Monkey Business

The White Capuchin Monkey

What would a rain forest trip be without seeing monkeys?  Everyone goes expecting to see them and some people succeed.  My first time in the rain forest was the most disappointing because I NEVER got a good look at them.  They were high up in the trees and fast moving.  Over the years, I discovered that early mornings, sunsets, water and fruit were attractions for lots of monkeys.  But you had to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.  Today is a fun post with A LOT of pics from the Wildlife Rescue and Rehab center known as La Jungla which is run by Dorothy "aka Queen of the Jungle".  She originally hails from Florida and began working the wildlife rehab in Boquete. Here are some random and fun facts from my travels abroad observing both wild and "tame" monkeys.  

First off, I have to mention that I went through massive withdrawals without my 5 cats.  So when I was at this rehab, I spent too much time with these very active monkeys.  Both of the monkeys in this particular area were former pets from owners who no longer had space for them.  They played as if they were siblings and it was really cute.  Handling monkeys is a strange experience....because they have tails that act like a 3rd hand.  They are also quite intelligent and possess skills that no ordinary dog or cat has. You have to wonder why people would kill or trap such a magnificent animal that is in so many ways like us.

Here he is on my arm for a brief moment before jumping off.  On this particular trip, I witnessed wild capuchin on Coiba Island.  They were throwing mangos at our cabin in the morning.  I'll show those pics during the Coiba highlights post.  Capuchin monkeys are very curious creatures.  In the wild, they watch from a distance.  As former pets, they are like a younger brother or sister:) I imagine my cabinets and fridge at home and the food all over the floor!!

This look(above) was for the camera....as in stop taking pics of me!  Panama has several species of monkeys which also include the very loud howler monkeys.  My first experience with a howler was with Pepe in the Amazon.  He was smelly, big, and at times dirty.  At night, he would take my underwear out of my backpack along with other clothes.  In the morning I would wake up to find them all over our bungalow!  Howlers have a very scary call that can send chills up and down your spine, but they are, for the most part, peaceful creatures.  One day we found Pepe eating out of a fruit bowl.  I filmed some video and it's on this blog from last year.  Just type in Peru and the Amazon and you should be able to find that vid.  In Panama, there are two types of howler....one is brown while the other is black and only found on Coiba island.  They are commonly found in most places where there is rain forest.

This is my friend Desiree.  Our Capuchin friend bounced all over the place because he was excited to see us.  Now that normally isn't the case in the wild.  Monkeys have been known to throw their feces at people from above.  They've also been known to bite.  In Cape Verde, during my Peace Corps years, I remember watching a green monkey attack a woman with a broom on top of her roof while trying to do her laundry.  I tried to keep a straight face while teaching the very boring English language. 

This guy was fast.  The White Faced Capuchin is also commonly found in Panama wherever there is rain forest.  While I question wildlife rescue and rehab places anywhere I go(including my own country), I do see a need for them.  Here's a thought to ponder.  It has been known that poachers will kill an animal for their fur and then discover a litter of babies.  They then take these babies to rehab centers and ask for money or they'll kill them.  I don't know what the answer to this is because my mother was/is kind of a rescue person for parrots herself.  People really need to think about what they're doing when they adopt a macaw or monkey!!  My house is full of macaws and African Gray parrots that were raised from eggs donated to my mother because the owners could no longer care for them.  My concern for this particular issue is....what happens when my parents pass?  Someone on this trip gave me the idea that I need to sit down with them and have a will made up for these magnificent birds....perhaps a local zoo where they could educate kids and live a full life?   Do you see the dilemna? If you don't know, parrots usually outlive their owners.  My 5 other siblings have expressed concern over these "other members" of our family.  I got the sense that Dorothy didn't do this kind of business, but she did say that lots of people now come to visit her because they have these animals that they no longer want.  What would you do?  I'm an animal lover and when an animal is hurt or suffering, my heart bleeds.  I'll do anything for them.  Why?  Because animals are pure beautiful beings. 

Here I am with my arms full of sand fly bites and two monkeys playing.  The bottom monkey is the "mono titi" or the squirrel monkey.  He is endangered unfortuneatly unlike his companion. They both wanted attention and were wrestling me for it.

This pic with Desiree reminds me of how my cats look at me when I am on the couch relaxing.  Look at that squirrel monkey's face!!

Human to monkey ratio.

Lots of monkey love! This little guy decided to eat banana and get it all over my shirt.  No table manners at all:)

Exhausted after playing with us for awhile.

