Simon at Sepilok

A proud moment for Pachi (Uncle) Simon today.

After Outdoor Nursery duties i took little Reto out for some exercise. We went up to the shady tree area with 5 other volunteers and 5 other youngsters.

Once again i encouraged her to reach out to small branches with her hands and feet and got her to transfer some of her weight from me onto them. After a few minutes of experimenting and to my total amazement she actually let go of me with her last limb and held herself up on the branches of a small sapling - the first time she has ever done this!

Nervously she moved her grip around a little, several times she reached out for me with one leg so i took some of her weight back to let her know i was there if she needed me, then she started reaching out further to other branches and leaves and began pulling herself up higher.
She was actually climbing on her own!!

Everyone around me was amazed and we all had huge smiles. I was cupping my hands underneathe her at this point, just in case she slipped, but i needn't have worried - she was absolutely loving it!

Soon we were hearing little squeaks and squeals from her, often a sign of distress, so I offered my arms back up to her expecting that she would come back down to me but she wasn't having any of that at all - we soon realised that the squeals were simply little squeals of happiness. As her confidence got stronger the little squeaks got louder and louder. Our smiles got proportionately bigger and bigger too!

I felt so proud of her, watching her confidence increasing all the time. The closest comparison i can draw was back when i was teaching Francesca to ride her bike, when i was running alongside her and gradually letting go of the saddle more and more until one day she was shakily pedalling along on her own. I'm sure some of you can relate to that feeling... :-)

After 15 minutes or so we literally had to drag her back down off the small tree. She made no complaints - she must have been exhausted after the excitement of all those wonderful adventures in the branches. Sure enough within minutes she had fallen asleep in Vicky's arms.

Well done Reto! The first step of your long rehabilitation journey back to the wild has just been taken!

After that nothing else really matters today does it... :-)