My beloved Assamese by Piya Saisawatdikul (good non fiction books to read .TXT) 📕

7

Chapter 3

The lord of cheek pouch

The darkness has stepped away by the time I got to the entrance of the tarmacked road but the dimness still was tardy waiting for an official time to move out. This morning I had to walk for 40 minutes to get to the sleep tree of TliiSS which is a medium distance for us.

When I reached to the sleep tree, the time was 5:50 am and our friends had begun moving already up the canopy. All 54 monkeys in the troop slept on the same tree and most of the sleep trees are a fig tree nearby a creek. I prepared the radio, GPS, collecting sheets and binocular while looking up to see some monkeys jumping out of the sleep tree above my head.

“Which way are you going today, guys?” I asked them and then I yawned for the third time…)))

Last night, it was almost 11 o’clock when I went to bed…

…the soap series was doughtily – No it wasn’t!

…Absorbed with a detective novel of Agatha Christie? – No, either!!

The only reason that could make me stay up late a bit even if I had to work the morning shift was…

That’s right... it was not difficult to guess…you should know it!

On the phone with that girl, about where to go, what to eat in the next holidays, many things and options were presented but in the end we couldn’t make any decision, not satisfied, not understood, so in conclusion it was useless talking, and we were not finished after 2 hours. We needed to debate again the next day and I needed to take my tired body to sleep.

Turning to compare with the monkey, just talking a few words, no no …it’s just a few tones they made, they understood each other.

…where we are going or feeding today?...

…so jealous of them!

But I didn’t mean to have a monkey as a girlfriend, I would still love to have “that girl” as my sweetheart the same and forever even if when we talked, she didn’t seem to listen to me, she liked to talk all the time (but smiling while talking) another good reason for me was I liked her voice when she was talking.

I was glad that the monkey isn’t talkative as her, because the forest would badly…???..., just only all the birds chatting (Bul bul, Hornbill) or the cicada voices, they already entertain each day a lot (that doesn’t include the chorus of the white handed gibbon family which never get tired of singing)

I thought of my girl’s face and all contexts above while walking after the troop from the sleep tree to the West.

I hadn’t started to work because there was not enough light, all I could see were just black shadows moving in the canopy and I didn’t know who was who.

This time (in August), many days after waking up, the monkeys would run toward the Tha kian(Hopea ferrea) area and stay up in their canopy for a very long time, to wipe off the hunger that had jammed since the night before.

When the light pink flowers of Tha baeng (Lagerstroemia calyculata) began falling down from the top, all over the place (in the dipterocarp forest area) wound be painted with the brightness from glowing yellow of Tha kian flower clusters that started blossoming.

The beautiful flower would belong to a group of visiting honey bee,

But, I am sorry, in this case it wasn’t.

It was with the caterpillar sir.

The one on top of the canopy that brought the monkey troop there since the early morning, sitting and selecting each caterpillar elaborately, which took a very long time to fill the gap in their belly, because each caterpillar was very small or I should say they were very tiny.

And that tiny factor was one good point to be there because each individual would sit- stay- still- wouldn’t move a lot. That meant it was easy to collect data. But there were also many bad things too, such as the pain in my neck from looking up the tree with its 25-30 m height, some dust caterpillar poops scattered down on my face, some dew fell down when someone moved and one last thing the caterpillar that fell down they came to walk on your body – it was very spooky!

And if I talked about the caterpillar on the Tha kian tree without mentioning the caterpillar on the canopy of the Koh rieb (Quecus glabricupula),

It would be like making papaya salad without fermented fish.

The caterpillar of the Tha kian was different in size from the one of the Koh rieb. It was much smaller and one more distinguishing thing was the one from Koh rieb would parachute themselves from the canopy with a clear web which was more sticky and strong than in the one from the Tha kian. If they got to the ground they’d climbed up and jumped down again and again.

From their funny behavior like that, it made the entire area, under crown shadow of the tree, covered by their web and it looked like a deserted forest which no one came to visit for very long and if you had a chance to walk through that haunted place, it could transform you into an mobile ancient thing or something like that.

Oh, how do you feel? If the web…

Stuck on face and eyebrows, held on neck and hair, grasped the backpack and every part of the body was filled with sticky web, it’s hard to explain that feeling but it should be the same as when one big bug flew through a spider web.

All of that feeling didn’t include the tiny caterpillar walking on your skin. That was the spookiest thing, no mention the annoyance of it.

In general, when the monkeys found a good taste fruit tree they would make some voices as a hundred birds chatting and then some fighting noise would follow but not the serious ones it was like they had selfishness hiding in their generosity and friendship in the troop.

