The Monkeys with Attractive Eyes

If eyes stick out like golf balls, bulbous enough to have inspired a hideous new creature on a Star Wars set; if a head is disproportionately small, looking like an animated sultana atop a skyscraper; if ears are of the larger, protruding variety that give the impression of a pair of satellite dishes in search of a cricket match, it’s probably best not to say anything.  Bodies come in all shapes and sizes, fashions change and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  There’s no such thing as ugly, only unique or exotic.

Besides, the owners of any differently shaped or sized features would likely have heard all the unfortunate quips and taunts.  They may feel self-conscious.

The human species, when at its best, seeks rather to concentrate on the positive, because it’s a nice thing to do.  

Indeed, through fashion humans have acquired an understanding of the available techniques for enhancing certain features or accentuating beauty.  Everybody knows that the more robust among us can favour vertical stripes to look thinner, that high heels for women are at least sometimes about height adjustment and that the right set of frames can bring emphasis to well-shaped eyes.

It's not so easy for monkeys.

There’s little a female gorilla can do, for example, to make its hands look daintier.  It’s difficult to say how a gibbon could give their lanky arms that shorter appearance, and with the swollen red rump of a baboon… well, fashion options are not easy to list.  Monkeys are left with the singular hope that those they come across in the forest will have the good grace not to draw undue attention to certain, exceptional features.

In the forests of Brunei Darussalam on the island of Kalimantan is yet another species of monkey in such a predicament.  How to describe them?

Well, they have very attractive, brown, almond-shaped eyes.  They have suave hairstyles, brushed back, that are almost retro-1950s hip, in a good way.  Their longish faces have a welcoming quality, with an endearing heart shape to them, while their mouths are petite and aristocratic, not at all obnoxious-looking.  Their eyebrows might not be lacking in bushiness but that could be described as distinguished or intellectual, surely.

Nor could one speak highly enough of their nature-chosen jackets, in coordinated earthy tones from brown to beige, tan, light orange and grey, which give a sense of chic casualness and must belong to the very highest echelons of forest wear.  That’s certainly something to focus on.

In Brunei these gentle creatures live in proximity to the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan.  They prefer the environs of the mangrove forests that line the riverbanks and channels just beyond the city limits, accessible to humans via easily arranged boat tours.  The monkeys are shy, preferring to spend time away from society at large.  I don’t know why.

In that neck of the woods are other animals to observe, such as monkey species of less distinctive appearance and maybe large sea otters, seen scampering along the bank.  But I digress.

The human species when at its best seeks to concentrate on the positive, but unfortunately the human species isn’t always at its best.  Sometimes humans can be rather cruel and biologists, apparently, are no exception. 

I’m considering the insensitivity in the naming of this particular primate: the proboscis monkey.  The word proboscis refers to a long flexible snout or trunk, or, more specifically, a large nose.

But I ask, with a nose that’s up to ten centimetres long and is odd for a monkey, is it entirely necessary to bring any further attention to it by choosing such a name?  It’s not small. It’s hardly to be missed. And to add insult to injury the biologists have placed those gentle simians in the genus Nasalis.

Meanwhile those monkeys with attractive eyes go on living peacefully in groups, groups with overlapping territories.  They are among the larger species in Asia, and pursue a diet of leaves and fruit, occasionally insects.  Unlike some other monkey species they are rarely aggressive towards each other and tend to mingle when one group in the forest canopy comes upon another.  They certainly have great personalities, one could say.

But unfortunately the biologists haven’t been alone in not looking beyond the matter at the centre of things.  The locals have likewise demonstrated insensitivity towards these gentle forest dwellers.  In Malay there are several names, and it’s the colloquial one, orang belanda, in which there may be an issue.  It translates as ‘Dutchman’.

It so happened that at the time when the first Dutch arrived in the Indonesian archipelago, their European heritage pot bellies and comparatively larger noses made an impression on the local people.

And while it cannot be assumed the proboscis monkey minds being called a Dutchman, or even that the Dutch take offence at having a monkey species named after them, the particular reference to the pot bellies and large noses upon which the comparison relies surely has the potential to offend both parties.

