Had a bad nights sleep last night I think it was more to do with backing onto a jungle and all the new nosises. Unfortunately it decided to rain at about 4am, I am not sure anyone slept through that it is just so loud. After cereals and toast we started our first days work. We have a rota and my job for today was the Sun Bears.
They have two enclosures of these cute little bears (the worlds smallest). So first job of the day was putting the food out for them, this involves climbing their enclosure and the trees and placing fruit and dog biscuits in the holes and crevasses. Next stage is to smear peanut butter and honey over it. We then got a chance to watch them when they were released from their night dens. It's great to see them sniff out what you thought was a well hidden piece. The baby bear born at Matang (it was unplanned) is a great tree climber and very very cute. After this we had the night dens to clean which means clearing last nights food and poop, hosing, scrubbing, hosing again then squeeging the excess water off.
First half the day complete it was time for lunch so we all headed back to our houses. I arrived home to find Beau cooking noodles and veg, which was delicious and well deserved. We got two hours to chill out before regrouping at 2pm. Most of the volenteers then went to complete their afternoons work, but Emma (a past volenteers as well) and I were tasked with going with Richard (a keeper) and another long term volunteer to collect bamboo for a group of school children who were arriving on Saturday to make some enrichment for the animals.
This trek was about 2km into the rainforest until we came across the bamboo. Richard cut it all down, then into sections where us girls tied it all together. The string we bought didn't really hold so we reverted to the natural vines growing round the trees which was a lot stronger! We popped it all on our shoulders and headed back to the centre. As bamboo harbours water they were pretty heavy and balancing them with sloshing water inside was hard work. When we returned to the centre we then had to cut them into individual sections. We were pretty efficient at this so upon completion headed over to help with the finishing touches to a civet cat cage. I wielded some power tools and we (not me) broke a hard wood drill head. Those things are strong and it literally just steered off! This now means a civet cat from quarentine can move into its new home. What this project is all about.
Day one of working was now complete, I went home and made dinner. We had some Birthday cake with the others for one of the others birthday, had a few beers and crashed about 9pm.
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