LOVE SONGS IN REHAB

HANGING WITH GIBBONS ON THEIR ROAD TO RECOVERY : As soon as you arrive you'll hear the gibbons, siren-like howls. But while their song is so obviously full of longing, it isn't freedom that moves them. It's love.
     See, it's gibbon tradition that both males and females sing to find a mate. Think of it as Ape ldol meets blind Date. Except here, at the Phuket Gibbon Rehabilitation Centre, a project of the Wild Animal Rescue Foundation (WAR), the stakes are much higher. Soli-tary gibbons never make it out in the real, wild world. They will only successfully reintegrate if they have a family.
     The biologists and volunteers who work thre adopt these fluffy-faced, acrobatic white-handed gibbons, who were once kidmapped and forced to live as pets or as showpieces for street performers, and teach them how to behave like the gibbons they are.
     Some were born into domesticity, but most were captured when they were babies, after they saw their parents killed. The statistics don't lie. Each captive gibbon represents between two and three dead ones. the hoal here is to slowly reintroduce them into the wild. You'll see them swinging in their large cages and singing to one another, because they khow if they can lure a mate, they just might make it to freedom.

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Consider Sam's story. Born in 1987, he was orphaned as a baby and lived in a Bangkok cage until he was three. That's when he was tied to the balcony railing of his owner's apartment. In 1994 his owner came home to find him wielding a knife in the kitchen. So,the man quickly called WAR. Unfortunately, Sam still won't sing. He never learned how. But most do, and so far there are three families of 13 gibbons living in the jungle above Bang Pae waterfall or on the man-made island WAR built in the nearby lake.
     When they are ready to forage and live in holy matrimony, the gibbons are released into the forest. Once free, they swing from branch to branch at 25 km per hour, eating fruit, nuts, insects and lizards.
     And they continue to sing-to one another, but also to other wild gibbons in the forest. It's a courtesy call, just to let them khow that there's a new family in the neighbourhood.