Animals (and people)

Random things happen to me sometimes. This week a monkey stole my bikini bottom. I was very upset. It was a really nice bikini, and the only bikini I brought. I had to buy another one, and I think I bought the only wearable bikini in Diani, as they all seem to be super 80s style here, ultra high-cut. But anyway, these cheeky sykes monkeys have been seen stealing food and grabbing clothes before and I’m very mad at them. I’ve been trying to blow my whistle at them but they always run off before I can get to it.

Nala the cat has also been very cheeky lately, biting hard and trying to eat my toes when I sleep. She uses her legs to get a better grip and really try to pull chunks off. When she’s not doing that, she still thinks she’s a kitten and tries to suckle on elbows.

We also have a baby vervet on quarantine at the moment called Merlin who will be introduced to the rest of the group in a bit. It’s just so cute to see this super tiny but very human-like little hands hold on to your fingers as if they were tree trunks. Then there are the colobus babies -- on a colobus check this week there were 4 infants! They are even cuter than Merlin. Colobus babies are very elusive, especially the white ones, they are all white until about 3 months old, then they turn black. I saw white babies. They were fantastically cute.

Last week we had an injured colobus call and it was my first time going on a call where the monkey was still alive. She had been electrocuted and was down for a while, but seemed well enough that we didn't have to bring her back. Since I arrived there have been a few electrocutions and also dog attack deaths, so it was good to see at least one actually survive.

Orit unfortunately left the Trust this morning, but will spend a few days in Mombasa, which means we’ll go out in Mombasa one of these nights. Right now I am about to start on my colobridges assessment project and trying to figure out the logistics of it. There seems to be, as was the case with the education project, lots and lots of information and material on the computer that is just sitting there unsorted and unused. As I started looking through the files today I realized that a lot of the work I was going to do had already been done and no one seemed to know about it. So that's the job I'm giving myself today, and thank goodness the office is air conditioned.