When you get up at six o’clock in the morning you can be amazingly productive, but that doesn’t mean anything to 21 expectant bears, who eat so much between them that it takes you the first two hours of the day to prepare their food ( and the food for the primates, and they eat twice a day).

Food deliveries come to the camp every other day: fruit, vegetables, rice, seeds and gruesome things insects, dead and live chickens. My first job today was to join the nutrition staff for animal food preparation. What you never imagined is the complex routine of feeding. Each animal when they arrive have their faeces analysed to determine what diet they were eating before they were trafficked and the center commits to maintaining that diet for best health. This is the reason animals are fed in different holding areas separating those that eat certain foods and those that don’t or can’t. Layer on to that certain animals that are taking additional meds and animals of the same breed that simply won’t eat together because they don’t like each other. Wow, they are fussy eaters! So aside from the preparation, the feeding itself takes takes a further two hours. One team on bears and another team on primates.

Truck filled with mornings bear and primate food.

This morning I was to help feed the bears. A far easier location to get to than the primates, yet a new challenge of throwing food over a 15-foot electrified fence. Throwing bananas, turnips, cucumbers, pumpkins and radishes. I used to be able to ‘chuck’, but am really hopeless now. The bears, in frustration, watch me sitting on their haunches. I can lip-read bear, ” Who is this new girl?, she’s too slow. We will starve”

The 21 bears are 19 moon bears and 2 sun bears ( I think) split in to 3 main groups. The two sun bears also share an area with a new species for me, a Binturong – named Richard (ha) – a nocturnal animal – but luckily came out of his den for feeding so that I could see him.

Bear feeding, TICK. Bears holding areas bleach clean and scrubbed TICK. My next job was to go in to the juvenile crocodile pen, empty their pond, scrub the bottom to remove all the green slime and then refill. Thankfully the crocs are each about 3 feet long and more scared of us than we them. As the water filtered away they shrank away in to the undergrowth near the pool. Instructions here were “keep your eyes peeled and if they seem to be heading your way prod them with your brush”. Not scarey work, but physically hard work in a 36 degree temp and no shade. The crocodiles living here need explanation, but a story for another day.

“Then just one more job before lunch”…..Really? ……More? “Please can you feed the deer?”…..Yes. I can do this. I have already heard whispers, including from Jeremy the boss here, that I am star volunteer. Yeh, yeh, I’m just that sucker who never says no!

The afternoon was then back to the upstairs area for primate feeding. It is the same story here as the bears, a complex and lengthy feeding regime but now two times a day. Across the 15 gibbons and Langurs there are 10 different combinations of food to be managed in and out of holding areas, feed, release, clean. I was also entrusted with two new tasks ( as responsible staff had been called away on a 14 hour mission to save a deer that had turned up at a food market in the south) : one to bottle feed the baby gibbon through the bars and secondly to hold down the amazingly strong baby red dour langur, photographed yesterday, whilst she was injected with serum. Wow, veterinary nursing, my next career!

Lastly, a picture of an Oriental Garden Lizard. It too watched my poor throwing skills as half the food landed back on our side of the fence.