October 13th, 2007

Oh the poo. The smell, the colors. I could paint with this stuff if it wasn’t so stinky.

06:45am. As many nights before, we spent the last night playing “Asshole” – a European card game, while the Germans, who now are the dominating nation between the volunteers, chose to ditch the rest of us and play “Yaniv” – an Israeli card game we taught them the night before. So now I drag my sleepy self out of bed and into foul-smelling work clothes, shove lenses into my tired eyes, and leave the volunteer dorm-rooms towards the Quarantine. If passing by the young loro cage is not going to give me the awakening jolt that I need (or deafen me permanently), the juvenile Spider Monkeys will.

We really are not supposed to interact too much with the animals. It’s detrimental to their successful return to the wild, and we are pretty much supposed to ignore them. Now, that being said, how exactly am I expected to ignore something jumping on my head? Ha?! How about my broom being stolen from underneath my nose by a swift wave of a tail, and the thief climbing with it up a six meter wall? Or wait, here, here is my favorite one of all. How about bouncing on my cage mate’s back, as she bends down for the water hose, sending the stream of cold water straight for my behind?! I bet they actually do understand what they are doing, and I think they think it’s mighty funny too.

The juveniles are the only Spider-Monkey cage we are allowed to enter. These rascals have not yet reached their sexual maturity, and so are not aggressive enough too actually, let’s say, seriously hurt a volunteer. Chances are you will end up with poo on your shirt from one of them trying to catch a piggyback ride, but that’s as far as it might go.

Only a few days before our arrival to ARCAS, the government sent here a few Spider Monkeys it confiscated from some traffickers, but not before the bastards killed a female to get her baby, and traumatized a juvenile to such an extent I found him in the gutter of the cage, blocking all the wet food remains and feces, the day after we put him together with the rest of the youngsters. It was depressed and paranoid, not letting fellow cage mates come near, even though they were welcoming and not aggressive at all to his being a newcomer. We were all worried this one will never be able to recover, but after a few days it seemed to at least eat with the rest of the group, and we could rest easy it will be fine after all.

The baby, though, was in the worst shape of them all. She wouldn’t eat, she needed her mom to carry her around and hold on tight, so she could, simply said, “feel the love”. For her first days in ARCAS, the volunteers let Peter take care of her because he is a vet, but shortly it was decided that, though, this baby monkey does need more attention and actual hand holding then any other animal around here, it would be better to switch around so she doesn’t get used to one person in particular, thus Shurik and I also got to be Mommy and Daddy.

Let me tell you though, I always knew that when we have children, I’d want a boy because boys are “Mama’s boys” and girls are “Daddy’s girls” just like I was (and just like Shurik is btw), but this was ridiculous! Pitzki (that’s how I and the Israeli girls, Tamar and Ayelet, named her), was such a Daddy’s girl, it was unbelievable. Between the two of us you could see right away who she liked more – whistling and reaching for Shurik every time I had her in my arms. Eh… maybe I’m not good with babies all together, but I did get attached to the little bugger over the few days I was the only one handling her. It was then, when Alejandro told me she should be learning how to climb now, and I took her to the “exercise” area we built for Kinkajou, so she could really try out all of her five appendages. To my surprise she did very well instinctively grabbing around with her tail, but I still played the concerned parent part standing underneath her with my hands cupped – ready to catch.

Spider Monkeys are, fortunately, resilient like that, but the Howlers aren’t. Howler Monkeys are as gentle as wild animals get, apparently. It seemed like the smallest gust of wind can blow them into a coronary. We can’t even enter their cage if we’ve been to the Spider Monkey cage beforehand, as we might transfer some seemingly harmless bacteria with us, and all the Howlers will kick the bucket just like that. Alejandro even told us that before they had the three Howlers they have now, they had a different group of seven. One night it rained really hard and the monkeys got wet. Six of them died from getting sick, as a result, and the last one, seeing all the rest gone, got depressed and died from stress.

Jumping Shurik

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