Spent an outstanding birthday with the woolly monkeys of Wool. We headed down to Dorset to visit Keith’s adopted chimp, Seamus, at Monkeyworld. Monkeyworld is an ape rescue centre and, as the name suggests, is home to primates rescued from all over the world. They purposely don’t breed them there, preferring to save space for abused monkeys to be rescued, but Seamus was accidentally conceived there in 1998 when his mother removed her birth control. And we’re glad – he recently turned 5 years old and is really mischievous and naughty. We kept returning to the nursery enclosure at different times of the day to watch him playing with his younger friends (Pip and Ben we think).
Seamus had some bread at lunchtime – no matter how fast the others chased him and tried to get a bit from him, he was too fast and boisterous every time. He might be selfish, but he was very affectionate with them too. One of the funniest antics to watch was them cuddling each other whilst squirting sprays of spit into one another’s mouths! As for the trick of weeing into a plastic cube, well… we don’t want to remember that… although they do say that aqua vitae is good for you (‘they’ being Auntie Val and Uncle Harvey, “Benjamin!”)…
Thanks go to Gayle and Hannah for helping me pick Seamus for Keith – he was definitely the best choice!