Animal Alphabet

I actually stole this picture from a friend of mine who writes a blog about his adventures teaching abroad. Ignorance Is Bliss. I got a kick out of it and I thought you might enjoy it as well.

Monkey Business- Working Interview

I just got back from a working interview at a primate sanctuary. I'll save you the suspense and let you know that I was offered the job and I do intend to take it. I thought that some of you might be interested in knowing what a normal day of work would be like for me.

Oh- before I get started, I should probably mention that I had to sign an agreement saying that I wouldn't post any pictures that I took at the sanctuary (this is standard operating procedure at most sanctuaries), so none of these pictures were taken by me.

I flew into town the night before my interview. The sanctuary does supply temporary on-site housing for it's employees. An oil boom in the area has caused an influx of workers and there just aren't enough places to live. The other new animal caretaker started a few weeks before my interview and she told me about some of the places she had looked at already. One apartment complex was charging $800 a WEEK per person! She did end up finding an affordable apartment but there was quite a wait. So the fact that the sanctuary provides housing is a huge help.

Another obstacle to   moving there is that it is a very rural area. It's approx. an hour and a half drive from the airport to the sanctuary and we stopped 20 minutes into the drive to get groceries for my stay. All I could think was "There's no way I'll be able to support my ice cream addiction here." It turns out that the gas stations carry most of your grocery needs there just aren't as many options. This, I can handle- I'll just need to learn to plan ahead alittle better. Right now I live a block from the grocery and only buy food for 1-3 days.

Anyway, this is going to become a very long blog entry if I don't start telling you about my day. The days there start at 7:00 (alittle early for my taste, but I'll get used to it). Everybody punches in at the office then heads over to the feed room where food was counted out the night before. Here, we split into two groups. The first group went off to feed the main enclosure, pelka (named for one of the original monkey's descendants who split off from the main group and made her own. Eventually, her group grew large enough that they needed their own enclosure) and the semi-natural enclosures (used as temporary housing for new primates and when introducing primates to each other, so they can be better monitored). I went with the second group to feed the Northwest enclosure, baboons, long tails and cats (yes, cats. I'll explain that in a bit).

We did Northwest first. It was pretty straight forward, we basically transferred all of the food from the crates to a wheelbarrow then walked around inside the enclosure, stopping occasionally to throw food out to the monkeys. There were also some large water tubs that needed to be dumped, cleaned, and refilled. During this time we tried to look at all of the monkeys and note abnormal behaviors or injuries. There were two blind monkeys that we had to find and hand some food to.

Next we did baboons. I did not get to go in with the baboons (nor did I want to. I don't have a lot of experience with primates, but I have enough to be scared of baboons).

Instead there is a small part of the enclosure that is gated off with guillotine type doors so we could close the doors and lock the baboons out of that area. Then we go in and clean up the old food, give fresh food, and clean water. Once we were done, we opened the trap door and the baboons came in to eat.

Then we did the long tails. These guys had one natural enclosure, which was done similar to Northwest and a few semi-natural enclosures. The long tails were all ex-research and prone to getting worms because they were raised in such sterile conditions, so they are fed on feeding tables instead of on the ground.

Finally we did the cats. This enclosure has about 40 cats that have been abandoned at the sanctuary over the years and then bred. The enclosure is meant to keep predators out not to keep the cats in, but the cats stay in because that's where they are fed. I should also mention that the monkeys can get out of the natural enclosures. This is done on purpose so that if one monkey is being picked on, they can get away. So there are a few free roaming monkeys around the sanctuary. Those monkeys are called "the trustees."

After that we went back to the feed room to count out dry food and wait for the produce truck, which comes every Wed. I'm told that this weeks truck was a small one, but by the time we were done my arms were shaking and I was out of breath.

Once the truck was unloaded into the cooler, we went to lunch. Normally, they bring their lunch and eat on property, but since I was there it was a special occasion and we went out. We went to one of the small towns near by and ate at what I gather was one of the two restaurants in town.

After lunch we counted out produce for the next day then the manager took me around to see the enclosures that I hadn't worked with in the morning, she also showed me the construction being done so they could take in 130 primates from another sanctuary that has gone bankrupt, and pointed out all of the things that she hoped to improve in the existing enclosures.

Then it was time for meds. There are two monkeys with arthritis that get a pain reliever every night as well as a rotating de-worming schedule.The arthritic monkeys are weary of new people so I didn't get ot give them their meds, but I did get to hand out the cherry flavored de-wormer. One of the females decided that one "cookie" wasn't enough and she grabbed my arm trying to get another. It wasn't a violent grab, but her fingernails dug in and she left a bruise.

