I’ll never forget the first time I Saw a slow loris in real life……..

We were new to Phang-nga and still getting used to seeing so much wildlife especially right outside our front door. One day we heard our dog (Bones) barking insesantly and when we went to investigate she was standing looking out of our front door across the street. At first we couldn’t see what was upsetting Bones so much, we scanned the garden, the street but we couldn’t see anything. After checking the garden for anything dangerous we let Bones out to see if she could show us what she was barking at. She ran straight to our front gate and her eyes immeaditaely shot up to the power lines across the street. I shone the torch towards the lines and there on the lines was a little ball of fluff with arms and legs, a slow loris!

I couldn’t believe my eyes, Carly and I stood there staring up at the little furry creature clinging to the lines excited, thrilled and in disbelief all at the same time. How had this slow loris come to be in such an urban area, and where had he come from?

We stood there for what seemed like an eternity just watching him, and he watched us intently too with his big round eyes, tilting his head to follow our every move. At the time we didn’t have a functioning camera so we had to improvise to get a photo of him. Carly shone a torch to provide some light and I held my phone-camera as high as I could to try and get a photo of the little guy.

Here are some of the shots……..

After a while we decided that we should leave him in peace to go where ever he was going. We watched as he continued his walk along the lines slowly placing each foot on the lines gripping them with his plump little fingers.

We began to wonder again where was he going, and where had he come from?  In the distance there is a big hill that is one of the only places in our town that’s still covered in forest. Could this be where he was heading? To this day we don’t know where the slow loris was going to and where he came from.

We saw him (or another male slow loris) once more that year and then we never saw him again. We knew we were very lucky to have seen him in the first place and so grateful  and driveled to have seen a wild slow loris, but still we hoped we’d see him again and wondered where he was and if he was ok.

Skip forward a year and I was out walking  Bones, taking her out to do her business one last time before we went to bed. She headed out to her usual patch of grass to go to the toilet and I stood by the road waiting for her. Whilst waiting I began to shine my torch around, across the grass,  from tree to tree, bush to bush and then along the fences. It’s something I  do every night  in the hopes of spotting something cool. Like most nights my search came up empty and I switched my torch off.

Bones was still sniffing around and not ready to head home yet so I turned my torch on again to pass the time, only this time I turned it towards the power lines above my head. I looked up in disbelief and saw a slow loris on the lines right above my head. This time it was a female slow loris looking down, watching Bones and I with her big curious eyes.

I ran back to the house to get Carly busting through the doors shouting “come quickly, come quickly”. In hind sight I can see why Carly was a little upset as I didn’t really specify what the emergency was. After I’d clarified that it was another slow loris we headed down the road for a look. She hadn’t moved far and paused on the wires as we watched her and took some photos.

After a while she headed along the wires towards the hill in the distance and we left her to her long journey wherever she may be going and we hoped we’d see her again some day.

If you’re interested in slow lorises here’s a really cool documentary about them. It’s definitely worth a watch; it’ll change the way you see them and the people around them Jungle Gremlins of Java