IN SPITE OF THE ONE-STAR ACCOMMODATIONS AND SCARY DREAMS, NO one was robbed, electrocuted, or carried away to Bedbugland during the night, and soon the Costa Rican sun poked above the tree line and began drying the puddles in the dirt roads outside. It was time to meet the woman who would be our hostess for the first thirty days of our journey.
As promised, we were met promptly at 8:00 A.M. by Carol Crews, the female half of the husband–wife team that founded and ran the Osa Wildlife Sanctuary. Carol was sixty-two and had lived on the Osa for fifteen years. She used to be a lumber trader in another life and an army brat before that. She wore her hair short, talked loudly and forcefully, and speed-walked through the streets of Puerto Jiménez, shouting “¡Buenos días!” to everyone as if she were the mayor. Even I had to occasionally trot just to keep up with her. Though she was educated as a business major, we all came to know Carol as a top-notch biologist who ran the wildlife sanctuary like an animated and kindly drill sergeant. Most important, in the monkey troop, she was the alpha—the leader—so, for protection, she was the one I needed on my side.
After gathering a few supplies, we headed for the dock, piled aboard a rented boat, and motored out across the Golfo Dulce, the Sweet Gulf. Over the whine of our small boat’s engine, Carol screamed the following instructions at us:
“Okay, maaawn-kay rule number one!” she shouted. (As her own term of endearment, she always pronounced the word “monkey” maaawn-kay, accenting both syllables the way a pirate might.) “Never hold a maaawn-kay! Let them hold you! In the wild, nothing holds a maaawn-kay unless it’s going to eat it!”
It was like receiving a briefing before going to war. Carol had our undivided attention.
“Maaawn-kay rule number two!” she continued. “If a maaawn-kay wants something of yours, give it to her! If she wants to climb on you, let her! Got it?”
Got it. Be a good sharer. Be a jungle gym.
“Maaawn-kay rule number three: Do not touch or reach for a person holding a maaawn-kay! Maaawn-kays get jealous and will bite the person they are sitting on.”
This had recently happened with a young couple, Carol told us later. The guy had a monkey in his arms, his girlfriend stepped over to greet them both, and the monkey bit the poor guy on the chest as if hungry for some heart. I made Traca vow she would not be overly affectionate with me in public, and with matching sarcasm, she said she’d do her best.
“Maaawn-kay rule number four: If a maaawn-kay gets into your room or another maaawn-kay-free zone, blow a whistle or call for help! Do not attempt to pull them or stop them in any way!”
No problem, I thought. No pulling or stopping. If Carol was the alpha, then I would be the omega male: docile, compliant, about as threatening as a Costa Rican dishrag.
As we approached the shore, we saw towering palms curved gracefully along a black sand beach, mountain cliffs rising dense and verdant in all directions, and not a man-made structure in sight. When we stepped onto land, our eyes were wide with wonder. “Welcome to Jurassic Park,” Logan said.
The property was incredible. It went deep into the jungle with a hundred yards or more of beach frontage. On the far right were the tour grounds, where visitors came each day to view a menagerie of animals that could never be released. On the far left, where we were headed, were the living quarters for the Crewses and for volunteers. There were no cars at the sanctuary, no roads in or out. No electricity if the generator was off. No hot water at any time. Drinking water came from a flowing stream. Showers were outside in the jungle. Windows had no glass, only bars to keep the maaawn-kays out—which was a choice the Crewses had made early on.
If you decide to take in orphaned or injured baby monkeys, you have to make a call right from the start: to cage or not to cage. If you choose the cage (and most everybody does), your job will be infinitely easier, but you will never be able to release your monkeys into the wild. Monkeys need a free-swinging, social, foraging, boundless world to grow up in, and cages are the very antithesis of monkey life. Knowing this, Carol and Earl made a bold choice, opting to raise their little brood without restraints. It was a lot of work, like raising abnormally fast and strong (and hairy) human infants. But the Crewses are committed to returning animals to the wild whenever possible, and so the first human/spider monkey troop was born.
On the day we arrived, the Crewses had three cage-free orphan spider monkeys in their care: Poppy, a large, sexually mature female who was listless and depressed after miscarrying her first baby; Sweetie, a scrawny volatile adolescent female who was on steroids for an unidentified skin condition; and Winkie, a playful younger female with a healthy thick coat and a mischievous nature.
As we walked up from the beach, Carol told us the monkeys were with Earl on the other side of the property, curious about the latest tour visitors. “So you all get a free pass,” she said as she led us past an anteater cage … past something howling in the trees … and into a structure she called the Human Kitchen. When we were all safely inside, she latched the gate behind her, locking us in.
Like all buildings for humans at the sanctuary, the kitchen was really a cage, with heavy mesh bars on the large window openings. It functioned as dining area, mess hall, and general command center for sanctuary operations. It was also the place about which the spider monkeys were the most territorial, and before long, all three of these amazing primates showed up, climbed up on the bars, and looked in.
At first glance I thought they were boys. They each had a curious pink appendage, not unlike a penis, that science poetically calls a pendulous clitoris. This limp little pinkie of flesh proved to be the source of much monkey attention as they pulled it and rubbed it throughout the day—and it reminded Carol of an additional maaawn-kay rule that Logan and I needed to know. “Never shower naked outdoors with a maaawn-kay around,” she warned. Apparently, they would be infinitely curious about any man’s “pendulous clitoris” and beyond eager to inspect it thoroughly.
“Okay. Time to meet the maaawn-kays!” Carol called as she opened the Human Kitchen door. And out we went.
As I’ve mentioned, I was scared to death. Even with my family around me like a human shield. Even though I weighed more than ten times as much as my potential attackers. We headed back toward the ocean, a place the monkeys were not crazy about. With 1 percent body weight in fat, spider monkeys sink like hairy stones and avoid the water at all costs; I was instructed to dive in fast if things went south. But I never got close to the Gulf. Within the first five steps, it was Sweetie—the most possessive of the troop—who jumped off the kitchen bars, landed lightly on her hind legs, parted Logan and Jackson with a wave of her four-fingered hands, and climbed, without teeth or force or any effort at all, up my body and onto my head. Her feet were on my shoulders. Her hands were resting on my forehead.
As you might guess, sitting on someone’s head is a form of dominance. It basically says: Look what I can do. I’m bigger than you. My tail is wrapped around your throat and my pendulous clitoris is pressed to the back of your neck. How do you like that, Tough Guy?
I certainly got the message.
“Now find a place to sit,” Carol instructed. “Let’s see what happens.”
So I sat. A few moments later, Sweetie climbed down to my lap and extended her leg to me. Above her ankle, she had a disgusting raw patch of oozing skin, and she pulled my hands toward the wound. Rub it, she seemed to say. So I did … around it, anyway. We sat this way for a while, me the subservient little leg rubber, Sweetie the all-powerful fifteen-pound Queen of the Jungle. As far as first dates go, I thought it went pretty well.
When this meet and greet ended without injury, we all set out across the gorgeous property to see where the tours were given, and Sweetie hitched a ride with me. I walked up jungle trails, down steep slopes, over plank bridges, all of it with a monkey on my head. Spider monkeys have a body temperature that runs 104 degrees, so I was drenched with sweat by the time I got to the tour grounds. But I got there. We both did.
If you’ll excuse the prison terminology, I believe Sweetie made me her bitch that day. I wanted to think that we were becoming friends, but either way, so far, so good.
Or, as Carol enthusiastically declared back in the Human Kitchen at the end of that first day: “No blood so far. Were off to a great start!”