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Published: September 18th 2009
There is a real sense of anticipation as we peer into the jungle. Everyone is very quiet, even the children. Thirty metres in front of us is a timber platform with bananas, coconuts and sugar cane in a small pile.
Behind the platform the jungle rises uphill.
A tall thin tree groans and sways in the distance.
Then another.
The orangutans are coming.
Noises in the Night
“You look exhausted”, said Sim.
We had just sat down to have lunch at the regular food hall next to work.
I nodded, “Prayers and Crackers”.
He smiled.
Prayers Five times a day a call goes out from the mosques in all directions for a “Hasten to Prayer”. In years past the muezzin, the man appointed to call to prayer, would have to climb the top of a minaret. Now days, they use loud speakers.
The first calling out of the day begins at sunrise, the last about 8pm. There is a small mosque directly opposite my building on the other side of the river. Another, much larger mosque is about 1km south.
Stereo.
The call is a combination of
singing and chanting which goes for about 5 minutes. At sunset it can have quite a romantic feel to it as the sounds drift across the river.
At sunrise, it’s not so romantic.
At sunrise, it’s loud.
At sunrise, it wakes me up.
Crackers Directly across the river and right opposite my balcony is a large tented food court. It’s a permanent structure that is popular in the evenings. Malaysians are late eaters and it’s not unusual for it to be populated after midnight.
Without sounding too dramatic, I would like to burn the food court to the ground, leaving a wasteland of ashes and overcooked food.
It’s not that I have a problem with the place as such, but rather what some of the people there do that does my head in.
You see, this area is Fire Cracker Central. It’s the home to fire crackers of all shapes and sizes and the little bastards that set them off.
In the five weeks or so I have been here, the fire crackers have gone off every night.
They are intermittent.
There are small ones and there are big
ones.
These are not fireworks. There are no colourful displays as they set them off.
It’s just noise.
Loud, sleep depraving noise.
It’s not unusual for The Fire Cracker People to do their evil noisy dance till one or two in the morning.
And, it’s illegal. Doesn’t stop anyone doing it though.
So, between the prayers and the crackers I haven’t been getting quality sleep.
Perhaps things will settle down soon.
Or perhaps I'll buy some ear plugs.
What do Kuching Cats and Taxi’s have in Common?
As you would expect in the city named after them, there are indeed cats here. As well as the live variety there are a few statues of cats scattered around the city. There is also a museum dedicated to them.
Nobody owns the cats here, they roam the street scavenging food. There are typically skinny (except for the pregnant ones) and wary of people.
Kuching cats have two unique characteristics not widely shared with their kind around the world.
The first is their understanding of the universal “hello kitty come here and say hi” noise made by puckering up your
lips and making a high pitched sound by sucking in air.
I have tried this a few times.
On every occasion they turned and ran.
Apparently that sound means “come here cause I want to eat your brain” to cats in this city.
The other and more sinister characteristic is their tails.
They are crooked.
Of the 15-20 cats I have got a close look at (that’s the ones I didn’t try the “come here cause I want to eat your brains” noise). All but two have a tail that is crooked at the end. It’s like a little right angle as though someone has bent and broken it.
I’ve asked around to try and solve this little mystery. Nobody knows.
So, as I see it there are three possible conclusions:
1. They all had their tails shut in a door (probably not the same door).
2. It’s genetic, or
3. The tails are deliberately broken.
I hope it’s No. 2. I would hate to think that the cats were mutilated.
If I find out any more about this fascinating mystery (ok, maybe not fascinating, but it is a
mystery), I shall let you know.
So how about the title for this piece? What do Kuching cats and taxi’s have in common?
Well, I’ll tell you.
Seeing as the little critters are kinda skinny, I decided to buy some cat food to feed them a little. So I have done some regular feeding outings to the waterfront with a pocket full of dried cat food.
Think I can find a bloody cat?
As soon as I put bloody cat food in my bloody pocket the little bastards disappear.
Just like a taxi, never there when you want one.
In all my time wandering around looking I found ONE cat to feed.
ONE.
And that skinny little bugger ate so much dried food (I insisted) that he lay down afterwards and hadn’t moved when I walked past him an hour later (I’m pretty sure he didn’t die).
