A short, incomplete list of moments in my life involving the Philippine Long-Tailed Macaque
When I was 8 or 9, my family and some friends went to an island where one of my mom’s friends had a house. They had a pet monkey tethered to a long post on top of some coconut trees. I decided to feed the monkey by throwing food up at it. It wasn’t able to catch one of the morsels, so I went right below where the monkey was to pick it up and throw it back, thinking it wouldn’t be able to reach me.
Moments later monkey claws dug into my face. I was bawling my eyes out and, in my infinite wisdom, decided to try to wash the blood off of the deep wound by running into the salt water.In middle school, the girls’ soccer team was sitting on the side of a hill listening to our coach explain things. A bunch of monkeys ran out to the middle of the field, right where we were facing, and begin an impromptu demonstration of simian reproduction. Our coach had to throw rocks at them to get them to run away.
In my first job, volunteering at the marine park, which also had a little zoo on the side, the people in charge were running out of things for me to do. They decided to sit me in front of the monkey cage and make notes on what the monkeys were doing on every minute mark, for an hour. Twenty minutes later the alpha monkey was on the spot in the cage closest to me, and started to masturbate.
The most difficult part of it for me was deciding how to note this in my log.
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