A monkey jumped on my head today. Multiple monkeys, actually. A quick heads up that the post below is a long one about the adventures of the wildlife center. We started off the morning (without Dylan once more) by walking to the café where we were to meet the Wildlife Alliance group. The plan was to drive to the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rehabilitation Center to meet the rescued and healing injured animals there. Thankfully, our transport van had a/c. I had a baguette and cheesecake for breakfast from the café :) After a stop at a local market to pick up fruit for the elephants and monkeys, we pulled up in the blazing heat to see Lucky the elephant with her trainer in the distance, out for their walk. She came over and we fed her bananas. She was beautiful, quite gentle, and obviously eager for the treats we brought her. Elephants have an incredibly sense of smell, which was obvious by the way she would sneak her trunk around your back if you were trying to hide bananas from her there. We viewed the other elephants in their enclosures, as they were slightly more aggressive. Lucky had been brought to the center as a 6 month old and thus had been raised there, being very comfortable with humans, whereas many of the other animals had been taken to the center as a result of villager intolerance and abuse of the elephants, who had been eating the village crops. One had had battery acid thrown at it in an attempt by the villagers to make it go away. There were 2 males (one younger and one teenager) and 3 females, and each female got time alone with the teenager male in the hopes of mating, as if all three were put together with him they would get feisty with each other, vying for his attention. Oh, young elephant love. One of the younger elephants was rescued after it had got its foot ensnared and lost it completely. The Cambodia School of Orthotics, for the first time ever, attempted to create an orthotic elephant foot. It was successful! We watched them change out the cloth covering on the inside. The bottom was made out of recycled tire! Resourceful Cambodians. Next up, Lucky painted shirts for us. I'm not crazy about training elephants to do unnecessary things for humans, but she is trained humanely with positive reinforcement and the keepers explained how to look for signs that an elephants is being trained with pain and negative reinforcement. It tickled as she ran the paintbrush over my belly. A cool keepsake, but not my favourite part of the tour. Afterwards we got to feed her a type of turnip directly in the mouth by pushing up on the bottom of her trunk and placing it right on her tongue (instead of allowing her to just take it out of our hands with her trunk). Elephants' tongues are actually attached completely to their mouths (they can't stick their tongues out at you) and they are the only land mammals who can't reach the ground with their mouths. We were driven (ahhhh, a/c) to see the tigers next. There were two large spacious enclosures connected to the smaller cages in the enclosed keepers area which the tigers could go in and out of for privacy from the public and for sleeping in safety. When we arrived, a tiger in one enclosure was resting in his raised tree home, and the tiger in the other enclosure was pacing up and down the chain link fence, looking at us, the curious new visitors. There was safety bar which kept you a couple feet away from the fence, as the tiger prowled back and forth. The guides said the tigers get excited when little kids come by the cages, as they are bite sized human prey for them (not that they ever get out...). The private keepers' area with the smaller cages that we went in next had no safety rail, and you had to stay a couple feet away from the thick bars separating you from the tigers. Most of the 8 tigers were lying on the cooler concrete lying down, but all were definitely aware we were there. A tiger is always watching. The one who was prowling, Areang, came back into this area to check us out. I was taking pictures of him, and he started growling and getting feisty. Our guides told us to put the cameras down, as sometimes they don't like having their photo taken, especially when it covers your eyes. The tigers were massive of course, but leaner than I expected. The moonbears and sunbears were the next for us to visit, with an antelope goat (or named something like that...) enclosure across the road. While we were visiting the sunbears, who were again lazing around due to the exhausting heat, a couple of macaque monkeys ran out of some trees, across the road, and over the fence into the goat enclosure. The continued running to the small shallow pool for the goats, where they joined about 15 other macaques for a dip. The macaques stole our attention away from the sunbears as they started swimming, wrestling in the water, and throwing themselves off of the tall trees to splash down into the water below! These monkeys were crazy, jumping into shallow water at such a height! The guides tore themselves away from the entertaining monkeys so that we could see the moonbears. They looked like small black bears (Winnie the Pooh bears as Derek called them) with a "moon" shaped yellow patch on their chest. They told us that the one bear was blind due to previous poor treatment and malnutrition, and the other was missing a leg, so the one missing a leg would sometimes guide the blind one around the enclosure. When we were there, the blind moonbear was wondering around by itself as it has gotten to know the enclosure pretty well, and the one missing its leg was dozing off. We went to a few more enclosures to see more snoozing creatures, including the pythons, otters, leopards, and gibbons. There was one female gibbon who was very docile and we were able to give her rubs through the caging. She would stick her arms and legs out and hold them there if you stopped, clearly wanting more scratches, as well as turn her back to the cage for back rubs. She had incredibly long fingers and toes for her size, and somewhat reminded me of a sloth with her gentle nature. She stared at us at the cage edge when we walked back to the vehicle, not wanting her massagers to leave. We took a trip to the nursery and saw some incredibly cute babies. The baby leopard was alert and playing with a leaf and a lady working for an NGO in Cambodia who was taking her fourth trip to the wildlife center. The baby macaque was lying on a large teddy bear and it was all the cute a baby monkey can be expected to be. We weren't allowed to touch them because they are still quite fragile. They also took out one of the nocturnal tiny little monkeys with the big eyes, lying on a teddy bear. Adorable. The most exciting stop of the day was at our next stop - inside the macaque cage. We were pre-warned to remove all jewellery and items able to be pulled off, as the monkeys are very curious and like to take things from you. As I wanted to keep my glasses, I was warned to hold on tight as the bigger male monkey had a specific taste for glasses stealing. Our guides also warned us to not stare at them, make lots of noise, or bare our teeth while smiling as those can be seen as challenges. We were told they would jump on us as we fed them fruit, but I don't think any 4 of us expected the extent of their monkeying around. The leapt off of the cages directly onto your head, and clung from your clothing with their juicy, dirty little hands! The big one of course attempted to steal my glasses a couple of times, but I held onto them and won the battle. They would grab the fruit out of your hands and go up to perch on your head to eat it, dripping juice into your hair. Afterwards I definitely felt like I needed a shower and a change of clothes. It was a very unique experience. Lastly, we went on a walk with Lucky through some bush. We fed her some more bananas and watched her eat a whole coconut, which her powerful jaw and teeth can crunch down no problem. Powerful, muscular creatures elephants are. We hopped in the van and headed back to the city. I was feeling a bit nauseous and I think I may have suffered from heat exhaustion, despite drinking lots of water and staying mostly in the shade. I spent the rest of the night chilling out in the hostel and my bed, as the mild nausea was annoying and I needed to recuperate for the long bus ride to Siem Reap tomorrow. All in all a good, adventurous day, with more good days to come.
