Merry Christmas!

A big welcome to those visiting my blog for the first time and a Merry Christmas to all!

If you didn't know, the moon and Mars were very close tonight and tracking across the sky together. Here's a picture I took (the best I could do with my equipment):


Tomorrow afternoon begins a marathon of worship services, which I'm really looking forward to. My handbell choir is playing at the 4pm and 6pm services. Choir is singing at 8pm and 10pm, plus I'm filling in with the other bell choir (also playing at 8 & 10). We just had a new organ installed at church this week, and I'm really looking forward to hearing all the Christmas music on it.





We are also singing and ringing for church on Christmas morning. I have an invitation to spend part of Christmas Day at a friend's house, and I'm looking forward to that. I also need to pack to leave for Kansas the next morning. I'm watching the forecast carefully, and so far it looks like I can get out of town in between storms. It should be an interesting drive. I'm taking an otter from our zoo and dropping it off at the zoo in Manhattan, KS on my way east. I'll have my dog in the front seat and the otter in a kennel in the back seat, so we'll see how that goes! For those not animal-savvy, otters are in the Mustelidae family, which includes ferrets & skunks, so they're pretty smelly. Here's a pic of Mulan that I took last night:


Lastly, here's a better picture of Hadiah and Mahal. They're still doing well together.

Hadiah & Mahal

To continue from my last post...

Hadiah and Mahal are still together. Today brought many huge steps forward in their relationship. Hadiah started off the day still acting afraid of Mahal. Then, mid-morning, while she was getting some treats from a keeper, Mahal climbed onto her and she did not freak out. After that point, there was more and more contact between the two and they started playing together. This afternoon, he took a nap sleeping in her lap and she carried him a little bit (she's still trying to figure that out). He had several temper tantrums today (I'm not sure why, but I think he was just tired), and Hadiah remained calm and even calmed him down.
I got a couple cute videos, but the pictures aren't great. Here's one of them from the end of the day:

Sad day in Primate World

Sometime early this morning our orangutan Sandra passed away. For those of you not keeping track of the orangutan saga, she's the one who adopted the baby (Mahal) about 2 1/2 weeks ago. She was very old (born in 1956), and with Mahal in her life, was much more active. It's possible that caring for him shortened her life a little, but it also greatly enriched it. We are confident that she died happy and with a purpose to her life. Now of course that left Mahal without a mommy yet again. We had introduced Hadiah to the 2 of them 6 days ago, so she'd been in with them during the day. We put her in with Mahal today. He was remarkably calm, but not too keen on hanging close to her. He actually seems to be dominant over her, threatening her if she got too close. He did apparently follow her some and she was close during feedings to get treats. They were left together overnight, and we're hopeful that within a few days they may bond.
Here's a picture of Mahal and Sandra that I took last week:


I'll keep you posted how things go!

Snowy Sunday morning

We've finally had quite a bit of winter weather over the past few days, with sleet, snow and everything in between falling at some point. The sun came out while I was in church this morning and this was the view from the parking lot when I came out:

I graduated!

Just a quick post...We had our last class of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University tonight. This class is changing my life, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone. Even if you don't have debt, you'll learn plenty.

A New Mom for Mahal

It's been almost a month since my last post. My apologies for that, especially to those who have actually been checking it (you know who you are).

I've been really busy with work and projects leading up to the holidays. My life at work got a lot easier this week, though.

On Thursday, we introduced Mahal (the baby orangutan we've been raising) to Sandra, one of our female orangutans. Sandra is 51-years-old, which is probably equivalent to a 100-year-old human. She also has arthritis (and only 4 teeth, but that doesn't really matter in this situation). Initially, we hadn't really considered her for a surrogate, due to her age and mobility. But she had raised 9 babies of her own, and seemed the most interested in him during our observations.

So on Thursday morning, we left him in an exhibit and walked out for the last time. Within 20 seconds of being let in with him, Sandra was picking him up. We had really been encouraging Mahal to be much more independent than a baby orangutan normally would be at eight months. Not knowing how good a job the surrogate would do at carrying him, we had to make sure he was able to move around the exhibit on his own and get to us at the bars for bottles. As such, we never really held on to Mahal or restrained him. So when Sandra was grabbing him and not letting go, he did not like it. For the first couple hours, she held onto him and he cried and screamed. Sandra knows that a baby his age should be carried, so that's what she was trying todo. When she finally let him go, and he calmed down, she seemed to realize that he did better that way.

It's now been 3 days and they're still together. Sandra still occasionally grabs him to pick him up and he gets upset, but he's adjusting. He sleeps on her when he's sleeping, and he's doing a great job of drinking his bottles through the mesh.

Here's a couple of pictures of the 2 of them:
This one was taken during the first 2 hours, so Mahal isn't real happy, but it's cute!
This one was take today, when he was hanging out with her by his choice.