Chasing Orangutans - Part II

From the Journal
August 1990

After dinner we prepare for the next day. We bring water bottles to the dining hall to be filled with boiled water. We’re asked how many hardboiled eggs we would like, one or two. Only “following teams” get eggs because we have to leave before breakfast. We set our wristwatch alarms for 4:30 am. We are to meet Mr. Uki at 5 am.

Next Morning…

Early morning in the women’s section of the team house. I quickly get up when my alarm goes off. I dress by flashlight so that I will not wake the other women. I drink a container of fruit juice and eat one of my two eggs. In the dark we meet Mr. Uki on the team house porch, and by flashlight and headlamp start up the trail to where Priscilla is nested. We string our hammocks up below her tree and wait. From 6-8 am we are to make minute-by minute observations of her activities. And again from 12-2 pm.

Lying silently in my hammock, I listen as the tropical rainforest slowly comes alive. In the predawn darkness I can see spots of green light shining through underbrush… the phosphorescent mushrooms I’ve read about. I hear strange birdcalls, growing in volume as dawn approaches, and when daylight arrives, the gibbons howl hello.

From 6-7 am, we have no observations to make because Priscilla doesn’t get up until after 7. From that point on, I call on the minute “Now” and Jay tells me what Priscilla is doing at that moment, what the infant is doing, and the position of the infant to its mother. I write it down on the waterproofed observation sheet: Rest – Moving – Eat - Close to mother. Often it is necessary to note P/O for Poor Observation. The person doing the observing soon gets a sore neck from constantly peering up into the trees with binoculars. Then we trade places. Priscilla eats leaves, flowers, fruit and bark (the under cambium layer). She moves and eats all day. It is one of the reasons that orangutans are solitary creatures and require large territories in order to get enough food. Too many orangutans in one area might lead to starvation. The only long-lasting social group in orangutan society is the mother and offspring, who live together for about seven to eight years. We share our food with Mr. Uki at lunchtime and he shares bananas and fish with us. In Indonesian culture it is rude not to share.

At times our clothing is soaked by perspiration. Jay gets a leech bite, but manages to remove it. Blood dribbles down his hand. Priscilla heads towards the swamp – and mosquitoes. She drops lower and lower in the trees. She knows we are following and “kiss squeaks” at us to warn us away. In the swamp she sits briefly on a fallen tree. She gets a drink of water and then climbs back into a tree to feed. She will be here for a while so we string up our hammocks and wait, while mosquitoes whine and fly about us. Jay sleeps. Priscilla moves to a tree directly over us. Debris and pieces of branches and bark rain down upon us as she feeds. Finally she is full and builds her nest for the night. Priscilla and baby curl up inside. In the growing darkness, we return to camp after fourteen hours of trailing a wild orangutan and her infant through the rainforest.

Note: Our hammock skills have not improved. Finding the appropriate two trees requires foresight that we have yet to master. The trees need to be far enough apart so that the hammock is at least a foot above the forest floor when you lie in it. And strong enough to hold you. Jay tied his support line onto a tree that was too small and when he got into the hammock, the whole tree bent over leaving his butt dragging on the ground. We all laughed. I too had my troubles when the knot I tied didn’t hold. As I got into the hammock it collapsed in a heap, with me tangled inside. I watched Supinah, one of the Camp orangutans, do a better job setting up a hammock than I did.

Adik, wild orangutan (male)

Siwoyo and Sugarjito

All of my own orangutan photos are somewhere in storage, so I have taken the liberty of using photos taken in 1990 by Ralph Arbus, the Camp Leakey photographer. He had no photo of the wild orangutan Priscilla.

Orangutans are endangered
.