Oooobeeeeedooooo

Late night, last minute blip!

This is my bookmark from Monkey World in Dorset.

I had never heard of this place until an old friend started texting me about a tv programme. She would text distraught because someone was ill or someone had died, and then over the course of the adverts one night, the owner and founder of monkey world, Jim Cronin discovered he had cancer and died.

My friend was distraught! We decided for her birthday a trip to monkey world was in order! This involved a round trip of 800 miles! Luckily the local airport at the time was running flights to another local airport only 30 minutes from the place.

It was an early start, and we got lost driving there but eventually we arrived.

Arriving was like opening my eyes to a new world. I had never experienced anything so fantastic in my life. Families of apes everywhere, a nursery full of baby chimps - and two family groups of orangutangs and an orangutangs nursery.

While watching the babies in the orangutangs nursery, they came over to watch us. Keen to interact with them, we took things from our bags and demonstrated. K took out a lipbalm and put it on her lips next to the window and Amie, the adoptive mother pressed her lips to the window for some to be applied to her.

We put our hand flat against the window and they would respond in kind. Standing staring into their eyes was like staring into the souls of kindred spirits. They knew so much and knew we were like them.

At another house we all smiled as we watched a mother chimp care for her little baby. She stood, looking rather agitated for a minute picked up the baby and ran head first for the window. It was quite un-nerving, she was a big chimp. As she reached the window she stopped suddenly directly in front of me and held her little baby Bart out in front of her. She had brought him over to show me.

She then sat down in front of me, Bart on her lap and watched me while I admired her baby.
People around asked 'does she know you?', 'do you come here a lot?'.

'no' my friend responded, 'it's just that she smells of bananas'.