It’s as well to assume the kindly beasts remain unaware of what the humans call them.  On the other hand, it’s difficult to say definitively just what it is that a monkey knows… I mean, understands.

rat 

                  pigeon

                 zoobr

red bird

                            kangaroo 

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: The monkeys with attractive eyes

Pura Vida; or, a Coati's Tale

 “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” 

– Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden; or, Life in the Woods, 1854

(Guest writer: a Costa Rican Coati)

For a good life, take it from me, nothing will surpass a patch of pristine rainforest and a decent sized public rubbish bin.  Sure, a shiny car, ultra-modern, sleek and featuring the latest ergonomics might be enough to make all the other vehicles in the traffic blush.  Sure, a long, tree-lined driveway of pebbles capped by gates in swirling wrought iron might be the envy of friends.  But it’s not pura vida, that quintessentially Costa Rican Spanish phrase that means ‘real living’ or ‘plenty of life’, and is also used for ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’.

Big experiences aren’t necessary either.  While it might be enjoyable to jet off to Cannes for the film festival now and then, to walk the red carpet; or to lounge in the Anguillan sun waiting for chilled refreshments to be brought right to your deck chair, such moments are only fleeting.  Take it from a Costa Rican: keep it simple.

But what would I know?  I’m only a coati and for those who are not quite the mammal experts they might wish to be, think of me as a cousin of the raccoon.

I’m based up in Monteverde, which is sort of in the middle north of Costa Rica about five hours from the capital, San Jose.  It’s not a bad spot: the morning air is crisp and foggy as the clouds roll in over the hills and in the nights there’s a wondrous chorus of insect and frog to promote blissful slumber.  Tree and branch, Monteverde is rich in green, within the 26,000 acres of the Cloud Forest Reserve.  You could say there’s a bit of a backyard at my place. 

 

In pursuit of packaged pura vida the tourists arrive from early morning to take a stroll in our patch of forest.  They’ve made trails for themselves with boardwalks and wooden stairs.  The tourists can be noisy and nosy when they come, but we don’t mind posing for their cameras, knowing that by habit in their backpacks is likely some portion of our lunch.  It’s a straightforward matter to take a break atop the visitor’s centre roof or in a tree, to wait for the tourists to shuffle off into the greenery.

I don’t wish to indulge in needless nationalism but I like being Costa Rican.  Well, I write ‘Costa Rican’ but casually we’re known as Ticos, particularly the humans.  We coatis are Ticos too and it’s not a bad thing to be.  I don’t mean to bore you with facts but our Costa Rica has around 25% of its land area protected in national parks and reserves, more than any other country.  Costa Rica’s been recognised as the planet’s greenest nation and since 2007 we’ve had this little goal of becoming the first carbon neutral country by 2021.  I don’t mean to sound proud, just because our Tico facts are impressive enough to be printed on t-shirts to sell to the tourists.

Anyway, for me and my coati friends it’s rather more the 2012 ban on recreational hunting that’s the favourite, because we do sport rather pretty jackets and it’s not everyone who can let that be.  So we retire to the tranquillity of our cloud forest, and the general dampness and breeziness, let me assure you, is not much of a bother when one has the warmth of fur to rely on.  It’s about dressing appropriately, nothing more. 

If I mention the sifting through trailhead garbage for food, my pura vida might not sound like your cup of tea.  But the tourists are generous in their bread crumbs, shards of vegetables and leftover fruit.  It’s incredible the amount of perfectly good food scraps they discard.  Better still, the rubbish bin is an ecosystem that attracts insects.  It’s a one-stop shop for all the nutritional requirements and the smell isn’t too atrocious on account of the rainforest air.  I’ll tell you something else: it’s tiring to wander the pristine wilds on a daily basis; much better to hang around the rubbish bins.  You can think of it as recycling, as any good Tico would.  Our omnivorous diet is our national contribution.

Down the road a bit the tourists like to watch the hummingbirds that come, attracted by the nectar trays hung out.  They’re small birds, hummingbirds, of several species in Monteverde, all with delicate curved bills suited to nectar-feeding.  But it’s neither their size nor their shiny feathers that impress the tourists, I suppose, as much as how rapidly they can flap their little wings to hover, mid-air, while they eat, if they wish.  At the other end of the scale in terms of speed are the two and three-toed sloths that tourists like to spy on night hikes.  They’re so slow that moss can grow on them.

