Simon at Sepilok

Continuing concern over the condition of little Sogo-Sogo today.
This morning a decision was taken to totally isolate her from the others with a suspicion that she may have Melioidosis (or "Melio" for short, see http://www.medicinenet.com/melioidosis/article.htm) which is a highly contagious disease that can apparently be easily spread through saliva on cuts or scratches - so no more kissing of OUs for Yvonne now.

We were all warned that we need to use barrier cream on our hands and arms and should wear protective gloves if handling Sogo in particular.

Note: these pictures of me with Eniro in the kitchen area were taken a few days ago, in case you were wondering!

All the infants were then evacuated from the Indoor Nursery area into the outdoor cages so that the room and all the cages within could be throroughly treated with a disinfectant spray. I pulled the short straw and was asked to do the spraying, so looking like something out of Ghostbusters i had to don protective mask and gloves and carry a backpack tank full of an anti-bacterial disinfectant liquid called "Veetree" (sp?). Thirty minutes of spraying every nook and cranny of the walls, ceiling and floor plus the inside and outside of all the cages and the job was done.

For the rest of the day all of the infant and juvenile orangutans were housed in the big outdoor cages, giving plenty of time for the spray to (hopefully) do it's magic.

There were plenty of hands helping today with people from all three of the volunteer workgroups mucking in and helping to take the orangutans out of the cages for exercise. At one point we had 9 out at once (which is a lot more than usual for this area) and it proved surprisingly difficult to keep tracks of them all!

The funniest bit was trying to get just three of the bigger ones out from a cage of six. I said to Nick just open the door a bit and we'll take the first three that squeeze out - of course as soon as the crack in the door opened we had a writhing mass of arms and legs and within seconds all six were happily running around and climbing on top of the cage. Ooops!!
Luckily they are much slower than we are on the ground so we were able to grab a couple and get them back inside relatively quickly. At this age they are still very much young children and never stray too far from "home".

By the end of our work day Sogo Sogo was still very poorly. So much so that Sylivia took the unusual step of asking for volunteers to stay up with her overnight and take her temperature every 2 hours. Four of us volunteered but for the first night at least she opted to use Caroline and Vicky - Sogo is more relaxed with the girls, Caroline especially, so that made good sense. Good luck girls...

Later in the evening Cath, Rebecca and Miriam returned from their Rasa Ria work placement. It sounds like they benefitted from our "smoothing of the rough edges" and it went a lot better for them, even though Mowgli became ill and was transferred to KK zoo for treatment, leaving just Joey and Siti there for the guests to observe at feeding time. But it sounds like the refurbishment work on the outdoor cages there is progress well so hopefully while Becky and Elle are there all six OUs will be returned to the NIC fold.