Life and Death in Santa Rosa

I realize that once again it has been a very long time since my last blog post. February came and went so quickly and now March is already a third of the way over. It is incredible how the movement of time here fluctuates. Some moments drag out into what feels like an eternity, while days and weeks seem to pass in the blink of an eye. January was a difficult month. For one, it was hard to come in for a landing after such an extended vacation. It was hard to face the notion that time here was only half finished and many changes still lay ahead. We were so hopeful to move into our new digs at the beginning of January, but of course that didn't happen. Here we are on March 7th and things still look a little grim. This is especially frightening because a National Geographic film crew is coming back to the park on the 10th. We absolutely must be out of the Albergue before then because there is literally no other place to put us or the crew. It stretches my patience thinner than it has ever had to be.

Speaking of patience, as I write this I am sitting in my favorite hotel room in Nicaragua. It is a beautiful morning and from my balcony I can look out over the cove that opens up into the Pacific ocean. While on a normal day I might be quiet and contemplative, taking in the view, at this particular moment I am feeling very impatient and frustrated. The drawback to the room on the upper level here is that it shares a bathroom with another bedroom that is not connected. This bedroom is full of 5-6 little old Nicaraguan ladies, each of whom apparently needs to take a 20min shower this morning. All I want to do is brush my teeth, but I can tell from eavesdropping on their conversations that they have used up all the water and broken the toilet. They are worse than a group of college boys, laughing and slamming doors at 6am. I was finally able to get into the bathroom and brush my teeth and wash my face with water from my nalgene. While inside, they tried to open the door 4 times!! When I got out and sat on my bed they looked creepily over the wall that separates the balconies, into my room to see if I was still there. I know I'm not the only person on this planet or in this hotel room, so why do you think you are? I'm having another Frank Grimes moment....

Now on to the title of this post. Life in Santa Rosa has changed dramatically. There are two more research teams and an endless flow of students, both foreign and Costa Rican, that come through the park doing field schools and other projects. The dry season is in full swing. It is very hot, but walking through the forest it feels like fall because of the crunch of leaves beneath your feet. You may not realize, but it actually a drop in available water, not temperature, that causes deciduous trees to lose their leaves. Life is good and research has really improved due to dry season changes in monkey behavior. January was a sad month though for two main reasons. First, we found a dead infant capuchin on one of our trails. It's location in the park indicated it wasn't from one of my study groups (this was later confirmed, obviously, because I would have noticed a missing monkey). It wasn't badly decomposed, but it's organs were completely consumed and I was unable to even sex it. It didn't appear that there were any wounds that would indicate an infanticide, but then again, taphonomic processes could have hidden these marks. My half-assed necropsy with the equivalent of toenail clippers and a bandanna over my face didn't reveal much. I'll worn you, these pictures might be kind of upsetting.

The infant probably died of natural causes, but it is also entirely possible that it was bitten and killed by an adult male. After the examination, we quadruple bagged the monkey carcass and it is now sitting at the bottom of our deep freezer where we keep the poop and urine samples alongside extra loaves of bread and frozen meat.

I do have more to say on the issue of death in Santa Rosa, but the time has come for me to gather my things and cross the border to get back there. I will have another post up this week regarding other monkey news.