Chiquito acts depressed when he's left alone in the cage, and wraps himself in what David Peiro calls his "security blanket."   Spider monkeys aren't solitary animals, and in the wild he would live in a "fission-fusion" society of multiple monkeys. 
      I can't do this to Chiquito.  If he doesn't cheer up we'll have to relocate him to another facility where he has company, because it will probably be at least six months before Lolita is big enough to be left alone with him.  Since he's never been around a small infant spider monkey his behavior may not be appropriate, and they haven't been together except for a quick photo the first day.  
     All of which is depressing me, too.       

      Embraces and pectoral sniffs occur frequently when individual spider monkeys in a community approach each other, or when individuals of the same community reunite after a period of separation (Klein & Klein, 1971; Eisenberg and Kuehn, 1966).   There is a higher rate of male-male friendly behavior, including embraces and pectoral sniffing, in males than females (K. Slater, C. Schaffner and F. Aureli, unpublished data).
    Our regent biologist Olivier Castro Morales visited a few days after the monkeys arrived, and Chiquito introduced himself by wrapping his arms around Olivier’s head and offering him a pectoral sniff...within seconds of Olivier entering the cage.  
     Olivier handled it well. 
NOTE:  If you're among the unfortunate majority who have never sniffed a spider monkey's pecs, the monkey wraps his (or her) arms around your head and pulls it toward the scent gland on his chest.  There is no discernible odor to mere humans...but it's the thought that counts!   

     Paul and I were five days away from moving into our new house, with its attached cage, when I arrived home with the two spider monkeys.  Lolita was no problem since I'd be wearing her 24 x 7 until she settled in, but Chiquito was a problem.  He needed to be in the cage, and he couldn't be left alone at the empty house. 
     It was about 5:30 when I got home with the monkeys.  Our neighbors, Dave and Valentina, were waiting at the house to see the monkeys and pick up the small crate they had loaned me for Lolita.  (All of our rehab supplies and equipment were being delivered on Saturday with everything else that had been in storage for six months.)
       Valentina fed Lolita, and Dave sat down on the floor next to the large plastic dog crate Chiquito had been in for the past 24 hours.
      "He looks depressed," Dave said.
      "I'm sure he is.  He was shoved in a crate and taken from the only home and family he's known."
      "What are you going to do with him tonight?" Dave asked.
      "He's going to have to stay in the crate, because it will be dark within fifteen minutes.  Tomorrow I'll put the crate in the cage and open it in there."
      "Poor guy,"  Dave said.  "I'll sleep in the cage with him tonight."
      I didn't give Dave a chance to change his mind.  While he drove home to get a sleeping bag, I packed a picnic for Chiquito. 
      Dave returned with a sleeping bag, cushions to put underneath it on the cement floor, a pillow, sheets, a flashlight, and a machete for unwelcome visitors.  Then he set up camp, and we put the crate in the cage and locked the door.
     "Should I let him out?"  Dave asked.  
     "I don't know how he'll react,"  I answered honestly.  The supplies the movers were delivering on Saturday contained welders gloves, a fencing mask, and a rabies pole specifically for a situation like this one, which could go horribly wrong.
     Dave shrugged, leaned over, unlatched the crate door, and retreated quickly.  But he wasn't as fast as Chiquito. 
     A black blur shot out of the cage and threw itself into Dave's arms. 
     And that's where Chiquito spent the first night. 

      I don't have any photos from today, which is probably just as well.  Last night I slept naked with a baby monkey (also naked) curled in my armpit.  I got up every two hours to give her a bottle and find a dry spot to lie on.  This morning I took a cold shower - either the hot water was broken or I couldn't figure out how to use it (Alexa had a long hot shower in her room).  I had no mousse, no hair dryer, no curling iron and no hair spray.  And then I got dressed in the same sweaty clothes I took off last night.  We left the monkeys in the hotel room because the temperature was already in the 80s, and when we climbed into the hot vehicle Alexa handed me Paul's black comb, which was lying on the dashboard. 
      "Here," she said.  "Use this."  
       We met Hanzel in front of Banco Nacional, and drove a block to the attorney's office.  (The town of Siquirres encompasses about five square blocks.)  The afternoon before, when Hanzel called to make the appointment, I asked how much it would cost and was quoted 40,000 colones ($80).  I said it was too much, in spite of the fact that I didn't know if there were any other attorneys in town, and Hanzel spoke into his cell phone again .  Then how about 20,000 colones ($40)?  I said okay and gave the money to Hanzel, not realizing we would be with him at the attorney's office.  The attorney was pleasant, accommodating, and seemed impressed that I knew the scientific genus and species (ateles geoffroyi) when he typed up the affidavit.  Alexa and I took turns using the restroom, and Hanzel paid the attorney.  My favorite part of the story?  Hanzel volunteered the fact that the attorney only charged $30 because it was a worthy cause.  (He did ask if he could keep the extra $10 for gas for his motorcycle since he had made two extra trips to town and Alexa, being Alexa, said he could have $5.)

