Week 3

Now that my third week with the monkeys has been completed, I feel well prepared to be released into the forest on my own for a full week following monkeys. This next week I will be conducting follows individually, rather than being accompanied by my supervisor/monkey-watching-instructor, Kalama. The past week in monkey-land has been exciting. I could ramble on for several minutes explaining the silly monkey drama and telling you about all the cute things I saw, but the most memorable experience of the week took place inside the office. One of my secret fears is that of snakes. I'm fine with bugs and all that jazz, but snakes really aren't my thing. This past Friday we were sitting in the office during a rain storm, and waiting for the electricity to come back on so that we could enter data into an Excel file on the computer. (Apparently when it rains the power isn't as reliable...) We are just sitting around chatting/reading when Lia says, with not much emotion, "There's a snake in the office."Just a few feet away from us there was a venomous burrowing viper snake slithering across the floor. I made my escape as quickly as possible into the rainy outdoors, and waited as the "snake dudes" (who work in the snake park near us) to arrive and remove the snake. That was the extent of the excitement, but I remained on guard for the rest of the day in the office, jumping at anything that moved on the floor, including a plastic wrapper that blew across the floor.