The 13 juveniles were finally let out into their new Dino & Daniel enclosure this month and we must thank everybody who contributed towards making it possible to build the new 1 hectare enclosure.

The rest of this month has focused on the long overdue stay of some of the quarantine monkeys being returned to their troops. A skydiving fundraising event was organised by Sophie Clarke in order to help raise the funds to be able to do this.

So far, Briyani has been re-integrated into the James enclosure successfully and is now living out there full time, Batman has moved to an introduction cage up at his old troop Goliath, Angelo has moved back down to re-join Skunkey troop, Phoenix will be joining Royal Troop and Vista and Jupiter are currently down with Honeybear. There will be further updates to come in the next newsletters.

All vasectomies have been completed for this year thanks to vet Amy Murton and vet nurse Claire Kelly.

Hollie Vercoe, a voluntary staff member who has volunteered with us on a number of occasions is now Assistant Manager to help ensure everything runs smoothly for the monkeys on a daily basis and it's turned out to be very productive.

Indrani Schelling, Kim Primeau, Alissa Kossar, Terra Schropp, Sjouke Schoustra, Helen Marsh, Sarah Smith, Hannah Molennar, Johanna Berlin, Annemieke Wijburg, Lacey McCutchen.

Since being in their new enclosure, every day you can see the braveness, curiosity and adventure grow within each of the 13 babies. They absolutely love being in the Disneyland Enclosure. Each day begins with their bath, which Johan has taken on as a personal challenge to outwit the volunteers and escape his bath. He is currently winning the challenge of escape but always meets the bath in the end.

We have many rock collectors in the group. Alec being the most dedicated. He loves to find the biggest rocks within the sandy garden and grate them along the ground, obviously enjoying the scratching noise they make. Due to his dedication many of the other babies watch him and conclude that a rock must be a prized possession and so find their own rocks to carry around with them.

The hot, dry weather has returned (for now), and so swimming is a daring activity that they all love to watch each other take part in. Luka and Laux love putting their head under, going round and round in circles. Others just like to walk through then quickly jump on the volunteers to soak them.

Most of the babies are pros at drinking milk from the feeding station, where they approach the bottle and drink themselves. Being so little Irene was the last to express her interest in this style of obtaining her milk but is now slowly taking little sips before darting off for more play.

Nap time is a thing of the past with so many new branches brought in each day for them to jump on. However when the night cage comes in to take them to bed, most of them willingly jump in, exhausted from the days play - (except of course Johan, who likes to both start and end his day with an amusing challenge against the volunteers).

Disneyland truly is a Disneyland for these 13 baby Vervets. They have all blossomed since being moved in here from the baby cabin and it is awesome to see them in here getting up to their mischievous monkey antics.

We have the addition of TJ in the last couple of days so there are now 14 orphaned babies. TJ was kept as a pet for 2 months before handing over to the VMF.

After spending a few days out in skunkey enclosure, Honeybear's integration has been suspended for a few weeks while she makes more friends for support. During her time in the enclosure she was bitten by alpha female Paradise and became overly frightened of her, however she is now seen grooming Paradise through the fence once again. The good news is that Honeybear is much less reliant on people now and is no longer interested in human contact after her time kept as a pet.

Vista a three year old female has been moved out of quarantine, along with her three month old baby Jupiter, both have moved in to join Honeybear this week. Much to Honeybear's delight she now gets to hug Jupiter anytime she wants, luckily Vista doesnt object. We hope that this friendship will assist them in joining the Skunkey troop as a team and help with Honeybear's confidence.

Having worked with the orphans from Disneyland since last January, seeing them go into their enclosure is something that I’d been looking forward to for a long time. After a few delays with finishing the enclosure, and an extra day when we discovered the fence wasn’t quite secure, the release morning finally came around! Myself and Dave went into the enclosure to encourage the little ones out, and provide them with comfort and safety if they found their new surroundings a bit overwhelming, but we needn’t have worried too much.

Those of you who have met this amazing little group of monkeys, will not be remotely surprised that Mistletoe was the first out of the door! The others all followed suit pretty quickly, though Mamba was quite nervous and stayed on my shoulder for the first 40 minutes or so, before finally moving off and exploring. It was amazing how quickly they all took to it, even little Forest shot straight to the top of the tallest tree. His days of toppling off plastic pipes in Disneyland are long gone, and he climbs just as well as all the others.
The three who seemed to take to life in the enclosure the quickest were unsurprisingly, Hoppy, Scritch and Ante, the three who have had the least contact with people, and perhaps the most experience of life in the wild. Phyllis seemed very at home too, and was the first to find a route out of the enclosure, climbing a fence post and shimmying down a supporting wire into Josie’s arms, who brought her straight back in!

