Monkey Business

Hi there. Well we've now spent two full days of working at the animal park and it's so cool! I've been assigned to being in the group of 5 people who look after the spider monkeys. Yesterday being my first day i was hanging out and helping with the capuchin monkeys just to get used to the whole thing. Capuchin monkeys are small and smart. Today I was standing next to where a capuchin monkey was feeding and it put two pieces of mandarin in my hand and was trying to close my hand over the mandarin to let me know that my job was to squeeze it really hard so it could drink the juice. Clever stuff! Then it was picking up my hand and trying to make me bash it on the mandarin to soften it up. Their brains are always ticking over. I can't carry a wallet or anything in my pockets either. They are expert pick-pockets and I gather that some were trained in the art before being rescued and sent to the park. Today i had every single pocket on my parka thoroughly searched. I had a 10 bolivian dollar note in one pocket and had to be really quick to get it out and stash it in my shoe before it was seen.

While yesterday was like a hot day in Queensland with the muggy heat, today was cold and rained a lot. After we had fed them lunch none of them had much energy so i was sitting down with two spider monkeys on each leg trying to keep warm and a capuchin monkey curled up around my shoulders. It easily makes up for having to clean out the cages where some of them have to sleep at night. It also makes up for coming home filthy due to muddy ground and a complete lack of interest in toilet training (so yeah, covered in urine and worse!) and then finding the shower is freezing cold. Mostly the monkeys we have most to do with are those that are new to the park so are on a leash until they can be trusted not to run away and to make sure they will be accepted by the group. There are a few of those. The older monkeys tend to be much more independent and don't seem to have much interest in us which is a good thing. I gather there is a plan to release some back into the wild at some point which is good because there are about 30 spider monkeys now and that's a little too large a group.

Other animals in the park are coatis ( weird raccoon-like creatures which are really only dangerous to your sense of smell cos they pong bad), howler monkeys, a couple of large local tortoises I saw ambling along a walking track, a few pumas, three ocelots (I haven't seen any of the cats yet as they are generally kept out of the way of the general public for obvious reasons), birds like toucans, parrots etc and various small animals like some sort of really vile weasel like creature that gets walked on a leash that has a stiff pipe in the middle so it can't attack the person walking it because they would happily rip your hand to shreds if they could. I saw two being walked today and they were angry little beasts. Tasmanian Tiger angry!

Ok, I've gushed about the animals for long enough. Time for sleep. I hope all is well back in Melbourne!