But reaching the caterpillars which were a lot, I’d never heard any noise besides the sound of tiny poops falling to the dry brown leaves on the ground.

What do the monkeys normally eat in the forest?

They eat everything from the highest canopy to the lowest basin under the creek.

Fruits for sure! Some mature and young leaves which the mostly from climber, beautiful and fragrant flowers are also a delicious meal, even small animals, bird eggs and insects they never refuse to fill their belly with.

And if we talk about eating, it make think about a long faced monkey with deep eyes into the skull, pale brown fur and a short tail with hair sticks out.

The lord of cheek pouch- Spud!

Spud was an old monkey that had disappeared from the troop a few months ago. He got this nickname because his cheek pouch was usually full, it was like when the monkey stopped to eat in one tree and left, Spud’s cheek pouch would be filled every time.

The cheek pouch is used to keep food while travelling and to avoid food competition. The monkeys hurry to handle the fruit and leave rapidly from the risky area and then sit down eating from cheek pouch somewhere else.

At first when Spud had disappeared I thought he was just gone for some time, like last year he had gone, staying and travelling alone for 10 days and eventually came back to the group.

I had noticed that before these two situations happened, Spud stayed in the last group of the troop, travelled by himself, had less social activities with other monkey as often and the most important thing he usually fought with the young males every time they had seen each other.

Before that time, when the old alpha male –Wendaa was still alive, Spud had one of the highest powerful positions in the troop, he walked proudly in the middle of all monkeys. But after the revolution in hierarchy, the old monkeys kingdom had collapsed and the young ones came in.

The old monkeys who had a lot of experience began to disappear from the troop one by one and had not come back to the troop again.

One day it was Spud!

I had been waiting for him to come back day by day until my hope ran dry and evaporated with the summer breeze .All pregnant female had given birth already and the sprinkling rain came. But there’s no sign of home coming.

It was still clear in my mind, for the motion of the white belly monkey with panda’s eyes, long pink nipples, that sat using shoulder tamp the sour and sweet Kam lung Sua Klong (Ziziphus attopoensis) fruit or the super sour Ma Had (Artocarpus lacucha) fruit out from his cheek pouch to eat during resting. Or out of his sitting position he opened his leg 160 degrees showing his preserved area with no care to anybody and handled Kratoom Bok (Antocephalus chinensis) intently or the procedure of feeding Dong Dam(Alphonsea spec.) or the builder of Mafai (Baccaurea ramiflora)shell mountain or Ma Tha kee Non (Garcinia thorelli)shell scattered under the tree.

Every motion was still clear in my memory.

Especially the motion of his cheek pouch hanging from being full of Sa Ba Ling seeds, with a suspect amount. And the other ones, when his cheek pouch was full of snails from a creek, I could see the shape of snails end stick out clearly.

Spud hadn’t just been the Lord of cheek pouch; he’d been in this position for a long time before since he was the Brave Spud until the time he became the Lonely Spud.

Spud was been the child lover especially with the male infant, whenever he’s seen the infant, he would take the immature and hug, sniff, genital lick and squeeze and then he would carry it to make Sandwich with other old guys such as Jownai, Wendaa or Punk.

To make a sandwich is a friendly behavior when two big monkeys will embrace face to face and have an infant in between their bellies, the big male will pull, squeeze the small boy, take a penis to suck and touch it and it might have some screams or be silent during the sandwich, just only teeth chatting. The infant is not scare of this activity, they love to join it.

In the last mating season the child lover still stuck in Spud’s brain because that year he spent a lot of time with a young adult female who never had given birth before, his efforts were sometimes wasted, because every girls ran very fast while Spud was very slow, so some times the younger males came and seized a chance of mating season before him.

When the real rainy season came the fruit had changed from green to yellow on the Dong Dam tree. Under the tree were lots of fruits falling cuased by monkeys eat and other reasons. But none of them were not wasted, cause wild pigs would come to eat them happily and then they would pay back some present to the tree- even if that present would give smell before it became a real present down to earth as fertilizer. With thousands of foot print around the area, this wet season I also saw many of their nests too.

Dong Dam fruits fully spread out both on tree and on ground.

Some plants could disperse by themselves, but some need helpers as wild animals.

I thought the great seed dispersal helper should have Spud in the list for sure.

Looking back on the Tha Kian canopy, the deliciousness still hypnotized all the monkeys to stay up there, thanks to their caterpillars, that helped me to finish my 2 focals even if I could feel pain in my neck.

And the situation was better for now, at 8:16, some