stephanie looking up

This is the new baby Steph mentioned in her previous post. You can see two long white tails of the colobus monkeys. The one on the right is the mother. The placenta is visible, unfortunately you cannot see the baby very well. 

The Clean Up Crew Today was a big day in my relationship with the red ants at my door, who I call the clean up crew. I returned from the forest  today at 5:30  as per usual, sat down, and took off my boots. When I got up and reached for the door handle, I noticed that the clean up crew were all facing me and frozen in their steps. I wasn’t convinced that they could actually be watching me, so I put my hand out and reached towards them like I might poke them. They all backed up in their tracks.    With pinchers like that, it’s a relief to know that I hold the upper hand in this relationship.    Like I said, it was a big day. Blue’s New Baby This morning we saw a newborn baby – it must have been born only an hour or two before we arrived. The mother, Blue, is an old woman and my assistant Charles was so surprised that she gave birth to another baby that he suggested that we throw her a party (in place of this we opted for cheering some beer over di...

                               Awesome nature spotted this week:  A small snake!  I don’t know what kind. Angela and I both yelped and leaped away when it made the slightest, slowest motion in our direction. All the kids laughed at us.  Awesome ants. There is a nest of red ants somewhere outside of my door. Despite the fact that their little jaws look like they could induce extreme pain, I greatly respect them because unlike the black ants, they don’t seem to bite unless seriously provoked. Instead, they neatly march along the roof, the laundry line, and around my door everyday cleaning up all of the dead bugs who were flying around the light the night before. A scorpion! Unfortunately I had to kill it, this is the rule when its on the porch or around the guest house. I felt very brave. The red ants cleaned up all of t...

What is notable about this sunday ? It was the day that the male red ants emigrated from the nest by the bathrooms of the guesthouse. When male ants emigrate, they have wings and the air becomes full of them. I hate this day. At night there is a light on outside of our bedroom door (which we aren’t allowed to turn off in case of snakes and scorpions) and as a result our doorway was covered in these male ants. Bleh. Thankfully most of the males don’t live longer than a day or two. Phew.    On the bright side, I saw an owl! YAY!

It is 12:30 am .    It is raining so hard on our tin roof and the power is out - we have no ceiling fan and it is hot hot hot. I can’t sleep.    It feels like if it rained any harder than this, all of the buildings would be squashed flat and we would be washed away in the night.

Awkaba!  Welcome back! I am taking a moment to put my feet up, relaxing on the porch of the guesthouse. My thermometer reads 32C in the shade.  I am watching a group of mona monkeys who have claimed the guesthouse yard (and roof) as their home territory. All of the individuals in this group seem to have limbs missing or paralyzed. Perhaps in poor taste, we call this group the war amps. One mona is dangling from the branches of a mango tree. One mona is sitting grooming itself on the walls of our summer hut. Another mona is playing with a dish towel that it has probably stolen. A few juveniles are wrestling amongst the tallgrass (the mower has broken), and all I can see is their long tails bouncing up and down, occasional heads popping out, and the grass waving around. Recently these monas pulled apart the straw roof of our summer hut to forage for insects. Now we have a skylight, wanted or not.  A few hens cluck about noisily and one rooster struts. Thr...

Today I was practicing learning to identify monkeys.  We identify monkeys based on variation in the shape of the eye brows, furry black caps and tails. I think it is really hard - my assistant Charles says I have no eyes. Sometimes I can’t even see the monkeys when he points them out – when they are so far away and all you can see is part of a body and a white tail hanging down – and somehow he spots them  and  can tell who they are, all without binoculars. Monkey master, that man.  I am finding it a bit ironic how the stranger, uglier, or haggered looking monkeys – those typically picked on in any social species, including our own - are becoming my favourites. I can tell them apart from the crowd. Budging eyes, balding or crooked tails, missing chunks of hair and silly looking hairdos now classify as desirable attributes in my books.  Thank goodness for funny looking monkeys – FLMs.