More monkeys and sunshine than I can handle in one weekend

So I decided to spend a few hours at the zoo on Friday and ended up spending most of my day there. It started when I went in to feed the monkeys and my friend the zookeeper gave me a bag and a broom and told me to change their straw. it was disgusting, and particularly difficult to do with monkeys hanging of me and launching themselves onto my back. It was particularly tricky when Thandi realised that she got quite the reaction from me if she started poking at my butt every time I bent over.


It was quite special because Oliver, the spider monkey has been very standoffish lately, to the point where he'll play with one or two people but he's pretty much avoiding contact. Anyway by the end of it I had Thandi jumping up and down on my shoulders and launching into my arms or onto the nice springy bag of straw, Oliver holding on to me and ignoring her, and the floor was all shiny and clean!

From there I helped with random things around the zoo, notably moving a few lizards to different tanks, which involved carrying extremely heavy tanks filled with sand between displays, catching lizards inside the tanks and then setting up new tanks with two lizards in each hand. It was awesome!

The next day I organised to go in early and help, in exchange for letting my uncle visit a few animals. He's blind, and so it's really fantastic for him to be able to touch different animals and learn about them, while 'seeing' their different characteristics. It's also a great excuse or me to be able to go and play with some of the animals I don't get to see very often. The best part (besides watching my aunt's face when the Mona monkey peed on her shoe) was going into one of the lemur enclosures and paying with a hand-reared lemur. He's adorable and fluffy and so so cute and we had the added bonus of the general public on the other side of the bars looking very jealous!

The bad part was that as I was helping with the new baby spider monkey and the Mona monkey, I ended up changing nappies and the little spider decided to pee all over my lap when I changed her. I hosed myself down and used some hand soap so it was all off, but I had a rather embarrassingly situated wet patch. I forgot about it until we came out of the lemur enclosure and were confronted with half my third-year students coming to say Hi!

and after all that I was completely exhausted, went to a games evening were Luke was house-sitting and was so tired I managed to end up on the wrong third avenue! Whoever decided to put two roads with the same name within 5 km of each other was a moron!