Right Turn Clyde!

Any fans of the 70's Clint Eastwood classic called "Any Which Way But Loose" will know why we named this guy Clyde. It's a long simian story that lead us to the moment when we met Clyde. As you read in our previous blog entry, we were awoken by the most evil, guttural howls and shrieks from the rainforest canopy that you can imagine on our first day in the rainforest house. It was the sounds of horror movies. We knew the howler monkeys were there and were actually very excited to see them. Rebecca and I had also heard them before in Belize, so we kinda knew what to expect, but what we didn't know was that these monkeys would wake us up each morning starting around 4:45am with essentially what amounts to a karaoke battle of the most horrible death metal music you've ever heard. :-) They are very territorial and make sure that all the other monkey troupes know which group of trees they are currently occupying, so the verbal battle ensues each morning at dawn. This is the first time in our lives that none of us minded being rudely awakened at 4:45 in the morning. We would wrap a blanket around ourselves and grab a front row seat on our back porch for the show. On the first morning we only heard them, but couldn't see them. Later that day, Kendall found the troupe that had camped out near our house and we began to get distant glimpses of them in the 150 foot tall tree canopies above our home. Early on day two, I was enjoying my morning tea around our pool and noticed the monkeys quietly moving through the trees near the pool. Before long, the entire family was awake and standing around the pool just watching the amazing family story unfold before our eyes. There were at least 6 adult howler monkeys and two babies that we noticed. The babies would ride on the backs of their mamas or even what appeared to be grandmas in the troupe. There was a dominant male and maybe one or two younger males that would scout out new trees to move to and jump from high limb to lower branch like flying squirrels. It was incredible to watch as they used all four limbs and their tails to grab hold of branches as they fearlessly leapt from perch to perch.

For two days in our rainforest house, this family of howlers stayed in the trees nearby us. We were able to observe them in the quiet hours of the early morning or in the evening, when they were just chilling in the trees. Obviously we took advantage of these many photo opportunities and started figuring out the hierarchy of the family. On our last day in the rainforest house, we discovered a lone male howler just 15 feet above our pool cabana as we were outside BBQ'ing. He's the one we named Clyde. We quickly noticed that the troupe of 6-8 monkeys had moved on, and despite the loud noises of that early morning, this one male seemed isolated and alone. It was our assumption that he had challenged the dominant male of the troupe and lost, therefore found himself alone. As you can see in the top photo on this blog, poor Clyde looked very dejected the whole time we watched him. We tried to raise his spirits and coax him closer with bananas, but he would have none of it. Eventually he climbed off into the forest and we never saw him again.

One of the things that amazed all of us is how these amazingly cute, seemingly friendly and family-oriented animals that we were so able to assign personalities and even names to could at the same time make such demonic sounds when they talk to each other. I joked one morning with the kids that if we talked to each other the same way howlers address each other we'd be screaming "GOOOOOOOD MOOOOOOOOORNING!!!!" to each other every day. LOL.

When it was all said and done, our first three days in the rainforest fulfilled bucket list items for most of our family. The exotic creatures we saw and experienced first hand were nothing short of life changing. Anybody can go to a zoo or animal refuge to see exotic wildlife up close. That is not our style. First of all, we hate zoos and the entire concept of capturing and caging animals for humans to pay to see them. Not only that, we also believe passionately in experiencing this world as God created it...in the wild, without cages or admission tickets. We treasure experiences that we can make for ourselves, off the beaten path, when things happen naturally rather than on a human-forced schedule. So even with the few grodey critters we had to share our rainforest house with (more on that in a future blog), we wouldn't have had it any other way and this home in the rainforest met and exceeded all of our hopes and dreams. Take a look at our Photo page for many more pics we took of this beautiful location and the fauna and flora we experienced there.