Those other monkeys

June 4th, 2013

Hello! Today I woke up and realized it was raining. What in the world. Rain!??! But it stopped. So we woke up, all had breakfast at 6, and left the house by 6:30 to go find a different group of monkeys. As in, the group of monkeys that ran Jatoba's off the other day! As in, Zangado. Zangado is thought to be Mansinho and Jatoba's father. It took an hour and a half to find this guy. Um, he is huge. He looks like an ape. He is so big, I couldn't believe it. And all he did all day was threaten us! He would hop onto a branch above us, show his large fangs, and shake the branches all around. It was quite terrifying at first. Not only was he a new strange (large) monkey... But he had a gang of 13 other monkeys around him. Strange monkeys... Who were they!? I don't know them! One was named Emma, though... Lol and I like that name (shoutout to Baby Spice). But for real, their faced looked to be a lighter color. It was interesting to see these monkeys. It was very obvious that these monkeys weren't as accustomed to humans as our other monkeys. Which is probably why they stayed up on that dang cliff all day... I only got 16 good data points. Oh, today was the day that Allison almost got it. One of the monkeys, apparently named Marcio, was threatening us. He was jumping up on a branch high above us and was looking down and acting like he wanted to pounce on us. We knew he wouldn't, of course. But then he started chewing at the base of a branch he was near... And he cut it free... And dropped it down! But luckily, it got caught on another branch before it fell down on us. Allison was directly under this Marcio monkey... And she decided she ought to move. And right after she decided to move, that dang monkey hopped down to where his branch landed, grabbed it, and dropped it all the way down to the ground five feet from where Allison was now standing. I almost died. Allison played it cool. Today Allison and I talked about my future. Made my tummy feel nervous. Other than that- we just gossiped probably more than all of your church friends. :-P Three weeks have passed. I have 6 more to go. I'm not ready for this to be over. I guess I should start making plans to come back.... ;-)