Since the BBC came, it hasn't snowed any more so, now, only remains are left, depicting a patchy landscape on the ground with leaves, branches and some hard snow scattered around...but in the tourist area, where a tick layer of ice is still present. Thanks to it, every morning, when looking for the monkeys, we can show our skills in figure skating (yeah, ok, we look more to a reumatic Donald duck...).
Anyway, the leftovers of snow are enough to prove that rubber boots are maybe useful to don't be wet but are useless in a slippery terrain if your aim is to don't end up with your bottom on the ground. This is how, the other day, when trying to follow Galack during a scream fight to collect faecal samples, I made an incredibly well performed imitation of Gollum climbing a hill. Given the amount of fans that this character has, the going ups are, at least, somehow dignified...somehow...The going downs, however, are further less elegant and, being fed up with almost dying every time that I tried to go down a snowy slope, I resolved to follow the wise advice that the Portuguese gave me when I was going to the cliffs of Veneguera to search for shearwaters "To move with safety use your 5 tips, arms, legs and ass".
Notwithstanding, all these difficulties are what I consider environmental enrichment and make the days more interesting. The real nuisances are, as usual, the tourists.
Today, the Boss and I had to follow Pepito and Tequila (Leila) for getting faecal samples and, as they are the lowest ranking monkeys, instead of being far in the forest with the rest of the group, they moved towards the tourist area. There, a group of teenagers started to harass them by throwing them peanuts, screaming a lot and playing music. As the other time, each time that a tourist came too close to Tabasco, Tequila's infant, she started grunt and open mouth, only achieving that the tourists started to laugh and even pursue her. For me it was quite stressful to see the anxiety of Tequila to keep her daughter safe among that bunch of cretins. One even climbed to one of the trees going after Pepito (The only good point is that the monkeys were so stressed that we could collect our samples...even when Tequila's one was stuck on her ass for an hour...).
The thing is that, looking at them I could only feel "asco y vergüenza" like Arianna Puello would say (disgust and shame). How could they find funny something that it was so awful to me? And then I wondered how many stuff I do that make others consider me a monster. We, the doomed species, I guess. Maybe Corso was right, we live in the Hell...and we are the evil.While waiting for Tequila's sample to fall (such an elegant way of saying "waiting for a rain of shit"!), the Boss, amazingly, tried to do some social anthropology. I would never be able of being nice with someone that I want to tear into pieces; I hardly manage to don't hit them with the urine-catcher! Well, I was standing there, with the typical pain in the neck (of course, Tequila has climbed as high as she could) when suddenly I saw Tabasco falling from 7 m high together with a cedar branch! While my heart beat as if I had just finished a marathon, Tabasco...stood, ran and climbed to a tree. I was freaked out, wondering if she would be really fine...fortunately seemed to be the case. These animals are completely amazing.
Once both samples were collected, we leave the two poor social outcast with the tourists, hoping that they were able to take care of them selves as they usually do ( I feel bad for betraying my kind, but work is work, guys, and the rest of the group was at the other corner of the home range!).
Fortunately, now that the Moroccan holydays are finished, these scenes are less usual and concentrated in the weekends. Western tourists are not better, of course, but normally they only stay for 10-15 minutes, not for hours; so they have less time to be harmful. Even though, our macaques seem to ran away, just in case, and today we end up in a patch of forest that I hadn't visited before and again reminded me to the Green group site...which is going to be very funny if it snows again as it was starting to do when we left this afternoon...let's see in one week and a half.
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