My camera works = A day in the life.

First of all, thank you Mom for making my camera work again, I don't really understand how you're so efficient but I appreciate it!

Second, I'm figuring out how to format this blog. By that I mean I notice that it is not formatted very well, and I wish I knew how to better it.

(Above) This is the dock where we meet every morning at 6:50, and the boat ride to the island. That's Grace on the right and Doreen in the back.

(Above) Lunch cage. Though its a cage, its comfy. It keeps our food safe from monkeys.

(Below) View from the lunch cage, the lower coral where monkeys get chow, and a water hole, so there's always something entertainin' to look at.

(Above) What we do in the lunch cage. Its true, naps are scrumptious, even on the single wooden bench that's provided

. The monkeys sit around until they get fed, usually between 7:30 and 8:30. On the left is 83L, a dude from which I collect fecal samples. He is alone getting his monkey chow because he just so pompous that he'll scare anyone else away, while on the right the monkeys are nice enough to share elbow room.

This guy I hate. He is 50B and he just doesn't prove very good samples. He has some idiosyncracies, such as here, where he is licking a tree. He also licks bricks, rocks, and metal. It may be a taste thing, it may be a minteral/nutrient thing, I just call him a loser because its fun to have someone to make fun of, especially when they don't "mind."

This is Paco's boat, one of those crazy old men I mentioned a few blogs ago. I'll get a better picture eventually, but every few days he takes groups around the island to see monkeys and snorkel, while playing loud music. I enjoy it. This female is threatening me, and she has a rediculous, very swollen forhead. The females get this when they are pregnant, with increasing swellings on their faces until they give birth. I hear that her's is going to get a lot worse than this because she still has at least a month to go. Damn.

Today, Friday, when we returned from the island to mass beach party on OUR beach. The picture is from the middle of the dock and right there on the left where the red car is located is where my street ends, and I usually walk my dog, but on a desolate beach. It's a holiday, I'm not sure what its called, but it is in honor of the Puerto Rican Constitution. This is what beach parties look like, you drive your car onto the beach, set up some chairs, then make out with your honey in the water, and maybe ride a wave runner. Puerto Rico IS a beach party.

Sam's Terribly-Awesome or Awesomley-Terrible Last Day

A few rediculous things happened this past Wednesday, I'm pretty sure in honor of it being Sam Yale Kid's last day. First, the boat stopped working pretty much exactly between the dock and the island. Orlando was driving, my favorite worker man, and he pulled out his cel phone which didn't get very good reception. The 8 of us or so on the boat started making bad jokes about swimming and entertaining ourselves for the hours we may be on the small speed boat together. After about 5 minutes, Orlando pulled the engine chord and it started up, then died. This repeated for another 5 minutes. The jokes got worse. But then, eventually, after about 15 minutes, the boad started and we made it safe.
Secondly, a few monkeys got into the lunch cage. The lunch cage door must always be closed, because the monkeys do know that there's goo food happening inside. I'm not sure how because I was outside at the time, but a few monkeys got in and stole some of Sams grapes from the table. There was a lot of yelling and screaming and loud slamming, eventually scaring away the monkeys. Everyone was fine, but an intense few moments.
Lastly, as Sam and Meg were leaving the lunch cage after a relaxing lunch, the adult male monkeys decided to threaten the hell outta Meg and Sam. As they slid open the door to leave, a female nearby got scared, grabbing her infant to her belly and tried to jump up onto the fence, but missed because of the baby on her belly, making a very loud noise. The female was a high ranking female so all the males in the area RAN to come threaten sam, and soon there were about 7 adult males, grunting loudly, and showing their shart teeth through the "O" face. Meg ran away, and Sam ran back inside the cage. They continued to threaten, until I picked up some rocks and started throwing them towards the monkeys so that they would back off. They eventually started to quiet down. It was intense, though. Its very scary when that many infectious animals with large teeth are threatening you, and coming closer and closer, even when inside a fenced off cage!
The boad has never malfunctioned, nor that have I ever seen that many adult males threaten so intensly, but a few weeks ago a few monkeys did get inside the lunch cage and poo all over the place, but luckily did not distrub anyone's lunches.
You've got to be prepared for anything on that island. wow.

