Never think to yourself that things can't get any worse when there are monkeys over head!

It’s the rainy season right now in Santa Rosa which means rain on pretty much a daily bases. It doesn’t usually rain non-stop this time of year, instead we will see rain for only a few hours each day. There was a good stint at the start of the rainy season however, where it poured for about a week straight. Regardless of the rain, we are still out with the monkeys and there was one particular morning where it was especially bad.

I hiked out at my usually time, leaving the dorms at 4 in the morning, to wake up the monkeys. Usually Mackenzie meets up with me around 7 but because it was raining so hard, there was no reason for her to hike out as it would be impossible for us to collect data. So instead of the usual collecting poo and pee samples, my only job was to keep the monkeys in my vision until the rain let up enough for us to begin data collection. This seems like a particularly easy job, you’d think that the monkeys would be inclined to take shelter when the sky opens up and decides to dump buckets of cold hard hell on your heads, but noooooooooooo, instead the little effers like to run frantically in opposite directions, making it virtually impossible to keep track of the group.

Now keep in mind that Capuchins usually forage as a united group. This means that for the most part, they stay within the same 150m radius of each other. So why they decide to split off and run in complete opposite directions when it rains, is completely beyond me.

Anyway, as I was saying before, this was a particularly bad morning and after about 4 hours of chasing monkeys around in the pissing rain, I was soaked through, cold and miserable and I thought to myself “things can’t possible get any worse!” At that exact moment, I looked up and a monkey shat in my face.

Needless to say, the moral of the story is never, EVER, think to yourself that things can’t get any worse when there are monkeys overhead!!!