Animal

Hey everyone! Its been a MAD couple of weeks at IPR! Lots of drama and excitement! A few weeks ago Sue put an ad in farmers weekly asking if anyone had any land they wanted to donate and amazingly she had heaps of offers! The most promising one didn't work out but Sue has since found an ideal property really cheap in Gauteng, so hopefully soon the Monkeys will be moving onto pastures new and much bigger! Sue has also accepted 6 Hamadryas Baboons (and possible 11 spider monkeys and Pygmy Marmosets!) so we have a month to build an enclosure for them (but we may find that we have to start again if the move goes ahead!). Sue also heard from a girl in Columbia who had found a Howler monkey chained up at a hostel, she had managed to get the Monkey out of that situation but she hasn't been in touch since, we can only hope that it found a place in a sanctuary out there and is not in a situation thats much worse.
While I was in Cape Town Twiggi (a 13 year old female Marmoset) had a baby. Shes had awful luck with child rearing in the past as she was uised as a breeding monkey in a lab and all her babies were taken off her after a week. Since arriving at the sanctuary shes had a few babies all of which have died. We really hoped that she'd finally be able to rear her own baby, but sadly after a week we noticed little Twiglet looking really weak with his head lolling and his tail uncurled. Sue wasn't around so Chaya called her and she said to take the baby off Twiggi and feed it. Taking the baby off Nigel (a young male who was carrying it at the time) was awful, the whole family of Marmosets screamed when I did it. We got the baby eating straight away and kept up hourly feeds through the night. Although the baby ate well at first the next day he began to vomit and it looked like he had an infection and sadly died in the afternoon. I felt awful for poor old Twiggi, her mate, Mukka has been vasectomized now so that little one will have been her last baby. We thought that Twiggi had probably stopped lactating, she is an old Marmoset and all those years of having babies taken off her might have suppressed her maternal instincts.
The next day was just as bad, Malika, another female Marmoset had been bitten by a snake a week or so before, she had a massively swollen head and we thought she'd lost an eye! They took her in and cleaned her eye up but she died not long after! So another sad monkey death! Not good.
The last few days have been mad! Loads of new volunteers have arrived and now we have a full house! Tash and I have moved into the tent with Chaya and Julio (we've injected the fun into tent life with our fun syringes) and everyone, except the animals (who were already a bit mental) has gone insane.
Poor old Papi (the Mona monkey) has been having a tough time of it, theres been so many people around he doesn't quite know where to direct his hatred! He had a go at me yesterday when I spilt his juice (BLOODY IDIOT!).
Next week I'm going to Blythe canyon and Graskop with Lu and Sam where we're going to do the gorge swing and a big zip line! Fun times! I can't believe I've got less than 3 weeks left, why does it always go so quickly!
I'm sure I have more to report, but I've forgotten!

Becky AKA Munzie

Hey everyone! Thought I'd do another blog of my adventure this summer! I've been in SA for 2 weeks now and I'm loving it! Have met some amazing people and great new monkey friends! I'm loving work at the sanctuary, which consisits of early morning feeds, supplements of porridge, cooking for all the monkeys! We made mango flavoured pap for them the other day and they were loving it! I've also made some cool enrichment for the marmosets, including a rope bridge type-thing and some holey cola bottles filled with mealworms! One of my favourite jobs is Papi watch; Papi is a Mona monkey, who, like many of the monkeys at the sanctuary had an awful past, his entire family was killed so that he could be taken into the pet trade, he moved around many homes and zoos which couldn't handle his abnormal behaviour until he found a home at the sanctuary. He paces alot and is easily agitated, but with all the attention from volunteers and a good quality of life hes come a long way from the wreck that he was when he first arrived. I haven't quite remembered the names and faces of all 70 marmosets, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually! They are such fun little guys, and the more playful ones love nothing more than a game of hide and seek! I've also enjoyed playing with some of the squirrel monkeys, even though Bobby decided that my hand was his chew toy! In the last couple of days Sue got word of a baby Hippo being kept illegally in Tzaneen, shes offered to keep it until a permanent home can be found (as the sanctuary only takes exotic species permanently) so hopefully in the next couple of weeks we have that to look forward to unless the SPCA find somewhere else for it!
Last weeekend I went to Kruger national park, its about a 3 hour drive to Phalaborwa, so we stayed there over night in a really nice hostel, if anyones ever there its called Elephant Walk Tours and Accommodation, its only R85 (about 8 pounds) a night! We got up early on friday and drove through the park at our accomodation in Satara camp. WQwe stopped on the way at Letaba for an ealry lunch and saw Nyala, bushbuck and some enormous Cranes as we looked out over the river. On the drive we saw Elephant, Giraffe, loads of Impala, Blue Wildebeest, Kudu, 2 tiny Klipspringer, Duiker, White Rhino, Hippo, Cape Buffalo and much more! On the second day we drove down to Lower Sabie to try and find a dead Rhino that had attracted loads of scavengers but got lost and had to turn back to make the gate closure! We stayed at Oilifants camp on the second night, which has a fantastic view over the Oilifants river! At half 5 the next morning we went on a morning drive, we saw loads of Rhino, elephant and antelope, but the icing on the cake for me had to be seeing a Spotted Hyena which leisurely trotted past the car without even looking at us!
I've just booked flights to Cape Town for next week, I really want to climb Table Mountain (despite previous mountain related experiences...) and see Boulder's beach! I'll be back at IPR on the 7th and I'll stay here probably for another month until I jet off to Cameroon and the Gorillas!
I'll keep you updated! Hope your all having fun!