Puck, the new baby Langur stopped calling for his mother after about 3 days, but his loud voice is still causing trouble with the local troop. If he finds himself ‘abandoned’ as he sees it, that is if I am more than a few feet away, he starts to call until he is picked up. At this young age he doesn’t much mind which human rescues him but as he gets older he will start to distinguish between us, as Phooka does. He also has little understanding of distances or danger yet and if he sees Phooka doing a big jump he will also just launch himself into the air, despite the lack of strength in his legs to go far enough for a safe landing.
Having watched Phooka jumping on our dog Urchin he decided to copy and flung himself off the bed towards her, unfortunately landing on her face. Urchin of course panicked at what she probably thought was some giant spider. Puck then panicked and tightened his grip, unfortunately his fingers were in or over the dogs eyes and he also started the screeching alarm call. Phooka hearing the chaos ran to me for help and landed on my head in panic, the dog shot under the bed with Puck still holding on for grim death and it took several minutes to extract her, remove and comfort Puck, persuade Phooka to let go of my hair and restore Urchins peace. Puck has not attempted it again and now Urchin is wary of him as well so they don’t play together yet However, I have seen Puck holding on to Urchins leg cautiously, so they will both get over the fright eventually.
Pani, one of our Rhesus macaques, recently suffered a rupture, which had to be operated on by the vet and he has been receiving follow up treatments to the wound 3 times a day. This involves an injection, checking healing and applying powder or cream to the wound. When a well fed Rhesus is sitting down, folds of spare flesh tend to gather over the lower stomach, obliterating the wound site from view. Pani learnt after the first few treatments to hold up his spare tyre so that treatments could be applied and followed the whole procedure with great interest. He has been with us since a baby when he was hand reared and the handling he received means that John is able to treat him without the need to dart or anaesthetise him. If we had to do this it would have jeopardised the healing process and possibly have made the operation impossible. Unfortunately Pani is now reaching full adult hood and has become aggressive with everyone other than John.
