Leaky’s Angels

Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas are the Trimates, sometimes called the Leaky’s angels. Each of them helped one of the great apes.

Jane Goodall helped chimpanzees, Dian Fossey helped gorillas and Biruté Galdikas helped orangutans.

They went their ways and Biruté Galdikas went to Borneo and built Camp Leaky to help orangutans. The reason Camp Leaky is called Camp Leaky is because Louis Leaky was her inspiration. Also, Louis Leaky supported Biruté Galdikas with her orangutan research. So, because I love orangutans and other endangered animals, we went to Camp Leaky.

“Crunch, crunch, crunch” I stepped on some leaves as I walked through a jungle in Borneo to a Tanjung Puting Reserve on one of the animals that lives there. “Just a little father.” Our guide hollered back to us. We kept on happily prancing like ponies, until finally we had made ½ of a mile into the jungle where the Tanjung Puting Reserve was.

It probably wasn’t at all what you expected. There were 10 wooden benches and in front of them was a wide open area. And in the middle of the huge area was a very tall and big table. As Trevor, mom and I kept on looking at the trees we sat down in the first row of benches. As we waited we kept looking around hoping to see an animal, but none of us saw anything.

Finally, we all saw it, there sitting in the top of a tree was sitting a big, hairy, cute curious animal. Could you guess what it was? The first orangutan I ever saw in the wild!

The old orangutan started to climb down the tree as I noticed its hair is as colorful as fire and her eyes were as black as midnight. As she was about to reach the ground, she hesitated and starred into my eyes. I felt a bust of fireworks shooting off inside of me when I could feel you her eyes seeing through my eyes and into my body seeing I am a kind person and won’t hurt her. I was excited when the orangutan came to the ground and came a little closer to me.

I started feeling a bit mad for when I saw why she came close to me. It was because people were coming with her morning food which was milk and bananas. The orangutan just kept circling the man with a huge branch of bananas bunched up together. When they were about to set down the bananas she was already goggling up bananas into my mouth. When she settled down with eating the bananas we all heard sways of the trees, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked the way the sound came, even the old orangutan.

As it came closer we all started to slowly walk towards the sound. Then there was a very tall orange and young orangutan. She came darting over to the milk and almost glopped up all the milk from the two bottles. The older orangutan started pulling the bottle out her mom so that there would still be milk left for herself. Then as the younger orangutan starts seeing the bananas around her she lets go of the bottle and started calmly eating the bananas.

When she let go of the bottle it made the other orangutan almost fall off the bench. After a little argument they both ate peaceful. The young orangutan stood as the old orangutan sat with her legs crossed and drank up the last bit milk. When they were finished with all their food they left and so did we.

As we were walking back to the boat, I kept feeling a feeling I felt when that orangutan looked at the inside of me. I could feel those eyes filled with love starring right through my eyes and into my body.