Babysitting A Monkey

     I love Chitti, my little monkey friend at the shelter. But one could call it a bit of an abusive relationship. When I walk into the monkey area, she comes running over when I call her and jumps at full speed onto my shoulders or head if I haven’t walked close enough for her to climb onto my arm. She proceeds to use us as a jungle gym, jumping between the trees, the walls, and our bodies. 

My hair must be an especially exciting color, different from what she usually sees here. She loves to tug on it – and she is ridiculously strong for a little monkey, pulling my head back at once point so that it hit the wall behind me (yes, I have this little attack on video). She gives me a monkey hairdo, pulling strands from my ponytail and pulling them over her head as if they are her own. When she gets agitated by the other monkeys around us (most of them extremely aggressive and widening their eyes angrily at me as they bang on the bars of their enclosures) or overstimulated in general, she gets mouthy, but I trust at this point that she won’t actually bite me, though she did (superficially) scratch my neck the other day. She loves to grab my nose with her little hands, but as much as she wants to, luckily isn’t able to steal it from me. She climbs all over me, poking my eyes, sticking her fingers up my nose, flinging herself to and fro, once landing splat on my face. She is definitely a pocket checker and stole a plastic bag from us the other day and ran away to the top of a wall with it, where she stood up and held it upside down over her head to eat all the bread crumbs that were left inside. 

She tried to go for my camera this afternoon, but I told her no way. The other day we finished playing with her earlier than she decided was acceptable, so she made her way via trees and roofs over to the cow area where we were attempting to work. I’ll just say it’s incredibly challenging to focus on deworming cows when a monkey is looming from above, threatening to jump on your head at any moment. 

     Chitti’s first gift to me was a few days ago when she sat on my shoulder playing with my hair and decided to pee down my back. The next day, she left me a little brown present on my shoulder. And today, I got some lovely monkey diarrhea all down my back. The gifts I bring her are a bit nicer. When we brought bananas, she gulped them down and stored them in her cheeks so that she could eat more before I gave them to the other monkeys.

The guava, she discarded after a few bites in favor of the stolen plastic bread bag.  She did enjoy her chopped mango today which was leftover from my lunch. She saw me coming and that I was holding a container of food and stayed sitting where she was on the ledge, holding her little hand out expectantly. I placed a piece of mango in it, which she immediately put in her mouth and held out her hand again. As the mango pieces got smaller and goopier, I placed them into her hand. I was surprised with how gently she picked up the pieces from my hand with her mouth, and then proceeded to lick the mango goop from my hands as if she was a dog, though dogs aren’t able to use their fingers to hold my hand in place. I love monkey behavior, watching all their facial expressions and how they use their hands and how incredibly similar they are to humans; I can monkey-watch for quite a long time. When the mango was all gone and I showed her the empty container, she of course tried to take off with the container, but her hands weren’t big enough to get a good grip on it so I won that battle. As I walked out of the monkey area, the calves were there, eagerly waiting to clean the remaining mango off of my hands. 

 

      This afternoon, a large group of school kids came to tour the shelter. It would be our job to talk to them about the dogs and cats, but first they were to visit the sustainable gas production area and the cows, both of which are near monkey area. During most of our stay, Chitti has been out of her enclosure and has free roam, though she mostly stays in the area around the other monkeys. Knowing my affinity for Chitti, the director gave me the job of babysitting her while the kids walked in the vicinity of her area, as to make sure that the curious little girl didn’t decide to bounce on an unsuspecting victim. Little did I know that babysitting a monkey can actually be quite a challenge. Chitti was sitting on a barrel when we arrived and happily climbed onto my shoulders and began her usual bouncing from place to place. She was actually quite responsive to me, jumping back to me when I called her. She did visit the calves a bit, hanging from trees to tap on their noses and occasionally bouncing off of them. She had fun for a while playing with a rope and some hanging vines. When we heard the voices of the tour coming towards us, Chitti’s curiosity was definitely piped so we moved into a different area. She got a little bored of just playing with me and Viru had to step up as a babysitter as well to increase the size of her jungle gym. 