The Jungla Rescue and Rehab is 20 minutes away from downtown Boquete. There was a black monkey that was severely beaten by its former owner and is currently in the rehab area.  There was a Tamarin monkey as well.  He was a bit shy, but I did get a nice shot of him.  Dorothy had several birds including a scarlet macaw.  Of these two species, both are critically endangered in the wild habitat of Panama.  Panama is certainly not Costa Rica in that it has decimated a lot of rain forest for agriculture. Different needs from different countries.  I'll get into more of that later on. But you do need to think about this....Costa Rica's number one focus is tourism.  Panama's is agriculture.  Only now is Panama trying to attract more tourists to the country and protecting several large and unexplored areas of rain forest....which is a postive thing.  The Tamarin monkey can still be found in the very dangerous and unexplored  Darien Gap.  We couldn't get there due to the heavy rains which flood most of this area during this time of year.  The Scarlet Macaw has a large colony that is increasing on the sacred island of Coiba.  I will be able to take you there.....all I can say is that it was magical.  When you walk into primary forest, nothing in the world prepares you for the sights and sounds of unmapped jungle.  We had a great time at Jungla and I'd like to thank Dorothy for the opportunity to get an up close and personal view of many amazing jungle critters. While we were there, several possums were being relocated to farms to help with the poisonous snake issues (because possums eat snake...and pretty much everything else:).  They found the family of possums in a home and normally they would be killed, but Dorothy convinced the homeowners that they could be relocated....and they were.    I created 4 videos that I will be presenting over the course of the next several weeks. Several video shots will include our visit to this very fun center.

the Tamarin Monkey with my Canon.....I love my camera!

This monkey is very shy in the wild. He did like marshmellows:) The Tamarin monkey is on the lower end of the totem pole when it comes to dominance in the rain forest.  Other monkeys will attack and kill these little guys.  Therefore they go to bed earlier than most monkeys.  They also sound like birds chirping in the wild allowing themselves to go unseen by predators.

Jungla Wildlife Rescue & Rehab

                                                                         Dorothy

Telephone 6968-6010

info@jungladepanama.org

A donation is asked at the door

More tomorrow friends....

A Positive Look At Termites

Termite nest in the wild

Termites have a bad reputation and rightly so!  They love wood.  Any homeowner, including myself, will tell you horror stories of these nasty little buggers.  In Tucson, older neighborhoods have infestations of them which makes it necessary for regular treatment on a monthly or yearly basis. We have two main types of termites here....dryrot termites and subterranean termites.  El Presidio has suffered damage from the dryrot variety.  Several thousands of dollars have gone into injections into each and every unit.  Both varieties are treated differently.  Subterranean termites are easier to treat because you just have to spray around the building and make sure no water source is found near the sides of your home.  If you see a tunnel on the side, you just wipe it off.  However with dryrot termites, it's a little bit more tricky. If you have wood that is rotten, these little suckers will fly and find an opening in the wood and create a colony in no time.  Every year the colony will eat one inch of wood somewhere within your home.  For this treatment, you can either fumigate your entire home forcing you to leave for a couple days as your home is essentially gassed or have the less effective injections around your windows.  Dryrot termites frustrate me and for that reason, you should avoid using wood around your home and garden in our desert areas.  I only know any of this information from the hours of termite lessons I have gotten from estimates done for the treatments. But hold on!  Your post said positive?!  Yes it did.  Everything was created in nature for a reason and I thought it would be fun to look at why Mother Nature created these little buggers.

With a little water and dirt, tunnels are created on the side of a tree to get to their nests.

Termites act as the decomposers for Mother Nature eliminating organic waste material recycling both plant and animal waste.  In a rain forest, this becomes an important job as they aerate the soil, breakdown organic material, improve soil fertility, and provide a source of protein for other living creatures.  The rain forest is a fascinating place....full of humidity and competition.  Trees battle one another as they climb towards the sunlight.  Vines eventually can take over trees as they reach for the sun. In nature, there are winners and losers.  Trees that cannot reach the sun in time will rot and die.  Trees, as a natural defense to vine takeover, will on occassion let a branch arm fall off that is covered by these pesty twiny plants. Trees will also die from old age or simply fall over.  With all this dead wood on the forest floor, someone has to clean it up.  Termites act as one of nature's forces to break this rotting material down.  There are other agents that help break material down like fungus, but the termite's job is most extensive.

There's the positive look into a termite's role in nature.  Some of you may be asking, "Does this affect residents of deforested or living outside of forested areas?"  Oh it does.  Residents are constantly combating termites and if they don't, their home is quickly destroyed over several years of infestation.  Some people just leave and rebuild.  The smart ones use brick and concrete with metal beams, but let's face it, that costs more money and not everyone has the cash to pay for these materials.  On this trip, I was amazed at how much money was wasted by foreign and local investors on projects.  They'd fund a project for a year and then never do a follow up on these structures.  These structures would just sit with A LOT of termite damage.  Locals would just shrug and build something else instead of fixing up the existing structures.  That blew my mind. I will have more stories about some of the facilities we were in during our travel....some are quite funny.  In short, termites in the wild are great:)  Until tomorrow friends.....

