Up early to start our first day at EPRC (Endangered Primate Rescue Centre). We’re told to be there at 6:30am for the morning shift (if we were up to working). We arrived and started changing shoes and the keepers were already zooming off. 6:32 and we were the only ones left. Mental note for tomorrow – arrive at 6:20.
They found us different keepers to follow for the morning. I looked after the gibbon feed which involved moving them to holding pens, then switching their bowls of food over and removing the leaf from the day before. Bowls are all carabineer’ed to the enclosure. The reason becomes obvious quickly when you see how much they bash on things.
John was on pre-release duty – walking the fenceline and collecting all the stick insects who’d died on the electric fence during the night.
Then off to breakfast for an hour. Our little restaurant had the choice of sandwich or soup.
The pre-lunch shift I helped out preparing a few cages for Loris that are arriving soon in the quarantine area and John helped fix another area. Just before lunch we were on leaf bundling duty. I’m still not sure the right way to do this task as we were quality checked with conflicting instructions. I’m sure we’ll be much better at this by the end of the week.
With so much food we basically skipped lunch and had a snooze for an hour or so. Our accommodation is this cool yellow house. We’re in one of the rooms on the ground floor
The afternoon was a bit of a rush as the keepers were keen to knock off early are there was a big football final on. Lots more leaf bundling which was getting placed into buckets of water to make the next day’s job easier.
We got to help out ie watch as they medicated the Loris that are getting ready for release and then the place was fairly empty. This worked out great for us as we got to spend some time with Elke, the head keeper, who could tell us all about the animals and meant we could get closer to some of the cages to shoot through the wire.
In the evening we were treated to dinner at Elke’s house with Adam the director with a massive spread of food that was way too much to eat.