     We drove two blocks to MINAET and sat in the hall waiting for the boss to open his door.  One of the other gentlemen, who we had spoken with briefly the day before, came up to us.
     "I need to talk to you ladies," he said before heading down the long stairway and out the door.  Alexa and I looked at each other.
     "Don't lie, but don't tell them we have the monkeys,"  I suggested.  Alexa agreed.
     But he already knew.  His niece, who cleaned rooms at the hotel, heard Lolita chirping after we left and immediately called MINAET.  
     Which is a wonderful thing.  I wouldn't want it any other way.  But I was  REALLY thankful that we had spent the previous afternoon at MINAET and were back again.  He was very nice, and eventually found phone chargers for our dying cell phones.  And the morning dragged into the afternoon.
      At the rate things were going, the paperwork really was going to take a week.  The boss said every word out loud as he typed it, and he typed at glacial speed.  At some point Alexa pulled up a chair next to him and started dictating.
     The room was hot, and in addition to not having  any hair accoutrements on our day-trip-turned-into-overnight, I didn't have deodorant and was wearing yesterday's clothes.  Plus I had nothing to do except stare at the wall clock as the hours passed, since gnawing on the edge of the wooden table didn't seem politically correct.
      At noon, which was check-out time, Alexa called the hotel and asked for a grace period.  And at 1:30 we FINALLY went back for the monkeys.  (I had made two trips to check up on them and feed Lolita in the interim.)
      "I just have a sixth grade education," Alexa later said, "and I was telling him what to write."

     My Tica neighbor, Alexa Sancho Castro, and I drove 4 hours to Siquirres to pick up the 1 1/2 year old male David Peiro had told me about.  I had spoken on the phone with his owner, Hanzel, and with my limited Spanish believed I had agreed to take a one-year-old female, too.
      Alexa and I met Hanzel in the small town of Squirres.  It was lunchtime, and the three of us waited an hour for the boss at MINAET to see us at 1:00 PM.  Taking the monkeys wasn't an issue because we had our wildlife center permit and written permission from the MINAET office in San Ramon.  Taking the monkeys that day was apparently a problem because the "passport" that would allow us to travel with wildlife could take a week to prepare, in part because the boss in the Limon regional office was on vacation.  We were told to return to San Ramon and wait for the paperwork.
      By this time it was mid-afternoon and we knew we couldn't make it home by dark.   Alexa doesn't drive, and the mountainous two-lane road through Braulio Carrillo National Park, and maze-like capitol city of San Jose, are not for the nightblind.  We agreed that we'd stay at a hotel in Siquirres after going out to at least see the monkeys.   
      We followed Hanzel's motorbike on a pot-holed dirt road, through banana plantations,  for a half hour .  A dusty sign indicated we were just 10 kilometers from the massive Tortuguera National Park on the Caribbean coast when we arrived at our first destination.   

     Hanzel and his wife lived about two kilometers from the first family.  Childless, they had raised Chiquito like a human.  He ate with them, slept with them, drank from a sippy cup, and even used the toilet and flushed afterwards.  But he had started to bite.  And the wife, a diabetic, worried that she might get an infection from a monkey bite.  Distraught about giving him up, she had gone  to stay with an aunt when we came.        
      Driving away from a second monkey pushed me past a tipping point.  What if Hanzel's wife changed her mind before we returned? A mile or two down the dirt road I pulled over and asked Alexa to call the San Ramon MINAET office.

       I haven't yet found a place in Costa Rica without cell phone coverage.  (Paul and I spent a night in the jungle after a five hour hike and were stunned when the guide got a call on his cell phone; we've used our cell phones after hiking down to the waterfalls on our property; and Alexa and I had coverage somewhere between Siquirres and Tortuguera National Park.)
       Long story shorter?  
       The head of the San Ramon office said he couldn't believe it when Alexa told him the Siquirres office hadn't provided us with paperwork for traveling with the monkeys.  He said he'd call the appropriate people.  He didn't say we could take the monkeys, but he didn't say we couldn't.  Because we didn't ask.  We turned around and went back for them.  First the male, then the female.
       By now it was after 4:00 in the afternoon and Hanzel was getting onto his motorcycle to head off to his night job as a security guard.  In a matter of five minutes, with instuctions from Alexa to "be brave," he had shoved Chiquito into my fiberglass dog crate, slammed the metal door closed, and loaded it into our car.  We made arrangements to meet at an attorney's office in the morning so Hanzel could certify that he was donating Chiquito, not selling him.  And then we headed in different directions.
       In spite of having borrowed a GPS, it did us no good at that moment.  Roads in Costa Rica have no names.  And dirt roads in amongst banana plantations aren't even on the map.  Alexa, always blunt but sincere, asked a boy on a bicycle where the "gordita" (fat) woman with the baby spider monkey lived, and he gave us directions.
       Emotions ran high.  I unpinned the wet diaper and handed it back.  (YES...pendulous clitoris!!!)  I paid $10 for the plastic bottle and remaining container of 2% milk, knowing it had been a financial sacrifice for a poor campesino family. The daughter who had been smiling in earlier photos dissolved in tears.  We gave them our cell phone numbers, I invited them to visit, and we drove away with our precious cargo.   
 

      Friday the 13th of January, 2012 
      I always suspected that thirteen was a lucky number for me (although I'm not superstitious, really) and today confirmed it.
     Paul and I were standing at the paint counter at Jorcel's, a hardware store in San Ramon, Costa Rica.  I noticed the other customer at the counter because he had an interesting tattoo around his wrist.  All black, sort of Art Deco, with what looked like silhouettes of monkeys hanging from a vine. 
     Me to Paul (in a whisper):  "Look at that guy's tattoo.  I think those are monkeys."
     Paul:  "Don't ask him."
     Me:  "Are those monkeys on your tattoo?"

     Long story short, David Peiro told me that monkeys were his passion, and that he had given himself the tattoo as a 40th birthday present.  Nobody else had ever asked him about it.
     David, an animal behaviorist who is originally from Spain, had recently moved to San Ramon after a divorce disrupted his plans to open a rehabilitation center on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.      
     Paul and I had recently moved to San Ramon from the United States, and had a permit from the government agency MINAET for a primate rehabilitation center...but no monkeys.
     And David knew of a 1 1/2 year old male spider monkey in need of relocation.