Last month
I spent 144h following the samango monkeys, without counting the corresponding
hours of sleeping sites data collection. The Minnesotan is close with 92h and
the Cardiffian with 66h,...even if is this last one the one that sounds as if she knew everything about the monkeys…An empty vessel makes the loudest sound...
Don’t get
me wrong, I don’t complain about working hard, I came this far to do so. In Morocco we worked much more hours, but we
were all in the same “business”, with pretty much the same schedule even if
some people worked in a different project. Here, many days I wake up when
everybody still has a couple more hours of sleep ahead and I come back when
everybody is making the dinner. Some days I only have a half day follow, and I
leave while most are sunbathing…I know everybody works hard here, but sometimes
just feels like I’m the only suc&%r!(pringá que te cagas, c&ñ&!).
So, while everybody goes to have nice hikings through the mountains or to
parties, I stand quietly in the forest surrounded by the little samangos who,
as a consolation prize, uncover their world for me.
One of the
funniest things of these little monkeys is, actually, the matings. The poor
male of my troop, whom I call Greg (cause is the House troop, and I liked the
series), tries to approach a female (or the female approaches him, rubbing her
tail on his nose, just in case he doesn’t get it), and then they try to make it
work…but then the juveniles run towards them screaming and jumping and Greg
charges them while the female looks angry blaming the kids.
My little
samangos, even if quite cute, doesn’t seem to be very smart…or maybe they have
decided that they are too many in the troop, indeed. The other day, they spent
one hour and a half screaming, with Greg with the typical ka-train calls,
because a crowned eagle was around. Not only they didn’t move away, but they
slept 10m from the place. Yesterday, the eagle was close to the cliff flying
while the monkeys were feeding on the Owner’s garden. The females and the
juveniles went into the bushes and started with their acute screams while
scanning the sky…Greg, however, was in the middle of the meadow, chewing grass
passively.
Sometimes,
I have to spend half a morning looking for them and this gives me the
opportunity to discover new places and even monkeys. Last week (if my
80-years-old-lady-memory doesn’t betray me), I was walking the Bushbuck trail,
looking for the House troop when I heard some of their typical grunts. I walked
through (i.e. fight against) the vegetation and suddenly I found myself in a
kind of little heaven full of little waterfalls surrounded by waterberry trees
and ferns…unfortunately that wasn’t my troop, it was a bachelors one; mine was further
up, in the middle of the thorny thicket ( of course!).
Relatively
often, we are not alone. Some days ago,
when was almost the sleeping time for them, I was following them while they
were approaching the cliffs behind the Barn when the baboons appeared with
their characteristic noises (and smell). I really enjoy watching them; so much
that, sometimes, I’m close to loose my samangos…when is not a baboon juvenile
that hides between my monkeys trying to appear in my scans…but I’m not that
blind…yet. That day, precisely, one of
the baboon males was eating something fluffy and I waited, trying to figure out
what was it. When he finished, he left the leftovers, but a bunch of juveniles
wanted to take a piece; but they ran away when I came closer. I just saw a
fluffy fur without any meat left and some cracked bones. Close, there was a
hole on the rocks covered by blood, so I assume that it was a dassie, but…Then,
I realized that my samangos wasn’t around, so I jumped from rock to rock (my
knees and ankles are really hating me for this) until I saw some…but also to
one of the French students. “This is House troop” I said “No, Barn troop” he
replied “Fuck!” I thought…both troops were pretty much at the same sleeping
site, so , were the baboons!
Actually,
finding baboons while following the samangos is pretty much a habit, but a
couple of days ago I was pretty excited. I was with one of the scans when I
thought “wait a second, that juvenile is too white” sure it was, it was a
vervet monkey! So there I was, with the vervets at my left and the samangos at
the right and, if it wasn’t enough, a warthog came over, foraging beneath the
vervets.
Last days I
have been coming back especially late because we have to record when the
monkeys stop to make noises after getting on the trees. This is how the other
day, close to the Barn, I saw four couples of bright eyes in the dark looking
at me from a tree. The eyes dispersed and a pair came closer; Greater bush
babies! One would thought that they would be scared of the light of the
torches, but they seem to be quite curios about them and this bush baby was
staring at me for a while, before another one joined him.
And these
are some of the things I get in exchange for my isolation. I guess I’ll miss it
when I start to work in the predator side of the project soon, but I think I
won’t miss track of the little samangos, even if I will be following them less
often.
And well…in
a couple of days I will be hitting Kruger...I really hope to see lions!
