of the session i was determined to start to "break" Sogo Sogo's resistence to me. She had already honoured me earlier with the privelege of giving her back a scratch through her cage bars, so i thought i'd make Nick and Vicky take the other two back leaving just the two of us. Within a couple of minutes she was holding my hand walking back with me and then she climbed up and we shared our first cuddle! I think she's weakening to my charms at last......or maybe it was just the new haircut??!

With so much rain, the group supposed to be doing the Jungle Trekking had their work cancelled for the day and the group working at the Outdoor Nursery had their work restricted. By the afternoon we had a very crowded Indoor Nursery as the others all mucked in helping with our work tasks. We're going to try to introduce a new system of whiteboard checklists tomorrow to try to coordinate all the jobs a bit better.

Between the rain showers we managed to get 5 older orangutans out for play on the ropes - Naru (youngest male out today, but holds his ground well), Toby (tries it on with us, the bravest of the 3 males out today), Kimbal (the oldest of the 3 boys, but a bullying little sh*t who always tries to bite us as he is scared of Toby!), Annekara (she spent the session rolling in the dirt and needed a bath afterwards) and Rosalinda (quietly did her own thing today).

Vicky later had a little arson moment as she left a towel too close to the gas ring, luckily the smoulderings were extinguished in seconds but she had a strange glint in her eye - clearly well have to watch her a bit more closely in future... ;-)

Lipong, one of the two year old males is still a bit sick and he is giving us cause for concern by not eating much today either. Especially after the very sad losses of the past few days. Hopefully he'll come through ok...
On the plus side we understand that big boy Bidai is due to head for KK zoo tomorrow lunchtime. I'll be sad to see him go in some ways, but i know it's for the best. A lot of the volunteers are a bit scared to go near his cage to clean and feed him, but he's always been a gentle giant for me depite his booming grunts! I'd really love to snatch a picture of him before he leaves to show you how impressive he looks. Fingers crossed on that front....

At the end of the day, tired but very happy once again.