     After a little while, we heard the voices fade and assumed that part of the tour was over so left Chitti behind to go find the director. We asked around and discovered that the kids were still out in the same area, so I went running back to the monkey child I had apparently prematurely left behind. I had failed as a babysitter, as the director was there in my place distracting Chitti as the children walked on by. I took over again and played little games with her, trying to keep her in place by swinging her hands around and letting her catch my hand as the rest of the kids moved through the area. She sat on my shoulder and decided to let out a nice stream of diarrhea, which smelled awful and I had to wear that around for the rest of the day. She tormented the other monkeys with her freedom for a bit, poking and prodding at their arms and moving away when they reached out to get her back. 

     Then she realized that the kids were still nearby and ignoring my calls, climbing on the wall over to above where they were standing, eliciting screams from the girls. She luckily didn’t bounce down to them and eventually responded to our calls and came back, where I discovered that she let me pick her up under her arms and hold her for a minute in my arms like a baby until she got too squirmy (not there long enough to get a picture). She let me keep a hold on her as we looked from a distance over the ledge at the kids, some of whom were scared and others approached slightly in amusement at the foreigner with a monkey attached to her body. When they walked away, I tried to put Chitti back near the other monkeys. As I pried her off of me, she bounced off of a dog (who shrieked in surprise) before landing on a tree; it was quite the sight. I ran away before she could bounce back onto my head, but I’ll definitely be back to say goodbye tomorrow.

     Well, that was a much longer monkey saga than I intended to write. But so it is with my fascination with monkeys. Covered in monkey filth and carrying with me quite the stench, I walked over to the small animal area, where we started off by talking to the girls about how to properly approach dogs. They all spoke English, which was very exciting for me to actually be able to fully communicate with people. We got Dora (yep, we named her after Dora the Explorer) out from the puppy enclosure. Just a couple of days ago, Dora had been alone in a kennel in an isolated part of the shelter, as had another puppy, but we recently moved them into a more central area called Puppy Pond that had not been in use. We’ve spent a fair amount of time with these two little girls in the last couple days and they’ve warmed up hugely with some human and animal socialization. After we talked about dog behavior and how to pet them, the girls all eagerly reached out their hands to stroke Dora’s soft coat. She was scared at first with so many people reaching at her, but she behaved quite nicely (aside from peeing on my already-disgusting scrub top) once I held her over my shoulder so that she could hide her head. Pictures below are Krishna (street dog puppy) curled up in my lap, and Dora (such a quick learner) practicing her down command.

     We then headed to the social cat room where the girls all stood outside and pet the cats through the fence as we talked to them about cat behavior and handling. They eagerly repeated the cats’ names in a chorus when we told them, and asked quite a few questions about the animals and what we were doing. A few girls were very sweet and thanked me for coming from the US to work with these animals and said that they would donate to the shelter when they were older. We repeated the routine with the group of boys, who at thirteen, were not yet overly obnoxious and while not as engaged as the girls, definitely seemed responsive to what we were saying and interested in the animals, so hopefully we got our point across to them. We were a bit worried when the kids arrived that since they weren’t young, they wouldn’t care to listen to us, but they were surprisingly engaged. I had put Dora back when we talked to the girls about the cats and I was hesitant to stress her out again but she was extremely excited to come out and visit again and licked my face the entire time we were talking to the boys. Puppy breath >> monkey poo. 

     Before the kids left, we took a big group picture. I had to stand in the front and felt awful for the girls who stood around me, taking in the smells of cow and monkey poop. One of the workers (who is a very odd character) told Viru afterwards that she was more appropriately dressed for a photo than I was – I was also streaked in dirt, and my dark scrubs showed that all too well. We followed them out of the gate and watched as they drove away, all sticking their heads out of the bus windows and excitedly waving and shouting goodbye. 

      Tomorrow we’ll do a half day at the shelter to say goodbye to all of the animals, many of whom I will miss hugely, and finish giving rabies boosters to all of the dogs. Then it’s time for a week of working in the village for more rabies vaccination and awareness. Time to transition to early mornings, flaky electricity, bucket showers, and living out in the gorgeous middle of nowhere.