Dear Diary – Part 3

Not Forrest, but Youtube ‘celebrity’ Sonya. Behind her eyes lies a similar story.

Pain. Sadness. Loneliness. Torture. This is the existence of a pet slow loris. After being ripped from my mother and my teeth removed with pliers, I was then stuffed in a man’s pockets and smuggled aboard an airplane to be taken far away from Asia.

The loris in the man’s other pocket died. No doubt he just phoned for another to be taken from the rainforest, thus the whole vicious cycle is repeated again. I haven’t seen a tree, let alone the forest in weeks now. I’m so, so homesick. Looking around, all I see are metal bars and a water bottle made for hamsters.

That I’m forced to live in a three-by-two-by-two foot cage is bad enough when adult lorises can comfortably travel five plus miles in a night. Often we’re then fed human food through the bars, forcing down horrible, unnatural things such as rice through our now mangled teeth. This makes us seriously ill. With our digestive systems made for gums and insects that even zoos struggle to provide, my life expectancy is now between one and two years. Back in the forest it’d be twenty plus.

Other factors also add to this. The temperature and climate also make us unwell, we’re not adaptable beings at all. That’s why we’re found in so few places. Put ‘cute’ clothes or props on us and the situation’s even worse. Often this is around the time we’re taken out of our cages and a camera shoved in our face, poked and leered at as though circus performers. Most of those who watch the resulting videos do not understand.

Millions of people have seen these clips on Youtube. Very few stop to think that we’re nocturnal and so the bright lights and flashing of lenses scares us and damages our eyes, whilst even less people realise that us holding our arms in the air to be ‘tickled’ is in fact a defensive mechanism; it’s from here that we secrete part of our poison.

Despite our name, slow lorises really aren’t that slow. These situations and the lights force us into a shocked state though, making our movements lethargic and laboured. And you think that we look happy? Try spending the other twenty-three hours and fifty-eight minutes of your day stuffed inside a small metallic prison.

‘Liking’ these videos on Youtube then makes the owner money. This in effect is offering financial incentive to own a loris. I shouldn’t have even heard of the word ‘money’. In turn, organised crime is funded by the illegal smuggling of lorises. Behind drugs and arms, wildlife is the world’s third most profitable illicit trade.

In a way I wish I’d died back in the market or on the plane. I’m not sure my body can handle much more. I’ll probably be dead soon. I just hope that not many others have to go through this. We should be left alone in the jungle, as all wildlife should. Not paraded in front of cameras with umbrellas, whilst back in Asia for each one who dies in a market or airport another few are taken from the forest. I could go on but one little loris can’t make a difference. Hopefully you can.

In only ten days I am partaking in the Run to the Beat half-marathon in aid of the Little Fireface Project and slow lorises. Please help me to help them.

Forrest on Tour

To celebrate Loris Awareness Week beginning next Monday, I recently took some time out from training to take Forrest on holiday to Denmark and Sweden. Although we unsurprisingly drew some strange looks, an interested few did ask some questions and so we were able to spread the word a little more…

A full update will follow soon. The big day of October 28th is seemingly coming around very quickly, hopefully by then I’ll be more than ready and thanks to your kind donations we’ll have passed the target of £500.00.

Dear Diary – Part 2

For part 1 click here

Forrest a long way from home.

There ended up being thirteen of us inside that box. With nowhere else to go it turned into a cramped, smelly, acrid mess. My fur had gotten matted to my skin, making my bones stick out even further. We’d received a little more food, but only of the human variety and it made most of us vomit.

Thirteen soon became twelve. The difference? Me. After nearly two weeks of sheer misery, I was gifted an escape from the market. Or so I thought. No I wasn’t thrown out, nor did I become a meal, but I was handed over to another man. He didn’t look like the ones I recognised. He dressed differently too. I think I heard him referred to as ‘Middleman.’

I didn’t know what to think. My face still throbbed, I was dirty, starving and I hadn’t seen a tree in a fortnight. By now I’d stopped pinching myself, trying to wake up. I saw some paper changing hands then Middleman picked me up by the scruff of the neck, the stretched skin sending fresh pulses of pain through my face. He smiled. I began to cry again.

I was thrown into another bag. This time there was only one other loris, from another island. We had a little more room but she just laid there in a fetal position and whimpering. Maybe she knew what was going to happen. The bag was zipped up and suddenly I was flying though the air before hitting a hard surface with a thud. A strange rumbling vibrated around me before we began to move again, tossing the bag against the surrounding walls. That was the first but unfortunately not the last time I was taken somewhere in a car.

