a jumbled update

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So I know i haven't updated in a while. This is mostly because nothing significant has changed and the last thing I seem to want to do at the end of the day is recount how boring and miserable my day just was. So I will try for a few points:

I'm leaving this coming friday afternoon (i hope) to meet up with mom and susan and then travel around a bit before heading home on the 14th. I'm really just anxious to get home, but hopefully the snorkeling and enjoying the sun will be enough to keep me occupied.

I FINALLY had a chance to do some observations on the howler monkeys in our pre-release (cages in the jungle). We have 3 howlers: an adult male: Itch, a juvenile female: Toots, and an adult female: Sheba. I was supposed to be watching in particular the interaction between sheba and Itch in relation to Boden, a single wild male howler who proweled the area. The recent news is that Sheba escaped from her cage so gave herself an early release. We spent some time watching her in the jungle. And now we've had several sightings of her and Boden together in the area - a good sign because Boden knows where food and water is. So we're quite happy about that outcome.

Today I had an unpleasant encounter with army ants. They move in enourmous packs. And they bite... HARD. and they were traveling right through the parrot, bunny, and toucan's enclousures. The birds we were not worried about because they stayed up high and they ants were climbing, but the bunnies cage was infested and there was a very real danger of the ants eating the bunny, so all day i had to stand guard making sure they did not change their path to enter into the log the bunny was in. I just went down a few minutes ago to check on everything and they seem to be moving out finally and i saw the bunny out for the first time (he stays in a log all day). I think it being dusk must have been enough for him to come out.

Robin (the boss) is away in the states and won't be back until the day i leave. So that is a little more relaxing. Marike and I were moved into a cabin, because they needed our room for another worker. The perks are that there's more room and i have a comfortable pillow and we have HOT WATER. i must say it is nice to not have to deal with a cold shower daily. The downside is that I can't pick up the internet connection from there, so there's less time to amuse myself online.

The parrot and I have become close friends. Even cleaning in there is difficult now because she insists on being groomed. So i compromise and stand under a perch so she can groom my head as I hose. But that definately helps pass some of the time because i can go in there and cuddle with her for a big part of the day.

I've seen two scorpions in the last 2 days. Today i asked Leo to kill the one i found and he simply squashed the tip of it's tail, picked it up (still alive) flopped it onto it's back and pulled out it's poison sac. he played with it for a bit then let it go. I don't think i trust myself enough to play with a scorpion ever.

I think that's all I have for now.

~Michela

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