Biosphere 2

The Sunset reveals a Secret Rain Forest hidden beyond the Glass Windows

 "This was not a failed experiment!!  If I hear one more person say that...." During an argument in the car before we arrived to the Biosphere, we discussed whether or not the Biosphere was a failed experiment.  I didn't think so but my other half Pat did. It was a rather lengthy chat, but it came to a halt when we were shown a movie and one of the scientists told us, the audience, that it was not a failed experiment.  Both of us laughed outloud enjoying our previous conversation even more.



The Visitor Center



First impressions.  I cannot help but feel saddened by this place.  It was a live thriving experiment that was threatened only several years ago.  It was the talk around town and it was pristine and beautiful.  Today, it is still magnificent, but the rust on the pipes is beginning to show. The place was shut down not so long ago as Columbia University which managed it didn't want the Biosphere anymore.  There was a debate for several months on who or if the place would remain.  Condos were proposed for the area and people felt strongly about leaving it as a research station.  In a bold move forward, the U of A took control of the managment in 2007. The CDO Ranching are partners in the ownership.  Today it has classrooms, conference rooms, and many other things for the public and researchers to use for educational purposes.

The ticket price is 20 dollars for an adult.  Since movies this past year have been so terrible, we felt why not help out the research and learn something new! But seriously...movies have been terrible this year.  Anyhow, the tour lasted for about an hour and a half plus another hour for all the extra stuff around the Biosphere(i.e. the ocean viewing room).  The place is located 1 hour north of downtown Tucson near the small city of Catalina.

Idiot me!  We've all done it.....forgotten the memory card and arrived at the place over an hour away with no store in site. You only hope that the shop has a disposable camera for sale or that they actually sell a memory card!!  Which they didn't.  So I reluctantly purchased the disposable camera and snapped shots I only hoped would turn out.....no macroshots, microshots, inverted shots....just general shots from a distance.  How did we ever live without digital cameras?  I could give up anything in this world but my camera.  It's an extension of who I am and what I am able to do.....I've always loved photography and snapping images of an adventure or lesson randomly taught in the middle nowhere.  The camera equals life. :) Lesson learned.  I'll have extra memory cards in my camera bag. I'll need a lot for Panama with all the video shots and pics!

Now for the fun.  I love the desert.  Please don't misunderstand me.  It's just that when I entered this magical world of plants; I didn't want to leave.....especially the rain forest area.  I was transported to another time and place.  We didn't spend all that much time in this particular biome, but while I was there, I didn't want to leave.  In typical rain forest fashion, the leaves blocked out the sun and covered the windows.  We were not in the high desert anymore.....we were in the Amazon.  Tropical plants are awesome and if the desert didn't have our frosty nights in winter, they would be very hardy here.  Once established, a lot of these plants don't require huge amounts of water.

The skinny.  Wear comfortable shoes.  You will see 5 biomes...the ocean, desert, rainforest, a coastal desert, marsh, and savanna.  The main research happening right now is focused on climate change.  The Biosphere is located on 3.14 acres. The campus is 34.5 acres.  It's 91 feet at its' highest point. It's open from 9 AM until 4 PM everyday except Thanksgiving and Christmas. The phone is 520-838-6200 or check out the website at B2science.org    Email is info@B2science.org  

This place is researching "green rooftops" in an effort to reduce urban islands of heat in our large cities.  These concrete islands are pushing the much needed monsoon rains away from the city.  This creates a stress on water use. Water harvesting, solar panels, as well as other projects revolving around a sustainable world are explored.

Because I am stupid and left my memory card in the computer, I was not able to get excellent pics inside the place.  I was so angry...and even now, while typing, I am having an issue with the terrible disposable  camera!!!  The Venezuelan Rain Forest did not come out because of all the humidity.....these pics below are terrible because they are dark and misty. It was really a cool biome to enter. Well at least you get the idea that a rain forest in all her glory is dark.....

The Biosphere is almost completely blocked out here in this huge area filled with over 90 different species modeled after a Venezuelan Rain Forest.

Notice how the plants will grab any sunlight they can get.  Here we see pothos dropping down from an opening in the rain forest canopy.

Why the name Biosphere 2? Because Biosphere 1 is our planet Earth.  Until next time, Happy Adventures!!!  And don't forget your memory cards!!:)