1 «7 *Z 
I forget all these worries when I am below with my gibbons. 
They ?re the most entrancing animals I have ever known. _ The black 
and white pair that live together sing me 8 duet every time I go 
near. Thev have an amusing way of sharing their food, and especially 
their drink*. When I give them a dish of milk, or of tea, the wmte 
one. with the longest arm, dips his wrist into it, and then just as 
he gets a lick off his fur, the little black fellow takes his wrist 
away and licks it himself. Often, when one has a fist full ot 
grates or banana, the other will eat out of the other fellow's hand 
instead of taking some for himself. 
We separated the pair of Sumatran orangs today. The female is 
a glutton, and a bully, and has her poor mate so hen-pecked that he 
is afraid to take a morsel of food for hi self. She will grab as 
manv as seven bananas - sometimes putting three in her mouth at once - 
to keep him from having any. One of them no- has the cage that the 
big Mawas Kuda had before he died. 
We are having banana troubles - either great bunches of them 
turn rotten overnight, or there are none ripe at all. Today all 
bananas aboard are green, and we are hard put to it to find substi- 
tutes. Davis has some birds that will eat nothing else, such as 
hornbills and fruit pigeons, though he is gradual _y breaking them 
in to melons and grapes. So he gets the few that can be found, and 
the rest of us have to feed pumpkins and sweet potatoes, which nobody 
likes auite as well. The Borneo orang is a joy. He eats anything 
at all, plavs with straw and chews on it if there is nothing else 
available, and waltzes with joy every time he sees me coming down 
the lii e with a tray of food. 
September 12 - ™, - ; I •' 9 
The Mediterranean, as a winter cruise, roust be something of 
a disappointment if these few days of September weather have been a 
fair sa pple. Days have been cold, rainy, and windy; the sea gray 
with white-caps. * Today was a bit better, in fact I stretched out on 
Number S hatch for a sunbath this afternoon, ^nd enjoyed a game of 
deck tennis in the xffcex evening. We have built a regular tar- 
paulin tent around the giraffe to keep out the breeze, and they seem 
happy so far. Even the little one is now drinking canned milk, and 
they all eat well. 
The female blue sheep kicked her way out of her cage yester- 
dav, and danced all over the ship before anybody noticed her. When 
I went below to give the gibbons tea, she was tied on top of Number 
5, feeling ver- friskv, and waiting for Gaddi and Jennier to nail 
her cage together again for her. It's a good thing it wasn't the 
male who got out, as he is rather a mean devil. If y u put your hand 
in his cage to pet him, he always tried to smash you with his horns. 
But the female is a regular pet. 
The birds in Number 6 continue to thrive, and we need have 
no temperature worries about them. The palm oil stored below our 
animals has to be heated, and is now at a temperature of 100, so that 
the fiaBryKR deck under our cages is warm t the touch, and the 
temperature of the hatch is that of midsummer. 
