These are some of my favorite pictures of
Ciam (pronounced Cham) and
Mamu. Ciam is a 15-year-old female
and mother to Mamu. Ciam was brought
to the rehabilitation center suffering from a
gunshot wound. She was shot for an unknown
reason and left for dead. She spent about a
year at
MWC before she was released back into
the wild.
While Ciam was living free in the forest,
she roamed nearby the center. The problem
with staying too close to the center is the
potential for close encounters between her
and visitors at MWC. Since MWC is literally
built in the rainforest, the paths that lead
to the enclosures, and are used by visitors,
are directly in the rainforest. A visitor to
the center was bitten by Ciam on the path
and she had to be placed back in her
enclosure at MWC. No one is sure why she bit
the visitor, but it is assumed that the
visitor had food and possibly enticed Ciam.
Ciam is highly intelligent and has
outsmarted the head keepers, the volunteers,
and even me! I believe her to be the most
intelligent of all the orangutans at MWC.
While the volunteers were painting the
outside of Ciam and Mamu's enclosure, they
left a paint bucket unattended. The wall
they were painting was concrete with a
window near the ground with some bars to
keep the orangutans inside the enclosure.
The head keeper told the volunteers to be
extremely careful when painting near the
window because of Ciam's cunningness. I
turned away from
Gus and saw the paint
bucket left near the window and saw Ciam
making her way closer to the window.
I moved the paint bucket about 10 feet away
from the window up against the wall so Ciam
couldn't see it. I went back to keeping a
watchful eye on Gus, although I should have
been keeping my eye on Ciam. After I turned
away, I heard a loud noise and saw Ciam
pulling the paint bucket closer to the
window with a long rope. I could not get to
the bucket in time before Ciam grabbed it
and proceeded to paint the inside walls of
her enclosure green!
I probably would not have believed it but,
luckily, I saw it with my own eyes. Ciam
tied two long ropes together and fastened a
potato sack to the end. Then she stuck her
arm through the window (keep in mind she
could not see the paint bucket) and blindly
lassoed the paint bucket and dragged it
towards her. I couldn't believe it!
After experiencing the fun of cleaning up
all the paint in the enclosure before it
dried, the head keeper and primate expert,
Keith Lloyd, told me whenever you think an
item is out of reach of Ciam, move it away
another 30 feet. That was definitely a
learning experience that I could not have
learned from a text book.
