Capuchin December 25
Next slide please.
Our previous subject concerned Shouters and Capuchin friars. Now we look at Howlers and Capuchin monkeys, friends to pirates and organ grinders alike. The Trinidad White-Fronted Capuchin is listed as endangered, according to Gupte Lutchmedial, President of the Trinidad Zoological Society. This is certainly not due to raptor or margay cat predation. Breathtaking habitat loss has pushed most of the island’s monkeys into the northern range, particularly the peninsula here on the west end. Human impact is even more viscerally demonstrated by the ongoing illicit trade. Every boy grows up wanting a monkey, and the vain rich ones end up buying them as grownups.
Capuchins may appear pensive and curious as they mature in captivity, but their intelligence breeds only depression, rage, and dementia. The Zoo on Queen’s Park Savannah has 14 males and only 3 females, hardly a remedy for frustration in a male-dominated polygamist society. Those captured in the wild, and sold abroad, carry a host of problems to future pet-owners, including yellow fever, rabies, and aggression, especially during the mating season. Gupte notes, “When they are ready to breed, they are known to attack female owners.“ It is cute to imagine Capuchins grasping grapes and peeling bananas, but these primates are omnivores—they eat fingers, too. “Don’t buy Capuchin Monkeys,“ he warns.
Oli and I hit the morning trail out of Tucker Valley in search of monkeys. Or something else. Estamos Vacilando, roaming with purpose but no particular destination, not knowing what we are looking for but confident it may be around the next bend. Climbing out of the Bamboo Cathedral toward the old US Navy installation, 400 feet above the west Caribbean coast, I strain to hear the bellowing calls of Red Howlers. Given their decibel range, the silence beneath the jungle canopy indicates that the nearest troop is miles away.
Then branches above us shimmy and shake, on both sides of the trail. I see no signs of Chachalaca, the only bird with such mass. No arboreal mammals could be so large as to rustle so many leaves. These are monkeys. One appears and immediately leaps across an abyss, tenuously grabbing a neighboring branch at the last moment. Light brown, with a pale expressive face, and a dark crown like the tight hat of Capuchin friar, this species is the “menkey that broke ze law“ in the Pink Panther. Another two take to traveling, and soon a cacophony of frenzied chatter breaks out, highly unpriestly, more like alley cats fighting.
Oli and I reach the old satellite station and climb three flights of solid concrete steps to nowhere. The gutted hangar beside the staircase sags precariously, but, once upon a time, crucial telemetry data passed these stairs to Mission Control. Or maybe not. The scattered old beer bottle glass and grenade firing pins intimate that the likelier mission was a sailor party, with fireworks and a marvelous Caribbean view. And maybe an angry pet monkey.