Other Creatures

Besides monkeys and dogs I also have daily interactions with: lizards, iguanas, crabs, mosquitos, no-see-'ums, chickens, cats, birds, frogs, I'll do this ecology lesson-style
Lizards So on the monkey island there are also many lizards that eat the monkey chow. There are beautiful black and blue ones that are vegetarian and eat leaves and monkey chow. Then there are the brown ones tha teat the blue ones and dead iguanas.
Iguanas There are some huuuuge iguanas on Cayo, and the staff is constantly keeping their numbers down. Last year they dug up their eggs and threw them into the ocean. They also shoot them with rifles and behead them with machetes. The monkeys usually don't pay too much attention to the iguanas, but sometimes they will grab an aguana by the tail and pick it up, swing it around, or just hold it so the iguana cannot run. When they let go, the iguana sometimes slaps them with their tail, which has a ridge that goes all the way down from their backs with spikes, which hurts the monkey. Then the iguana runs away with their funny feet that makes them look like they have wheels.
Crabs Two kinds. Hermit crabs and roadside crabs. The hermit crabs are all over the island, and are pretty cute. I pick them up sometimes and look at the, but if their too big they can reach around the shell and pinch me. Roadside crabs are a whole different thing. So if your driving at night on the roads here there area always people with flashlighs off to the side looking for crabs. There is barely room for 2 cars on the roads, and these people with nothing but flashlighs expect you to see them, and not kill them! Its very scary to drive at night because of it. I've been told if you find a crab off to the side you feed him for a month to clean them out, corn or something, then you eat them.
Mosquitos The mosquitos don't like me, but they loooove Grace. Sucks for her, seriously. The mosquitos are tiny here, and they don't fly straight. Its nice because they don't have the obnoxious buzzing sound, but are impossibel to kill!
No-see-'ums. This is their technical name. These guys are tinnnny little monsters that really sting when they bite or sting you, I'm not even sure what they do. They're very random. Sometimes right when I get out of the water they attack me, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes they get me while walking the dog at sunset, but sometimes not. Obnoxious. Luckily, though, they don't hurt or itch later.
Chickens The house next to the office has many chickens and roosters. The rooster does his call thing throughout the day, so I guess his circadium rhythem is off. There are also chickens up the street, that are uncaged but I beleive belongs to a family. One time a rooster came and sat in front of our house and scared away a cat.
Cats. Sooo many cats, probably just as many as street dogs. They like to sleep on top of cars and taunt our dogs. They make the dogs bark all day and all night, ggrrrr. One time I let Pandora have a stare off with a cat, and the cat pounced at her, and now she's even more scared of them. When we begin our walks, like 4 a day, she always looks under cars for them.
Birds There are beautiful white egrets, and one lands everyday in the same place on the island when I am eating lunch. The pelicans look like teradactals when they are flying. The Pigeons in San Juan are disgusting.
Frogs. There are frogs the size of my fist that are fun to watch jump away. I only started seeing them, but maybe this is because I have to walk Pandora every night now. There are also tiny tan frogs that I've never seen, but are kind of the emblem of Puerto Rico. They are called Coqui's, because that is the sound they make. They're Very loud, and start making their noises once the sun goes down until about midnight. There's a really good cheese called Coqui cheese, and the coqui is the symbol next to the Puero Rico Google home page, because that shows you for real how important the frog is to PR, right? Our neighbor said that once her dog was playing in our back yard and had a frog in its mouth, then 10 minutes later the dogs face swelled up immensly, and they had to tak it to the vet for a shot. I'll work on not letting that happen to me or my puppy.
More Dogs Yesterday for the first time I walked around a neighborhood with Pandora on the other side of the highway(its a joke to call it a highway, its a small but major street). As I walked into the neighborhood the dogs in their respective houses started barking, like a wave. The barking started about 2 houses ahead of my path, and ended about 4 houses behind me. OOO it was loud. Some houses had 4 small dogs, some 2 big dogs, some dogs on the roof. All mutts, ALL strange twists of dog fate.
Rats/Mice. Grace saw a small furry being in our kitchen. Crap.
Horses. Someone has a horse tied up next to the beach in a little green area. Sometimes in the afternoon I hear the guy running around on the horse. That's really all I know about it.
That's about as much as I know. Enjoy!

