Time to Meet the Big Bad World

After a few weeks of training Shishi our resident bush baby to have a fear of the dogs as well as training the dogs that he is not food in the hopes that he stood a chance in the wild. It was finally time to open the hatch and allow him the chance of a wild existence. We set up two cameras in the hopes of catching the big moment that he took his first steps into the big world, on the first night we placed his food on the open hatch to entice him to explore outside. After looking at the footage it was clear that he needed no encouragement and made his way up into the trees very quickly after we opened the hatch, we also witnessed a large number of wild bush babies around the hatch making the most of the fruit platter we had put out for Shishi.

The first night went quite well we heard him calling a number of times and he was interacting with the wild bush babies although at times this was not always in a positive way. The following night we could hear him calling a good 150 meters from his cage showing that he had been exploring his surroundings. While we heard him having a few scraps with the wild bush babies he seemed to be doing alright although the food we had put out for him was devoured by the other bush babies. However, on the third and his final night of freedom he was back right above his cage unfortunately getting heavily beaten up by the others. At which point we decided that for his own benefit we put him back in his enclosure and give him some time for his minor injuries from the fight to heal before we give him another shot at freedom in the coming days.