The Slow Loris

By: Kat Asbury

University of Illinois, Class of 2011

“I’ve never heard of a slow loris carrying rabies,” we heard David Attenborough announce at the far end of the dinner table.  My friend Tash and I exchanged a look.  Finally the conversation at his end of the long table had turned to us.  Sir David hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention to the volunteers at our camp in the Borneo forest until that moment, despite having spent several days around us, filming the orangutans for which our camp was famous.  We were now sitting at a table with him and our camp director, because Tash had gotten bitten by one of those slow lorises (which can be fast in certain circumstances).  We needed permission to decamp to a Singapore hospital, where hopefully there would be some rabies vaccine waiting for us.

Our crew of volunteers had arrived in Borneo four weeks before and had traveled six hours by slow boat up the Sekonyer River to our camp in the forest. I had expected the camp to resemble the camp sites I had visited in Indiana as a kid, with a few plain wooden structures arranged around a clearing in the woods, with a pit toilet nearby, and in a way it did.  The difference was that there was no clearing, the buildings were scattered widely through the forest, all of the windows were covered with orangutan-proof metal fencing and the pit toilet was actually inside our dormitory.  Plus we slept on the floor on thin, mildewed mattresses. Actually, the whole set up reminded me a bit more of a BBC miniseries I used to watch about a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

The volunteers were mainly young British ecologist-types and zoo keepers, but there were a few Americans and Australians thrown in. We had come with the idea that we could somehow help protect the endangered orangutans of Borneo from human encroachment. We ended up spending our days lugging wood into the forest (which was full of wood already) in order to build guard posts. The guard posts were there to make sure no more wood was lugged out of the jungle.  The work was rather hard, but was compensated for by the fact that all around our primitive camp lived orangutans. There were wild orangutans that we never saw, only heard booming from the trees in the morning, semi-wild orangutans who victimized all of us, stole our soap and cigarettes and ate them, and completely tame orangutans who used sign language to say “more” and “I want.”  They were usually referring to soap and cigarettes.

The signing orangutans were quite famous and it was one of these orangutans that David Attenborough had brought his crew to film.  The volunteers had naturally been very excited about the visit, as only a group of nature fanatics who had grown up on televised animal documentaries could be.  The date of Attenborough’s arrival kept changing, or else it was a secret, either way, we never knew when to expect him until one morning he was just there in camp, looking very comfortable in safari gear. Several of the volunteers tried to start conversations with Sir David.   This didn’t go well.  “Stuck-up,” one volunteer sniffed as we prepared to lug more wood into the jungle.

When we returned from work that night we heard that the signing orangutan had obliged the film crew wonderfully by stealing a canoe and paddling down the river.  They ate it up!  Unfortunately, once the orangutan had made her escape she had little interest in being returned to her original dock and even less interest in repeating the escape for a second take.  She retired to the shore with a bar of soap, lathered her arms and licked the lather off over and over again.

Sir David and his crew, plus the camp director, were staying at hotel a half a mile or so up the river.  The hotel was lovely and rustic and consisted of a series of low cabins connected by thin wooden walkways through the jungle.  It was much nicer than an Indiana camp site, and therefore many steps above our volunteer accomodations. We would have been sickeningly envious except that by the time we were aware of the lovely hotel it was time for our weekend off, and we were to have a dance party in the closest town, Pankalun Bun. 

The weekend started out well.  We were given a tour of our organization’s hospital and orphanage and a few of us were actually able to hold those stars of pre-teen poster art, baby orangutans.  Alcohol wasn’t allowed at the camp, so that meant drinking only occurred most nights after dark, but in town we could drink openly, during the day, and by the time we got to our long awaited party in the living room of one of the Indonesian camp assistants, everyone was fairly tipsy.  Then a slow loris appeared in the middle of the room, seemingly out of nowhere.

I had never heard of a slow loris before that evening and I actually didn’t notice it until Tash was screaming. I certainly couldn’t blame the cute, big-eyed creature for biting her.  One moment it was lolling about in the middle of the street in a small town in Borneo, the next it was scooped up and placed in the middle of a dance floor as some sort of a joke. Tash had tried to rescue it by also scooping it up.  The slow loris obviously got tired of all of the scooping and decided to bite someone. When we found out the animal had previously been lolling about in the street, we became a little bit worried, this being odd behavior for a slow loris.  

“I’ve never heard of a slow loris carrying rabies,” Sir David announced at the other end of the table.  We had ventured the 6 hours back down the river the next day to the fancy hotel in the forest to let the camp director know that Tash would have to fly out to Singapore to get her rabies shots and I would be going with her to keep her company.  We had decided a trip to Singapore would be necessary, as that morning, within 12 hours of being bitten, Tash had been taken to the local hospital by the Volunteer Coordinator and had been given her after-exposure rabies prophylaxis injection.  Unfortunately, several hours after that the coordinator decided to tell her that actually she had been injected with an antibiotic of some sort, he had looked at the box. When asked why he hadn’t let her know earlier, he said he didn’t want her to panic.

Now the camp director was nodding to Sir David, “I agree!  I don’t think Slow lorises can carry rabies!” She announced to the table.

She then led Tash and I out of the dining room of the fancy hotel and repeated David Attenborough’s expert opinion that slow lorises don’t carry rabies. Then she added that it probably was too late to get the after-exposure injection anyway –didn’t it have to be given within 24 hours? She then looked at me and said “Really the point is that it wouldn’t take two of you to get to Singapore anyway, would it?”

“Oh is that the point?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s the point.” The camp director said firmly. I guess I understood.  The camp could not spare my abilities as a wood-lugger for the few days it would take to get to Singapore and back.  The orangutans couldn’t spare me.  Tash and I returned to our orangutan-proof shack in our part of the jungle that night and the next morning she alone was taken by speed boat to town, then to the airport. I was carrying wood into the jungle by 9:00 am.  Tash was back in a few days thoroughly vaccinated and never ended up developing rabies.  By then Sir David and his crew were long gone, and she and I continued carrying wood together.