Saturday, March 11, 2006
The One With The Sugar Cane
Sogo is improving all the time, she was even seen climbing the bars of her quarantine cage for a short time this morning!!
This morning was mostly about sugar cane.
Instead of bananas we had to carry bundles of sugar cane down to the feeding platform store. The bundles are pretty big and quite awkward to carry on your shoulder but Nick and I coped OK.
Only Vicky had a little problem - as we approached the place where the poisonous Viper was yesterday i suggested to her that it might still be there and that they love sugar cane.
She claims it was a complete coincidence, but at that exact same moment she dropped her bundle of sugar cane, the ties broke and they rolled all over the walkway!
Sure enough the Viper WAS still there, in fact in exactly the same place (they don't seem to like a lot of exercise!), so i grabbed a quick photo to show you what it looks like...
The food store is a big heavy metal cupboard that it recently took four of us to carry from the main centre out to the feeding platform, over an obstacle course of fallen trees, narrow bridges, plank walkways and steep slopes. The idea being that enough food for a whole day or more can be carried to it and stored there first thing in the morning while it is a bit cooler. Here it is complete with today's sugarcane bundles on top. Notice also the very sexy designer sweat patches on my shirt too... :-)
Once most of the cane was safely stored inside Dusain then stripped some of the bark from other pieces of cane and let us try them. They were delicious, very woody but also sweet and juicy too. Soon we were all biting the cane, chewing it and then spitting out the dry fibres just like the orangutans do. Easy to see why they like it so much.
Three varying styles of eating the sugar cane were seen:
1) Nick and his "magic flute" sideways approach...
2) Simon "may the force be with you"...
3) Vicky "the sabre swallower" (please try to keep it clean folks, this is a family blog...)
After Outdoor Nursery duty we helped with exercising some of the older OUs.
For Kimball (the oldest male in the Indoor Nursery) this mainly consisted of seeing how many bites he could leave on the volunteers in 1 hour. Nick seemed to be his chosen main course today.
The other 5 were all pretty well behaved until it was time to leave when Tompong decided he wanted a bit longer, so he climbed out of the trees and swung across onto the roof of a disused building. The others were all taken back indoors but this little angel refused to come down until bribed half an hour later with oranges and sugarcane!
Short session at the building site today, just managed to concrete the final post into place before some light rain started. For the next several hours the sky was lit with distant lightning but we missed the worst of the showers.
Another live Chelsea league win on TV tonight, i'm going to miss having a "season ticket" when i get home!
This morning was mostly about sugar cane.
Instead of bananas we had to carry bundles of sugar cane down to the feeding platform store. The bundles are pretty big and quite awkward to carry on your shoulder but Nick and I coped OK.
Only Vicky had a little problem - as we approached the place where the poisonous Viper was yesterday i suggested to her that it might still be there and that they love sugar cane.
She claims it was a complete coincidence, but at that exact same moment she dropped her bundle of sugar cane, the ties broke and they rolled all over the walkway!Sure enough the Viper WAS still there, in fact in exactly the same place (they don't seem to like a lot of exercise!), so i grabbed a quick photo to show you what it looks like...
The food store is a big heavy metal cupboard that it recently took four of us to carry from the main centre out to the feeding platform, over an obstacle course of fallen trees, narrow bridges, plank walkways and steep slopes. The idea being that enough food for a whole day or more can be carried to it and stored there first thing in the morning while it is a bit cooler. Here it is complete with today's sugarcane bundles on top. Notice also the very sexy designer sweat patches on my shirt too... :-)Once most of the cane was safely stored inside Dusain then stripped some of the bark from other pieces of cane and let us try them. They were delicious, very woody but also sweet and juicy too. Soon we were all biting the cane, chewing it and then spitting out the dry fibres just like the orangutans do. Easy to see why they like it so much.
Three varying styles of eating the sugar cane were seen:
1) Nick and his "magic flute" sideways approach...
2) Simon "may the force be with you"...
3) Vicky "the sabre swallower" (please try to keep it clean folks, this is a family blog...
After Outdoor Nursery duty we helped with exercising some of the older OUs.
For Kimball (the oldest male in the Indoor Nursery) this mainly consisted of seeing how many bites he could leave on the volunteers in 1 hour. Nick seemed to be his chosen main course today.
The other 5 were all pretty well behaved until it was time to leave when Tompong decided he wanted a bit longer, so he climbed out of the trees and swung across onto the roof of a disused building. The others were all taken back indoors but this little angel refused to come down until bribed half an hour later with oranges and sugarcane!
Short session at the building site today, just managed to concrete the final post into place before some light rain started. For the next several hours the sky was lit with distant lightning but we missed the worst of the showers.
Another live Chelsea league win on TV tonight, i'm going to miss having a "season ticket" when i get home!
// posted by storri @ 6:17 pm 
