THE PRIMATE TRUST

Rain, Rain, Go Away

26th September 2016

Again, a few nice breaks in the weather recently, meant a brief return to the pool and the joys of swimming for many of the monkeys. See Tom’s latest video on the diving contests! What are hopefully the last rains of the season have now returned in force, turning everything to mud again, but at least the end must be now in sight.

The big Ganesh festival is also now over. This always means a shortage of staff here, as they dash in to work just to do the essentials, before returning home to prepare their feasts and entertainments for relatives and families. This mass Indian holiday also results in a shortage of available food for the monkeys, as the fruit pickers, shippers and sellers also take time off. A big shortage of bananas, one of the monkey’s favorites as a result, and some not amused looks from our residents as we offered them cauliflower leaves instead. But with the return to the wholesalers of the banana trucks on mass, more bananas than even we could use on the next few trips.

A big step forward on the Raj and Katrina saga, when Raj was seen actually grooming a prostrate Katrina, who clearly couldn’t believe her luck. Because of his total isolation from close contact with humans or other monkeys since a baby, this basic monkey behavior is not in his repertoire, other than as a nervous tic, on his own hands only. Although Katrina has been grooming him from time to time when he is in a good mood, he has never returned the action himself, till now. It hasn’t stopped their frequent sparring matches of course, when their joint frustrations with each other explode, but is one big step towards normality for Raj .Next ambition; get him to want to swim in the pool.

Our monkey’s fridge, which is used to full capacity, to lengthen the life of their fruit and veg finally collapsed and died of a failed compressor. It had been donated by a local large electrical goods store, Shetye Sales, several years ago. In this climate it is really essential to keep food fresh. Faced with a massive bill for even second hand household goods here, we approached Mr Shetye again, he does cattle rescue himself from his home, and he came up trumps again for us, and a large and still quite posh silver fridge promptly arrived, many thanks again.

Kochi, no longer such a small baby, still comes in for the night at about 6 pm, for his cuddles, and all the best food that he doesn’t need to compete for, although he also uses this time to bully my cats, trash the bedroom and torment poor old Urchin the dog as well. With the expected final end of the monsoon and cold wet nights soon, I am planning on getting him to at least sleep out in his pen, once he has had cuddle time, with his troop, Ruby, Lavender, Dixie and Dennis. He is quite old enough to do so now, although he might not at first agree with me!

Only one call out recently, when someone reported some Indian itinerant travelers trying to sell a baby monkey in the local market. Unfortunately ,it had already been sold on when we went to investigate and they were all gone .I still get frequent requests over the PTI web site from Indians wanting me to” sell them a baby monkey please”, despite all they can read there on the sad outcome of this. They are still in demand as “pets” when tiny, although it is of course an illegal trade. This one will undoubtedly end up on a chain or in a small cage after a few weeks, or even days, of poo everywhere and home destruction.