There was always a rush to get to the three showers in the women’s changing rooms, and it could sometimes be 6:30 before you got your turn. I wanted to be away on time tonight, so I had worked out a plan to beat the rush. I had put the food ready in the inside enclosure, and I had fifteen minutes till I had to let the baboons in. My last job of collecting the bowls would not get me messed up or smelly, so of I dashed to the showers. I hurriedly had a shower, got dried, put on my clean bra, I was searching in my bag for my knickers when I heard the feeding bell. I thought, “Blow it I’ll get my knickers when I come back”, grabbing the nearest clean overall coat, I put it on and ran back to the baboon house.

I dashed through the food preparation room into the area where the enclosure doors are operated from; the baboons were crowded around the door fighting each other to get in and they were all getting very agitated. I pressed the gate open button and started counting them in, they were coming in such a rush that counting was impossible, and even when inside they were chasing around wildly, so I just give up, assumed they must all be in, and closed the ape’s enclosure door.

I now opened my door from the feeding room to the enclosure, and went outside, closing the door and wedged it with a log. Now this door had a very complicated locking system to prevent the baboons from opening it from the outside enclosure. The problem was that it was that complicated, and so difficult to open that the permanent keeper that I had been working with, didn’t bother to use it. He had showed me how to wedge a wooden log from the outside wall to the door, as he said “you aren’t going to be out here if the baboons are in the enclosure, so why they bother with that stupid lock beat me”.

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