So I've pretty much had the coolest 3 days EVER! Stuff I've only dreamt of doing! On Wednesday morning I was picked up by victor, ubuh and Diana (the Mexican vet) in the wildlife rescue truck to began our 5 hr journey through the beautiful mountain ranges headed for sepilok... The trip was crazy.. Victor is a stressful psycho driver! Has to overtake anything and everyone haha! Kinda scary when your swerving around the hairpins turns up high on a mountain range. Anyway other than the driving the trip was great. We sang and danced our way to sepilok even passing the spectacular mt Kinabalu which is 4500m above sea level! Gorgeous!

Once we arrived we unloaded to truck into the 'vets' accommodation and started work immediately! Diana had a tight schedule over the next 3 days so we had to organized and keep up! My job for the trip was the photographer/ translator.. I had to carry the camera everywhere and document everything so it could be used in the final report!

First job was the 1st sun bear post-mortem (there was meant to be 2 bears but one was still frozen :S).. Wow! I've never seen anything like it! Slicing open a huge bear, pulling everything out and dissecting every organ to determine cause of death! I loved it! It was cool the I knew all the anatomy anyway so Diana would teach me as it cut.. And say things like 'see this isn't normal... It should be like this..' or 'a dogs kidney is more like this...'! So I learnt heaps! We were in theatre for over 2 hours! Cause of death: he was born with a heart defect and was unable to pump adequate blood around the body... So in time the hearts ventricle muscles grew and grew to the point that one of the cavities was completely muscle! Diana said the bear would have died a long painful death :(...

In the afternoon we headed to the orangutan quarantine enclosure and proceeded to give them all tb shots.. Which with orangutans is in their eyelid! Then we wait 48hrs and if the orangutans have tb they will have a red eyelid caused by the reaction to the needle! Just like humans! Anyway there were 14 orangutans in quarantine of all ages! One was named chikita who was 4 months old and still in nappies! So cute!

That night the 4 of us headed to mile 8 to get sone groceries for victor to cook dinner and a carton of tiger :)!!! Wow what a feast! Victor is an awesome cook.. We had rice, Sabah greens, long green beans and fish! Delicious! Around 2am we had finished the beer, finished the food and it was bed time! Wow what a day!

Early the next morning we were up early to start the 2nd sunbear post-mortem (I did decide not to eat breakfast before haha)... This time the bear was younger and had died from multiple contusions from fights with other bears! You could see the internal bruising on his heart, kidneys, intestines and lungs! Crazy!

After that it was blood test time with all 14 orangutans.. One of the zoo nurses fainted! Haha! Poor girl.. She got teased so bad for it too!

That night victor cooked again for us and I brought a cask of stanleys red wine for all to share!! Really nice evening listening to the radio, laughing and just having a good time!

Woke early again to begin health checkups with all the sunbears! Followed by more blood test then tb result checks with the orangutan! Today the 12 travellers worldwide volunteers arrived at sepilok.. And a big welcome lunch was put on for them! We got to attend and Got to have a chat with them! They were pretty cool bunch.. 6 Aussies in total! They all stay for 2 months in a big house! I think that would b so much fun! But then again im working at the... Following the vet around! I wouldn't change it for the world!

What a Big day! Red wine to finish the day.. Early to bed and then up early to head back to Lok KAwi!

I wanna be a vet! Hmmm we will see!
Xxxx