Fruitless in San Juan and the pain of July 5th

The event of not seeing fireworks in San Juan on July 4th is largely representative of Puerto Rico in general. Everyone in my town told us, me and Grace and her visiting bf that Old San Juan is the place to go on July 4th. The three of us, incrediblyl skeptical about the possibility of entering Old San Juan with the traffic situation, headed out. Once parked we started to ask around if there were going to be fireworks and where. Everyone gave us the same answer, "We thought so.... but it doesn't really look like it. . . " There weren't many people there. We saw fireworks beginning about 20 miles away, low to the groud across the bay and sat down to watch, just in case they were the only fireworks we were to see. And they were. Grace's bf, Geremy from Seattle then coined the term "Fruitless in San Juan." True. Hilariously Puerto Rico, no one knows exactly whats going down.
But the night did provide a few more entertaining moments. We met one of the 4 electricians for the US Coast Guard, getting very drunk and very eager to talk about the doings of the Coast Guard. His rablings were interesting, including how if your in the military and your not paid to scratch your ass, then you don't do it. Since there are 4 electricians for 150 Coast Guards in Puerto Rico, he replaces light bulbs every few days and basically does nothing else. So I kept asking questions to see what else would leak out of his mouth. He continued to tell disturbing truths about how the Coast Guard's job to keep immigrants from setting foot on land, because once they do they are safe, really is just a big game of shark and minnows. So there are planes that survey the water, and they coordinate with coast guard ships to intercept people. He's been on the boats a few times, and explained that when they intercept attempters they usually get them on board, give them blankets because they've usually been at sea for a few days, a majority of them coming from Dominican Republic or Cuba. Then they take them back from wherever they came from. He said the success rate of making it if you attempt is about 40%, the other 60% are either caught or drown. They come on small speed boats, sometimes with 30 unprepared people. He was a nice guy who went on to rant, furiously that if everyone who tried to come to the US just stood up to better their country, it wouldn't be like this. Intense shit, I had to take a break after hearing the story. SOME kinda patriotic July 4th. . .
So maybe I should have thought ahead of time about this, but it is a BAD IDEA to take 2 dogs walking on the beaches in Puerto Rico on July 5th. Can you guess why? Trash and bbq chicken and fist bones EVERYWHERE!!!! I was excited for a walk on the beach with 2 dogs, and I was going to get them, Pandora and Ginger to play with a ball instead of just gnawing on each other's ears. Everything went wrong as soon a I let them off the leash. They ran in the direction of a quiet thicket, where there was a couple getting IT on. I got all nervous and flustered and w/o making too much eye contact chased the doggies around until I got them both back on their leashes, which they continued to twist around each other and tangle. The only way to make these 2 dogs keep moving when they smell something fishy or are into playing is to start running and they run with me. Once I finally go their leashes untangeled, I started running, but right next to me there happened to be a cement wall about 1 foot high, which I fell over, pretty f-ing hard. So my legs are and look pretty beat up right now, a week later. I blame it on July 5th.

Why do so many Adventures involve Old Men?

