I painted misty rainforest for the orangutan exhibit at Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo in the fall of 1994. Recently I was delighted to discover on the Zoo’s website a video showing an orang named Tengku swinging across the face of one of my murals (and showing the mural’s colors more accurately than the photograph below does).

The job consisted of tropical jungle covering three walls 30 feet tall with a combined width of 141 feet. To access the high portions of the murals I used a scissors lift, also known as a lift truck. A scissors lift can fit through a doorway, so it’s deal for an interior exhibit like this one, and you can drive it around, which is kind of fun (though not as fun as a boom truck).

I find orangs fascinating and have written about them in two of my Mostly True Tales, Animals and Primate Behavior.