Volunteering at the Monkey Sanctuary!

Yay! Another productive day! I was late for the bus for this trip cause the bus wasn't that frequent today and also I should've taken the 41 bus instead of the 2 bus. That would've saved me from being late :/ but oh well what's done is done. Alhamdulillah the bus waited for me though. The journey took longer than I expected. It was said on the e-mail that it would only take us an hour and a half but it took us 2 hours (the bus driver went on the wrong road) but there were a lot of new sceneries so I don't have much to complain.

Just realized, it's not actually the right path but you get the rough idea how long it was

Got this from google - the bird view of the Monkey Sanctuary

We can barely make out the outline of cages and the house there (from the above picture).

Here we are!

All ready in my wellies, still got dirt on me :s

The enclosures are a bigger than what I expected 

Pretty too - nice runways interconnecting the enclosures

Seh Ling was there too

So as Cally ^^

These are some of the monkeys open to the public: 

One of the Wooly Monkeys

Black-capped Capuchin

Another Capuchin

Wooly Monkey - My first time seeing a monkey eating GRASS

I was working on this post last night but I fell asleep *typical me* so I'll just continue where I left off. Don't mind the date. This happened on the 26th of February ^^. I just woke up and WOW my body's so sore! - especially my back. Thanks to shoveling mud yesterday or was it due to sleeping on the uncomfortable chair in the bus. Seriously it hurts so bad.

Ok enough of me whining, straight to the story - when we got there we were give an introductory talk on how the place started. It was formed in 1964 by a monkey-pet owner who studied about them more so than the average pet-owner. He/she then realized that monkeys are wild animals and they need their social life instead of being kept in cages alone for years and years hence set up the sanctuary. The pet trade is the main danger for primates especially the cute little monkeys like marmosets and squirrel monkeys. I was surprised at how bad it was, even London apartments have cages in them to keep their pet monkeys! Man I guess that's no surprise actually, as monkeys are cute of course some would take them as pets. Not sure why people would want the big ones though but yeah people have their own preferences. But yeah there are at least 5000 primates being kept as pets all around UK - not counting the small cute ones as no license are required to keep them, unlike the big ones like capuchins. So we can only IMAGINE how many are there being kept in houses or apartments all around the UK only, not to mention Europe and everywhere else! Monkeys are smart creatures so imagine humans were kept in cages all their life, how would you feel about it? The monkeys in the sanctuary all came in the state of poor health psychologically and physically. Dental problems, diabetes, abnormal bone formations, over or underweight not to mention high stress levels - all were victims from the pet trade as of being put in cages and being given inappropriate diet. There are 26 present in the sanctuary now and most are healing well and living quite happily in their own social groups. But if the pet trade is not stopped, there would be no end to this. Ah I forgot to mention, the law says that it is completely legal to keep them as pets. I personally find that absurd. They should ban the primate pet trade altogether - be ethical and think of what's best for them and not us.

Being all protective there :) But it is true and we should raise people's awareness on this matter.

One thing I'd thought I'd never had done - I ate ham yesterday, pure accident of course. We were provided lunches and they were hand made sandwiches, I took the one labelled 'tuna with cheese sandwich'. It looks a bit weird cause there were veges in it but I trusted the label and ate it. But then I didn't taste any tuna so I checked it and ask Cally if it looks like tuna to her and she said it looks like ham. I was SHOCKED and froze for a bit. I stopped eating and threw it away. I honestly didn't know what to do but mom said, "tawakkal saja . . apa buleh buat." so that's what I'm doing. Moral of the story : Don't be too gullible and check before you eat.


Then we head out and do some shoveling. After that made some enrichments for the monkeys to make them active and keep them interested.

We reached Tremough at about 6.15pm, thankfully there was a bus there to go to Falmouth but I had to pay £2.60 as it was past 6 and it's the weekend so no student discounts. Jolly~

We're gonna have a cookout afterwards here with Dina and Tiqah for lunch so I'll update on that later.. Tata~