Discouraged but not deterred I shall continue with my regular trips, taking the cat food for regular walks.
Person of the Forest
Orangutan translates to “person of the forest”. It is perhaps an acknowledgement of the orangutan’s human qualities that the
locals chose to refer to them as people. They are indeed very human and are arguably the world’s most intelligent species aside from humans (Though I have met a few humans who would struggle to match wits with a cardboard box, let alone an orangutan).
Borneo and Sumatra are the only places in the world you will find orangutans in the wild, though fossils have been found in other parts of Asia.
Mark and I decide to visit the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre some 15km south of Kuching. My guide book tells me there is a feeding at 1pm. Unfortunately, it was wrong. The feeding started at 3pm.
We decide to have a little drive around before stopping for lunch. We find a little food place in a the small town of Semonggok a few kilometres from the centre.
It ‘s not a tourist town, no reason for it to be. So when Mark and I walk into the place the cooking ladies have a bit of a giggle.
In the corner is a small elderly man slumped over a plastic table. There are empty beer cans around him. He raises his head and started mumbling.
On his forehead are sunglasses with mismatched lenses.
I think this is his local.
I move over to the cooking ladies and point at a meal they are already preparing and hold up two fingers. They nod and giggle.
We eat and pay less than a dollar for meals.
We leave and head back to the centre, arriving in time for the afternoon feeding.
Our first glimpse of wildlife is some sad crocodiles in small pens. Not sure what they are doing in an Orangutan centre. Still, I took some photos of them.
A ranger gathers us together and tells us we must be very quiet and not take any food or drink with us to the feeding area. We follow as he leads us up a track 200m to a timber platform.
We stand and wait, staring into the jungle.
The orangutans make their appearance slowly and dramatically.
Right down the middle of the jungle, straight to the feeding platform moves the dominant male. You can track his progress by the noise and the movement of the trees. Long before we see him we get a sense of his power
and presence.
Either side of the dominant males’ path, his troop make their way with less fuss. Half a dozen of them move smoothly towards the platform. As they get closer they use ropes in and around the open area between us and the feeding platform. A mother, her baby hanging upside down from her belly, makes her way across one of the ropes to a large tree next to the platform.
A juvenile female moves towards us and sits high in a tree a few metres away.
A young male hangs upside down on a rope near the platform.
None of the troop goes near the food.
They are all waiting for the dominant male to arrive and begin eating.
And there he is, emerging from the jungle some twenty metres up a tree next to the platform. He is three times the size of the other orangutans. His face is large and black. He looks like a guy I knew called Harry.
Harry makes his way down the tree and lumbers onto the platform. He grabs some fruit and sits facing us, devouring it.
The troop now take turns scrambling
down to the platform and taking some fruit. They are quick, never spending more than a few seconds on the platform.
The female near us climbs lower. One of the rangers throws a coconut to her. She catches it and climbs back up. I am a couple of metres away from the tree and looking over at Harry. The female starts to bang the coconut against the tree. After a few hits, she gets frustrated with it as it’s not breaking. She throws it to the ground a couple of metres from me (Authors note: It is estimated that 150 people each year die from falling coconuts).
The young female then comes down the tree and hangs from a nearby rope. She blows a raspberry. We all laugh. The ranger tells us we must be quiet. Loud noises can make the dominant male angry.
Nobody wants an angry Harry.
There is silence.
But Harry is oblivious. He sits munching on the fruit.
The female gets a bit fed up with the rangers’ idea of how much fruit should be thrown her way. She gracefully climbs across to a sapling and uses it as a
pole vault to move across to a small tree above a pile of fruit near the ranger. She reaches down and grabs some fruit and makes her way back (see video).
The feeding continues for another 30 minutes. Harry finishes eating and climbs up a large tree. Some of his troop sneak down for a final fruit meal before moving back into the jungle.
The orangutans leave as they arrived. Harry makes his way noisily up the middle while his troop flank him, never moving ahead of him.
I feel like I have just met a family.
Dad is a little grumpy and little scary, Mum is looking after the baby. And the young-uns are up to mischief.
Yes, they are People of the Forest.
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anonymous
non-member comment
Don't mess with Harry
Blimey Tod - Harry is a big boy! By the way Coleman is behind me busy scratching the life out of the pooh box - he is very industrious!!!