In every respect Costa Rica is a wildlife haven.  Being in Central America, species that developed in both the North and the South, separately, learnt to intermingle here when the land bridge formed and the landmasses joined.  As I said, our cousins the raccoons prefer up north while in South America are other coati species.  As a result, while our Costa Rica might account for only 0.25% of the planet’s land surface it has 5% of the world’s biodiversity, right here!  Ah, but I sound like I’m boasting.  I would only mention how I like living in a cosmopolitan, multi-species cloud forest society.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect to our lifestyle is how attracted the foreigners have become to our Tico ways.  It’s not a decent habit to eavesdrop but I once heard these American girls, mid-twenties at a guess, talking about a retreat down on our Pacific coast where foreigners try to live in harmony with nature.  There’s no TV there and I believe as much as possible they grow their own food.  I guess even in America the heritage is not only the bright lights of Hollywood, the oil tycoon tiffs of Dallas and the roulette wheels of Vegas.  There’s also Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, where Mr. Henry David Thoreau in the nineteenth century once tried to live a pura vida of his own.  That’s American heritage too.  A secret: Walden’s back in vogue.

There’ll always be critics, those who find my words too 1970s and hippy.  I’d remind that if we think of the 1970s it was flower power that ended the Vietnam War.  It’s not an achievement to be scoffed at.  Not that we could ever have a problem like the Vietnam War here in Costa Rica, because our renowned President José Figueres Ferrer constitutionally abolished our standing army in 1948, leaving more to spend on health, education and culture; making us the most peaceful and politically stable country in Central America.  Neighbouring Panama followed our example in 1990 so it’s catching on.  There must be another tourist t-shirt in all that somewhere.

I’ll have to leave you there: think I smell some tourist tamale, made of corn, delicious, and there has to be some left on the plantain leaf it’s wrapped in when they toss it out!  Do stop by though, if you’re ever lucky enough to visit Costa Rica.  No appointment needed: we coatis will be right here, hanging out around the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve rubbish bins. Pura vida!

Statistics in this piece researched on Wikipedia here and here.

Algo mas?             

Bolivia en Español?   

Bangladesh en Español? 

Something else?  

Bolivia in English?     

Argentina, Chile or Uruguay? 

This article also published in Star Magazine, 
here:Pura Vida

The Red Bird

Eudocrimus ruber.  Adults measure 55 – 63 centimetres in length with males slightly larger weighing about 1.4 kilograms.  Wingspans are 54 centimetres and nests are messy stick constructions built well above the waterline.  Flight is nimble and the curved bills of the males are 22% longer.  Let’s talk of waders.  Let’s remember Caroni.

And there was Eid on its way.  And there was Diwali on its way.

‘Take my number,’ she said, ‘and if you’re not busy for Eid, call me and you can celebrate with us.’  Just as once there had been a coincidental meeting with a Dhakaiya businessman aboard a Bangaon train, there was that young woman in the Miami terminal, waiting as we were for the flight to Port of Spain.  We’d asked her of her country and she’d said a few things.  You know a country has to be good when the first invitation is granted before arrival.

She had no way to know there’d be knobble-kneed Shazam in Bermuda shorts and t-shirt to look after us.  Neither did we.  It was our very first trip to Trinidad.

Shazam was used to tourists because he was the driver at the guest house in Diego Martin.  He’d spent the week before us with a wealthy American woman who’d had shopping to do and he’d enjoyed that.  He knew the tourist routines of the north of the island and he’d heard all the tourist complaints.  He was used to the sometimes fussiness of foreigners.

Shazam was expert enough indeed to dutifully ignore the instructions of the guest house manager regarding the ordering of the sites.  The main trouble seemed to be with Maracas Bay, a postcard beach on Trinidad’s northern shore where the manager may have thought about the tourist-friendly sunset, telling Shazam to go there last.  Shazam thought about the traffic and the narrow winding road.  Despite working as a driver, he was nervous in traffic and on narrow winding roads.  You could tell this by the way he jerkily swung to the side on occasion as a speedier vehicle passed; and because he said as much.

It was hot in the middle of the day at Maracas Bay, perfect for a swim and a lunch of the battered shark in roti dish called shark-n-bake.  And it was just as well to do things the Shazam way.

I’m not sure why Shazam thought we’d be delighted by the modest modern shopping malls of Trinidad.  Perhaps that’s where some of the other tourists liked to go to feel at home; maybe he’d been there with the American woman the week before; but it didn’t take much time and he was pleased to show us, in between the British colonial blocks of the Trinidadian capital, so we didn’t suggest anything different.

