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Against All Training Rules...

12/26/2012

Chiquito looking innocent in his hammock.

Paul came in this morning after "transferring" Chiquito to the cage-within-the-cage and said: "Chiquito was sitting on my foot and, against all training rules, I sort of booted him into the small cage." We both burst out laughing.
Obviously, rehab animals shouldn't be trained. Or reprimanded. So when Chiquito snapped Paul's bifocal frames in half on Christmas Eve, Paul uttered a single swear word and that was that. (Paul, however, IS trainable, and he's headed into town now to get contact lenses. It was the umpteenth time he forgot to remove his glasses, and the second time Chiquito broke expensive frames.)

     Just as we always "forgive" Chiquito for being a monkey, there are times he has to forgive us for being human. I was watering the vines around the base of the monkey cage a few days ago when Chiquito grabbed Lolita through the chainlink and wouldn't let go. She squealed, he held on, and my trigger finger reacted involuntarily. I hit him with a jet of water. He released his grip, I released mine, and I returned to watering the plants like nothing had happened...but I was chuckling inside.
     Chiquito dropped to the ground on all fours. He levitated, turned 180 degrees in midair, and landed on all fours facing the opposite direction. He repeated this several times in quick succession. Since I knew he would hate being laughed at, I put down the hose and walked into the house.
    "Yes," Paul said, "That's his frustration dance."
    Next time I feel like swearing, I might just try a frustration dance...

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Are Spider Monkeys Sexist?

12/12/2012

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Lolita can't get enough of Steve Mandel.

To all of the women whose feelings have been hurt by Chiquito and Lolita...it's nothing personal. It's just your gender.
Chiquito is openly aggressive toward women, but Lolita will simply ignore you (unless you're holding a bottle of formula).

Just hanging out with her latest crush.

     This isn't something you can search on Google. And our sample of two is obviously statistically insignificant. But I did find ONE line in the ONLY book written about spider monkeys that says: "In the Amazonian city of Iquitos in lowland Peru, many locals believe that spider monkeys behave differently toward women than to men (D. Urdaneta, personal communications)." [Spider Monkeys; Behavior, Ecology and Evolution of the Genus Ateles. Edited by Christina J. Campbell.]
      Initially I thought Lolita liked older men with facial hair, and that still appears to be her preference. But Norman's son Jose switched seats with him and was able to lure Lolita with a pair of sunglasses, after which she warmed right up. Norman's wife Any was relegated to snapping pictures...just like all of the other wives before her. (That's you, Lee Ann, Jennifer, Gloria, Carol, and Dianne.)
     I'm fortunate that both monkeys consider me "mom" ...and don't treat me like a woman.

Norman has a moustache.

Jose lucked out with sunglasses.

Steve has a beard AND moustache.

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Parenting a "Child" with No (Human) Social Skills

12/10/2012

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Chiquito grooming Paul's hair.

     Chiquito is every parent's worst nightmare.
    He bites and pulls hair. He doesn't share.  He's rough with his kid sister. He teases the dogs. He throws food on the floor. He has a tantrum when he doesn't get his way. And he moons and/or humps the people he LIKES.
    He almost never does what we want or ask him to. So we're inevitably disappointed when he doesn't "perform" for company, or videographers and photographers. And like typical parents in denial, we bemoan the fact that "they didn't get to see his cute, feisty personality." (He has one. Really. Sometimes he's cuddly, too.)
    We hire a monkey sitter so he's never left home alone. We rush out in the middle of the night if he hears something that frightens him...hoping we look deranged enough to scare off whatever it is.
    Only a parent could love him. And fortunately, we do.
    But like every parent, we look forward to the day when he leaves home, is a parent himself...and appreciates what we went through?

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Reknowned Wildlife Photographer Steve Mandel Visits

12/8/2012

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We had been waiting months for my roommate from a writing conference, Carol Foote, to visit with her husband, Steve Mandel. Carol is a professional photographer in her own right, having worked at Time Magazine for a decade. But I had loftier visions...of a photograph of Chiquito appearing in the Smithsonian beside Steve's "Lemurs" or "Snow Monkey Mother and Child." http://mandelphoto.com/#/Wildlife/Japan/1/
Unfortunately, I had forgotten to explain the honor that was being bestowed upon him to Chiquito. But as luck would have it, he was immediately attracted to Steve...albeit in a "bromance" kind of way.

     Steve looked amused. He might even have been flattered, never having gotten up close and personal with any of his wildlife subjects before.  So things looked promising, although Carol was justifiably concerned about the fact that Chiquito doesn't like women. Based on our recent experience with the videographers, I assured her he would be afraid of her big camera And when Chiquito climbed the tree beside Steve, who was taking pictures of a pileated woodpecker, I assured him that Chiquito would definitely be afraid of his even bigger camera.
     WRONG.
     Chiquito leaped off the tree onto the camera, breaking off the plastic contraption at the end of it. And Steve lunged for said contraption, yanking it away from Chiquito.
     In the heat of the moment, Steve had broken a cardinal Monkey Rule. "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine."
     An adrenalin haze clouded my vision, and I never saw what happened next. But Chiquito was obviously incensed that Steve wasn't sharing his toys.
    "OW!" Steve yelled. "He bit my leg!"
    "Badly?" I asked in disbelief.
    "It drew blood!" Steve responded.
    Horrified, I stared at the calf of Steve's khaki pants, waiting to see a deep red stain spread across the fabric. Steve is on the anticoagulant Coumadin, having recently spent two weeks in a hospital in Brazil following a DVT (deep vein thrombosis) from flying.
    No pool of blood. Steve was wearing knee-high compression socks, but on examination there was no blood on it, either.
    Puzzled, we soldiered on. Steve with his camera in one hand and a large stick in the other.  Carol with her camera and a stick of her own. And Chiquito circling to give them a wide berth. The magic had gone out of the Kodak moment.
    For the sake of Chiquito's reputation, and because it's inevitable that the bite story will grow like a fish story, Steve agreed that I could photograph his leg for posterity. The photographs of the photographer trumped the show.

Reprimand, Chiquito style.

Treatment, rehab center style.

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In the jungle with the monkeys.

Michele Gawenka

Jane Goodall has always been my hero, and working with primates an aspiration. Africa wasn't in the cards the summer I turned 16, when my parents offered to send me to volunteer, and there was only one class (in physical anthro-pology) when I wanted to study primatology in college.
Decades later my husband and I retired in Costa Rica, and this is our journey with spider (and howler) monkeys.