About an hour we stopped. The boot opened and the bag was picked up, Middleman revealing himself leering at us soon after. The other loris whose name I can’t remember had stopped whimpering by now. Though I’m sure she was also in pain, she appeared numb, her face a picture of utter defeat.

Suddenly Middleman thrust his hand up and grasped my neck, shoving me downwards and crushing me into one of his trouser pockets. With no way out and no air, I went into shock. Us lorises do that a lot when so scared. You can’t move or cry, or do anything. This way they know you won’t try to get out or attract attention. You’re forced to huddle there motionless and silent as though drugged, whilst they push their bag into the x-ray machine and walk through the metal detector like they don’t have one of the world’s most endangered primates lining their pockets. Yes, this really does happen.

No one likes flying, do they? Try being a loris on a twelve hour flight and not knowing where you are, what the noise is, why you’re moving so fast or when the nightmare’s going to end. The scream of the engines alone I will never forget. A lot of lorises die in transit and I almost, almost wished that I was back in the market. I’m pretty sure my face would have been showing the same look as the other loris’s, who’d been forced into Middleman’s other pocket. Still, at least he’d looked happy.

I’d heard the names of some strange places like Russia and Japan and Germany when the rumours had been going around the market. I guessed it was one of these I was heading to. I’d heard another word as well, something I should never have heard in my life: ‘pet.’ The idea of this is perhaps the most horrifying of them all…

Ode to a Loris

Credit: Dr. Karmele Llano Sánchez of the International Animal Rescue

Climbing, creeping, exploring and hunting,
The sun plummets  and they don’t stop moving,
From India to Indonesia roaming the woods,
Feeding off insects, eggs, gum and other goods.

For this animal that we all know as the loris,
Should have no other home than the forest,
Afraid of the light and with a poisonous bite,
With few friends or allies they now face a fight.

Thanks to medicine, poaching and outright theft,
The Asian jungles are now largely bereft,
Whilst they’re not just fluff balls or a pretty face,
In the environment and ecology they have a place.

Awareness, enlightenment and education,
We can all play a part in helping to save them,
With too much torture, suffering, killing and pain,
By contributing a little there is so much to gain.

Dear Diary – Part 1

Happy in the wild vs. Helpless in a market.

Hi. My name’s Forrest. My owner called me this because he thinks it’s funny, but really us slow lorises shouldn’t be given names. Ironic as well since forests are the only places I’m happy, not that he cares.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen one. I was out on my evening stroll with my mum a few months ago, when all of a sudden there were lights and noise all around us. Some strange creature I now know to be a ‘human’ shone a torch into her big beautiful eyes, blinded her, and then they murdered her. She fell from the tree, whilst I was grabbed kicking and screaming and thrown into a bag full of other baby lorises. Apparently we’re easier to handle.

A couple of hours later, we were released into a bright, scary room. They picked up one of the other lorises, along with a pair of pliers. They pulled out her teeth. Oh my God, the blood… She cried and shouted and the floor turned red, before blacking out. Then the man looked at me. I don’t remember much of what happened next.

I woke up shivering and my whole face hurting badly. Looking around, there were six others in the box with me and all in agony. I guess painkillers would be a waste of money. Where their teeth had been, I could only see open, festering holes. Some looked infected. It’s really hot and humid in the tropics, so germs can be rampant. This is where a lot of lorises die. The poachers then just go back into the jungle and find some more.

All I wanted was my mum, but I tried not to think about her body being left to rot back in the woods. Instead, us orphans clung together trying to offer a little comfort. Minutes turned into hours, and hours into days. The nausea and feeling of weakness went up, whilst my hopes went down. For one of the others it was already too late.

Some time later we were taken to an animal market and stuffed into a tiny cage with some other lorises. We would only be briefly let out when someone wanted to take a look at us, usually picking us up, or poking and smiling at us like they thought they were being nice. Left outside, people don’t realise either that we don’t like daylight and it hurts our eyes. We’re nocturnal beings, any time the sun’s up I should be safely tucked up in a tree sleeping.

Stomach growls began to accompany the whimpering which engulfed us all. By now I could start to see my bones sticking out through my thick fur. I did get the occasional scrap of food, though I had trouble eating it for obvious reasons. Water was a little easier, but also had to be rationed between us. Another couple of lorises had arrived by then, including one missing an eye and one who didn’t stop crying for his mother. I knew how he felt.

Occasionally one of the orphans would be plucked out legs first, receive an all over eye exam and then disappear, seemingly forever. Were they to become meals? Were they so weak that they’d simply be thrown away? Or had they been sent away to some distant, unknown land as a few rumours said..? A couple of nights later, I discovered the answer.