In the evening we toured the Hindu fair beyond the city, to the south.  Trinidad’s population is split, about evenly, between Africans and Indians, the descendants of slaves and of indentured labourers, and while the Africans are Christians, the Indians are divided principally between the Hindu and Muslim communities.  It’s the strong Indian influence that makes the island unique in the West Indies.  There were flashing lights and tabla songs on a stage at the fair, because Diwali was on its way.

Eudocrimus ruber.  It was after that I suggested Caroni and Shazam was quite discouraging without exactly explaining why.  I pressed him for the reason and in the end he said he’d taken tourists there before and they said there was nothing to see.  There were too many mosquitoes and Caroni was just a swamp and it was disappointing.  We had to convince him that we’d not be of such an opinion.

He was still in two minds at the dock where the small, open-air tourist boat waited.  He still worried about mosquitoes as we put repellent on.  Politely he made it clear that he’d not recommended Caroni and so if we didn’t enjoy it, it wasn’t his doing.  And we waved as the boat set off.

 At first there were narrow channels with mangroves on either side and the boat had to drive slowly to find passage between the submerged sticks and the shallows.  It was there we saw the python, spiralled tightly in a mangrove branch.  Indeed there were two.  It was there the afternoon sun sprinkled gold among the greenery and brought reflections enough on the water to make tranquillity.  There was a caiman too, a smaller alligator relative, posing in wait amid twig and branch on the channel-side mud.

Well, the channels became canals and lagoons as the sun moved lower, as the sky was decorated with those Caribbean pinks you don’t seem to get elsewhere.  And there were greys too, in the rain clouds that mostly moved around us but occasionally delivered a little light water down upon the boat.  To go further was to better appreciate the size of the marshland: at five thousand hectares it’s not the Sundarbans but it is large enough to feel lost in.

And perhaps there are no tigers in Trinidad but there are the scarlet ibises.  Eudocrimus ruber.  The main attraction.

It’s a diet of red crustaceans that produces the brilliant scarlet of their feathers.  The colour comes about at the time of the second moult, as the younger birds in grey, brown and white learn to fly.  The scarlet ibis is the only shorebird in the world with red feathers. 

As the boat once more returned to smaller channels the first ibises found us.  They were like shots of fire beneath the mangrove canopy, light streaks flashing across the mangrove green and black as they somehow negotiated the entanglement of branches in high speed flight.  What do the pythons and caimans, and all the other animals that sought to blend in, sporting mangrove tones, think of those flashy ibises?

But as soon as the flashes of red, three or four together, were spotted shooting by, so they were gone and the terrain returned to its usual shades.  Was that all we’d see of them?

And there was Eid on its way.  And there was Diwali on its way.  But it was not these occasions, rather Christmas which was still some months away that came to mind as the boat turned to enter a larger lagoon once more.  There was a large tree at some distance, and it seemed to be decorated with dozens of shining red lights.  As the sun was negotiating its last with the Gulf of Paria in the direction of Venezuela, the ibises came in to roost by the dozens, choosing that singular tree, and as each weary air circle was completed and a pair of wings finally folded, one more light was added to the unlikely, everyday, mangrove, marshland Caroni Christmas tree. 

Eudocrimus ruber.  The wader.  The eater of red crustaceans.  The tree decorator.

It was dark as the boat returned to the dock.  Shazam cautiously asked how it was and he was rather pleased with the answer.  He was relieved because we said nothing of mosquitoes, mostly as there weren’t any about.  Caroni was not ‘just a swamp’ and we had no complaints.  Who indeed could be disappointed with the red bird?

On the drive back to the guest house we passed a Christmas tree sculpture of small white lights, and on one side was the outline of a Diwali lamp and on the other a crescent moon.

On the drive back Shazam said to me excitedly, ‘I have met many tourists, but if I ever get the chance to travel I want to travel like you do.  You take things easily, as they come.’  In the car, full voiced, he sang his national anthem, and we sang ours.  And we had no complaints.

Shazam took us to a park on Diwali evening where we lit candles along with local families.  And for Eid he took us to his home, to feast and to celebrate.

Wikipedia sourced photo.

For bird enthusiasts, there are also grey birds of battle to see, while others are more kind of fish people.  There's even something here for the fruit enthusiast.


This article also published in Star Magazine, here: The Red Bird