In Times of War and Upheaval

The monkeys are insane right now. I was out all day yesterday and lost the monkeys at 6am, and never found them again. Frustrating to say the least. They vanished into thin air. Literally. Watched a monkey go into a tree, and he never came out. And they were all just gone.

What is interesting, and also the reason they are so difficult to find right now, is we picked this group up about a week ago, to discover that the alpha male, Coltraine (the one that chased me away from the group a couple months ago) was missing, along with Kanela, a juvenile female. One of my peers, a native, thinks poachers got them, because they had been hanging out in an area where we most commonly see poachers, and they alarmed at us like crazy for the first two days we were with them. Usually only monkeys that are unhabituated (not used to people hanging out with them) alarm at us like that. So it seems likely that a human had something to do with Coltraine and Kanela disappearance, which would explain their nervousness in our presence. Very sad. People can be such stupid assholes.

So now, Oden is alpha. Another jerkoff. He approached me the other day, aggressive coughing, and reached out like he was going to hit me, but for some reason pointing at them works, so I pointed and he backed off. But not without branch breaking and dragging the branch with his tail in a circle around me first. Both are displays of
aggression. The monkeys are not typically aggressive towards us, even
though I have had encounters like this. It's a new alpha trying to establish and demonstrate his dominance...Coltraine had carried on in a similar manner at first. They are nervous and eager so they threaten everything. Plus, with Oden, this was during an intergoup (where two groups of monkeys intermingle for a time). Power...probably the scariest, bad-ass-mother-fucker of a monkey in the history of monkeys...is the alpha of a small neighboring group. His bottom lip is all shredded
up, and hangs open all time, so it looks like he is permanently aggressive threatening. And he's huge. There are no other males in his group. It's just him and three females (that is unusually small for capuchins). When this is the case, as it is with another group we have right now, the alpha usually runs away as fast as possible when other monkeys are around because they have no other males to back
them up and will get their asses kicked because they have all these females as resources. But not Power. He goes around looking for fights. And even during intergroups with groups that have up to 7 males, he still wins. He's just that bad ass.

So, Power shows up and all the monkeys go fucking nuts for 45 minutes. Screaming, intense vocal threats, wheezes, brays, branch breaking, etc. You know. The whole 9 yards. I actually got it on video. This was the first intergroup I have witnessed that actually got physical. But of course, Oden chased Power off on the ground at the end and by the time I caught up, Power was gone and Oden's face was all bloody. I don't know if Power got injured, so it will be interesting to see him when we find his group next. But I think Power may have actually lost an intergroup.

Sorry if you find all this stuff boring. I find it awesome.

So for the rest of the day, Oden and the adult females were very much on edge. There was actually brief encounter with another alpha, Gandalf, but he ran away almost immediately. He had just recently left Oden's group to become alpha of The Musketeers, so he peaced out as soon as he saw Oden. But with all this tension, Oden was NOT happy, and even though I was laughed at for it, I was pretty afraid to be too close to Oden for the rest of the day. He was threatening us pretty frequently, and piloerect all day (all their fur stands up when they are really pissed to make them look bigger and more intimidating...and it works). I feel like we all get a little too comfortable with the monkeys sometimes. Yes, they
are used to us, and no one has ever been injured by one of them, but we can't forget that they are still very much wild animals. We can follow them all day every day only because they allow us to. And with Oden being uber stressed - he just became alpha and has all this new responsibility - he just had TWO intergroups, and just got
all cut up, AND his old alpha's reign was likely ended by a human, he had
every reason to not want us there and following two feet behind him. So I hung back from him for a few hours, so he could simmer.

The following days Oden and his group stayed in the same general location all day long; Oden just licking his wounds. It's like he regrets becoming alpha. The group stays really quiet and high up in the trees, making it hard to follow them. Yesterday they moved actually; silently, so we lost them. Who knows where the hell they are now. Aaaaand.....4 other males from the group have disappeared. They didn't like Oden, so they are probably trying to immigrate to a new group, which can be a touchy business. So things will be interesting the next few weeks.

PS......saw a HUUUUUGE coyote the other day. It was awesome.