For the first few days, they stuck pretty close to their intro cage, so I went into the enclosure and moved to a camel-foot tree near the centre and climbed up to the top. It wasn’t long before the others joined me. Sitting 40ft up a tree with a beautiful view of mountains, and little monkeys bouncing and playing around me in the branches has to go down as one of my best experiences at the VMF, and one of the best of my life.

In the last few days, Hoppy has decided that he’s done with intro cages, and has flatly refused to come in for main feed and is now sleeping out in the enclosure, waiting by the intro cage in the mornings for his troop to come out for play time!

Observations have been constant throughout the day to keep an eye on them whilst they get used to the dangers that life outdoors can bring, such as eagles and snakes. It won’t be long however, until they are joined by some adults – Meisie from Gismo A will be joining them eventually, and there are possibly plans for a few other adults to join them such as Thandi and Armstrong from Skunkey G, who are not well suited to join Skunkey enclosure, but would be useful additions to help look after the little ones as they adjust to living the kind of life that monkeys should be living.

Bebe (1yr old) has now also been moved up after having a rough start and has started going out into the enclosure daily with the others.

We would like to thank all those people who contributed towards the Dino & Daniel enclosure fundraising along with all staff and volunteers who helped build the enclosure. For those people who responded to our plaque donations and gave $100 or more, your names will appear on a plaque outside the new enclosure. Please see names below:

Hairy Armadillo Ltd (Rob Tuppen)
Kathleen Healy
Gabrielle Bertrand
Wendy Morgan
Carmin Lepitzki
Dawn Patrick
Elizabeth Whitehouse
Rosemary Ullyot
Joan O'Flaherty
Melissa Liggio
Jennifer Danzy
Margaret Brown
Leif en Lut Brottman
Rachel Plotnek d
Maitreyi Salmon
Chris May
Wendy Morgan
Brenton J. Head
Helen Barton
Kate Oliver
Natalie Caillault
Astrid Westerman
Sharon Clarke
Clare Humes
Emma Lloyd
Niamh Healy
Jessica Ruedin
Mary Blinn
Alex Robertson

Please e-mail josie@vervet.za.org before 20th March 2011 if amendments to your name need to be made or if we have forgotten anyone.

10, 000ft in the air and I questioned my sanity as the door of the plane opened, forcing icy blasts of air towards us.  I closed my eyes, held my breath and then was quite firmly pushed out into thin air, with nothing but a thin piece of silk and a few ropes (along with a professional tandem instructor!) between me and the ground.

With fellow monkey lovers Claire Kelly, Amy Murton, Rachael Steinbok and Suzannah Clamp we experienced the rush of our lives all in aid of fundraising for the foundation.  The money raised will go towards extending Gismo enclosure to allow ex-Quarantine monkeys to be re-integrated into their troop, amongst other projects.

We would like to say a big thank you to skydivextreme, based in Modimolle (Nylstroom) for not only providing us with a fantastic day out, but also for their generosity, and would recommend them to anyone looking to skydive in South Africa.

We would also like to extend our gratitude to everyone who donated and supported the day.  The monkeys lives will be greatly improved because of your help.

The total amount raised was R7400 approx $1000 - thank you everyone!

• Female vervets stay within their birth group, males may change troops every few years and leave their natal group around the age of maturity which prevents inbreeding.
  
  
• During mating season, many male vervets migrate to neighbouring troops and often fight for rank and females.
  

• Female vervets fully mature around the age of 4 or 5 years, males mature around 5 or 6 yrs.
  

The VMF will be having a stand at both the Brighton VegFest on 19th March and the Bristol VegFest on 28th & 29th May this year.

Vegfest is a vegan festival with lots of stalls, entertainment, talks and more.

www.vegfest.co.uk

If you would like to help with this event, please contact josie@vervet.za.org as we are looking for organisers and people to be there on the day.

Amy Owens, Samantha Duggan, Nicole Vidal, Chelsea McFarland, Nicky Voois, Danielle Miller, Rachel Cheng, Rachael Steinbok, Simone Kunisch, Rachel Gilbert, Lacey Green, Rebecca Blakley, Dino Nardini, Francesca Neri, Amy Murton, Joyce van der Wateren, Rob Tuppen (return).