Zoo Taiping with Julie and Wasabi

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Hello there once again,

I'm going to start this blog with a little explanation of where I am, as not everyone seems to know that much about Malaysia. Malaysia is a federation of 13 states, nine of which are monarchies, split between Malaya, the peninsula in the west, and Borneo, the island in the east, which are seperated by the South China Sea. I'm in Taiping, a town in the state of Perak, in the north-western area of Malaya. Perak is the oldest kingdom in the country, and Taiping is one of the oldest towns. They actually claim it's a city, but there really isn't much here. However, it does have two things going for it - utterly incredible scenery, comprised of endless jungled hills, and the country's oldest and greatest zoo.

so, onto the important stuff - the zoo itself. I absolutely love it there. It's only been three days, but I cannot say how fantastic it is. I do spend a great deal of my time cleaning the enclosures, which involves scrubbing and hosing and yet more sweeping, but I also get to feed the animals and engage in erichment exercises - meaning I get to play with them as much as I like. There are two main areas I've been focussing on, and will be for the next week. One is Wasabi, a young orang utan. She can't go into the main enclosure since the two adult females are too violent towards her. The resident male died quite recently due to an infection and the females, Pudding and Heaven, are unpredictable without him. Wasabi (named after the Japanese horseradish) is five now, and will go to anaother zoo when she's eight to enter a wider community. For now, she spends most of her time in her own enclosure, except when she's taken out for walks around the zoo. She's absolutely wonderful. Incredibly palyful and cheeky, her favourite game is going through my pockets to find food (although she did get a good deal more out of them the first time, when I wasn't expecting it). When we feed her, we hide food around the pen for her, although she usually only eats the fruit and throws away anything green. However, she has been sharing her beans with me. We tried putting peanut butter on them, but she just licks it off, and then she managed to steal the jar. It's pretty exhausting dealing with her - even though she only just comes up to my knees, she's pretty much pure muscle and weighs more than I can lift alone, which is tough when she tries to climb on me. She's a Bornean orang, so she has reddish fur, not orange like the Sumatran kind. She's highly intelligent and very affectionate, although she does throw a strop if she doesn't get what she wants.

My other main area is the chimpanzee enclosure. I have to clear out the leftover leaves and food, wash out the crap, and hide food around the trees. The chimps like honey and bananas, so we hide those in holes in the trees, and they prize them out with sticks. A good deal of tiem is spent on Julie, a young chimp who lost her right leg as a baby. She can't mix with the other chimps well, as they tend to shun or bully her because of her difference. She's kept in her own section, mainly indoors but let out at least once a day with a keeper. She's extremely fast considering she's missing a leg, but then, she spends most of ehr time on her hands. She's incredibly boisterous, and likes to grab hair and jump on me from a great height, but thankfully, chimps are much lighter than orang utans. She tried to run off today when we were cleaning her pen, and we only got her under control by locking her in a cage with me until we were finished and could let her back in.

That's not all I do - I've been in with the elephants, fed the leopard cats, lemurs and birds, played with the gibbons and seen the hippos (one of whom is expecting a baby any week now - two year pregnancies can be hard to pin down to a date). It's exhausting work, and some of the animals don't have the room they need, but generally it's a good, open zoo and all the creatures are well-loved. I think I'm going to have a good four weeks.

Dan x

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