The last thing I got to do at my "interview" was to hand out bananas to all of the semi-natural enclosures and the trustees (so the don't try to steal them from the semi-natural enclosures). Some of the monkeys would come up and take the banana from me, others I had to toss it in for them. The only black crested macaque at the sanctuary was one of them that would take it from my hand. There are lots of snow monkeys, long tails, baboons, and bonnet macaques, but only one black crested macaque. As the odd ball out- he was instantly my favorite.

This picture is really cool. The black crested macaque stole 

someones camera and took a picture of herself, then gave it back. 

While handing out bananas, I also met a snow monkey who came from a zoo where he was housed with no other monkeys and therefore needs to work on his social skills. He's in transition so he is still in an enclosure by himself where he can see the other monkeys but he can't reach them. He's conflicted. He so desperately wants to be groomed, but he knows that he shouldn't be interacting with humans. So he'll offer his back to be scratched but once you start scratching he'll turn around and show his teeth in a threat. Sure enough, that's exactly what he did when I made my rounds. What do you do when a monkey is threatening you? You  avoid eye contact, hand him his banana, and move on. 

At the end of the day I was tired, soar, bruised, scratched, dirty, and happier than I can remember ever being. 

Land of the Leopard

The Russian government has created a new national park. It opened on April 9th in the Russian Far East and it's 1,011 square miles will be a safe place for critically endangered Amur (Siberian) tigers and the Far Eastern Leopard, which is the worlds rarest big cat (there are only approx. thirty surviving today). The park was created through the merger of three existing protected areas and the addition of some previously unprotected land along the Chinese border and in the northeast portion of the leopards range.

This park is one of 13 new national parks and 9 new national reserves to be opened in Russia!! That will mean that 3% of Russia's landmass will be protected. Some of you might be thinking 3% isn't that much, but keep in mind that Russia is HUGE. 3% of Russia's lanndmass is 197,784 square miles, for all of you Americans who read my blog- that's approx. the size of Texas. 

WAY TO GO RUSSIA!!! 

On a completely unrelated note: My personal life is very busy right now, so I apologize in advance if it takes a few weeks for me to post anything new to my blog. 

Bonobo Handshake: A book review

Before reading this book; I couldn't tell you anything about bonobos except that they're like chimps who have a  lot of sex, I couldn't tell you anything about life in war ravaged Congo except that the war has something to do with diamonds, and I certainly couldn't tell you anything about meeting, falling for, marrying & living with the love of your life. Now... well... some things you just have to experience for yourself. But I am confident that if any of those subjects were to come up in a conversation, I could keep myself from looking like a complete idiot (celebrate the small victories folks).

This isn't just an adventure story about a girl living in the Congo, working with apes. This isn't just a love story about how she fell in love with her husband or how she fell in love with the bonobos or how she fell in love with a country and it's people. This isn't just a war story about death, violence, torture, anguish and loss. This story is alittle bit of all of those things but when you put them all together, it's something more. It's a story about life, and life never fits nicely into one genre or another.

Terror bird

I was reading an article about the difference between Old World Vultures (found in Europe, Asia and Africa) and New World Vultures (found in North and South America). It was really interesting, we've known for a long time that old world vultures are in the raptor family but there's been an ongoing debate about new world vultures. At first they were thought to be raptors as well (descended from other birds of prey), after studying their behavior and DNA there was some thought that they were descended from stocks, but now the discovery of some prehistoric skeletons suggest that they are actually a family of their own.

The image on the left is a California Condor- a New World Vulture. California Condors are the largest flying bird on Earth (it weighs 18-20 lbs)
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The image on the right is a Hooded Vulture- an Old World Vulture

This is one of the New World (Turkey) Vultures that lives at the raptor center that I work at. Her name is Aura and based on her attitude- she KNOWS she's beautiful

The part of the article that was really interesting for me was the description of the prehistoric vulture. These birds were up to 7 feet tall, had a wingspan of 20 feet and weighed 120 lbs (and they could still fly!). For those of you who are familiar with the Macbride Raptor Project, this bird (with its wings out-stretched) would be as long as our clinic building and only slightly shorter. Imagine if these birds were still around; it would certainly make my job (catching and treating sick and injured birds of prey) a LOT more interesting.

I couldn't find a picture of the prehistoric vulture, but I really wanted to share this picture with you. The caption was "dinosaur-like terror bird"