After a big adventure snorkeling around the Monkey Island with Paco, and then a trip to his friends house, I reflected back that I've made friends with 4 Old men in the month I've been here.
First of all, when Loren and I were in Old San Juan, while we ate dinner the night before she left an old dude named Julio talked to us for about an hour. I guess he's a usual to the restaurante, and stood outside the bars of patio with a glass of wine from the restaurante and talked to us. We shot some shit, and it turned out that he had grown up in my current town, and I told him how I love Puerto Rico but have problems getting around with no car. He said he has property in this side of the island and could pick me up and gave me his number. I haven't done anything with it yet.
Another was when Grace and I went surfing at Luquillo beach, and we met Tom Fergeston, the surfing instructor OF that beach (in his opinion). He invited us back the next day, and said he was having a BBQ on the beach, and that every sunday he went to bar down the street where there was a great live rhumba band. I had a car and it sounded interseting, so we showed up at the beach the next day, and found him drinking with a group of people. I went over to talk to him, met some people who were playing reggae music. (Sorry for this next part to all family members and those I know through Academic institutions) I met one older guy who was well drunk for 5pm who told me I had a nice ass for 10 minutes stright, I have no idea how he did it but he had a LOT of ways of saying it. (That's the end of the nonPG part)
Tom gave me a few rides on his surf board, which was much easier than the board I had rented the day before, which was his point. Tom was a really nice guy and I liked his friendly attitude. This all changed once we got to the bar, I bought him a drink for the 20 minute surf lesson, and he started hitting on Grace non-stop and was just another dirty, old, drunk man. The band was amazing, though, with an upright base, great horns, keyboard, and a singer who didn't even need a microphone who was, as Tom said, as "gay as the sky is blue."
Next was Paco and the snorkeling boat. Paco owns a good sized, maybe 15 seater, bright red, blue, and yellow boat that we see a few times a week circling around the monkey island. He teaches tourists about the monkeys, gets close so that his passangers can see them, and provides snorkeling equipment. The snorkeling was awesome. On one side I've always seen a few pelicans that hang out on some things sticking out of the water, which Paco explained is a ship wreck. A nice reef had formed with crazy huge brain corals, sea urchins, and some tropical fish. There were also huge star fish all over the bottom. Back on the boat, Paco handed us (me, Maria, and Maria's friend) each instruments, turned on salso music. He started dancing and encouraging us to do the same. We did for a few minutes, entertaining. On our way to the next snorkeling spot on the other side of the island, we asked him many questions, none of which he answered though he definetly thought he was. He's definetly an eccentric, crazy, nature-loving old man. He used to be the post master in Punta Santiago, told me he was once a teacher and when I asked him further he said "well I'm a jack of all trades." His knowledge of the monkeys when we asked for what he tells otherse was very close to on point, but not coooommmpletly there.
Once the sun was beginning to set and we needed to start home he asked if we wanted to visit his friend, a guy from New York's, amazing house. We said sure, and so his friend, I forgot his name so I'll call him Joe, met us at the dock. Paco explained that Joe's house had just been broken into, so it wasn't a great sight but we should definetly see the view. Joe took us in his car up to his house, straight up the hill, about 5 minutes from the dock. His house has an ammaaazing view, overlooking a huge portion of coast, looking west so that one can see many bays and inlets along the coast. It also has a wonderful view of Cayo Santiago. As it turned dark there was a wonderful breeze, and we could see the coast line light up, and the dark, mysterious monkey island right in the middle. Just wonderful.
So of course its Puerto Rico, so though a robbery had occured a few days before Joe came down to his beautiful vacation home in PR, the police couldn't make it to do fingerprints until the day after we visited. The whole house was a crime scene. He showed us some of the oddities of the incident. The robbers drank 3 whole bottles of rum, and had begun to pack many things to steal, which they started loading into a room. The robbers had taken down the shower curtains, putting the clips into a bowl like respectful robbers. They had moved many strage things it appeared they wanted to steal into a room, such as mirrors, DVDs, and other statues, that Joe explained were definetly not in their correct spot. Joe explained that his neighbors heard something going on, and so called the police and came to the house. The robbers then excaped, leaving most of the things behind, besides all of Joe's underwear and a suit. Wierd.
When it came time for someone to take us home, Paco and Joe turned into old men. First they told us we had to come back once the place was cleaned up for some wine, which wasn't too strange. But then they got into a little old man conversation that didn't make any sense about who should take us home, in which car and who should leave what equipment where. It took about another 30 minutes before things were arranged so that we could get a ride home, which included taking 10 minutes to back a car up very carefully into a parking spot and losing an electronic gate opener that Paco had in his hand a minute earlier.
I've been in Purto Rico for a little over a month now, and I find the number of old men that I feel I know quite well very strange. I'm not sure if its because I talk to them too much because I find them un-intimidating, because they enjoy talking to me, or what. I've only met one Puertorequeno, the guy who works at the key making kiosk, and his phone number doesn't work anymore. Its not that I'm incredibly anxoious to meet Puerto Ricans my own age, but something just seems off.
Today is the 4th of July and I'm not sure what lies in store for tonight. I may go to San Juan with Grace and her bf, or just stay here in Punta. There are many people coming into town, but its mostly families and I don't think there is any central party or anything. If I do stay here maybe I'll get the nerve to walk around and at least see whats happening. There are huge packs of fireworks for sale at Walmart, so I suppose fireworks are legal. We'll just have to see what happens.

Scientifically, whats going on?

Whew, its been a busy week. I've been meaning to write this blog about scientific endevours on the island for quite a while now so I'll get right to it.
So there's a few groups of people who work on the island, and I'll categorize them as the long-term-researchers (Maria, me, Grace, Doreen, and Aki), The Yale Kids, and The Hardvard Guys. Grace and I are working on Maria's project, hormone analysis and adulte male behavior. Doreen is working on a project for Anja Widdig at the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. They are studying the behavior of the entire cohort (monkeys born in the same year) of 2004 and are interested in paternity (relation to their father). Aki is from a University in Japan and is studying play behavior. She records juveniles alllll day long, and will eventually go back to look at the facial expressions and body language that initiats play behaviors.
Second there are the Yale Kids. They are all working under Laurie Santos, a Psychologist at Yale. There are usually four of them working here at a time, and they stay for about 4 weeks at a time, coming and going in groups of 2 so that there are always 4 people. Yale has purchased a house in the next town over, Naguabo, where they all stay. Their projects are mostly looking time experiments. Each Yale Kid is in charge of one experiment, and they video tape the reactions fo the monkeys to the experiment. The theory is that monkeys look longer at things that are unnatural, unusual, or implicitly incorrect with the laws of physics. The experiments are adapted fom ones done with human babies. Of course they all have complex psychological names for the experiments, but I am an Anthropologist, so I'll explain it in those terms. One girl did an experiment to see if monkeys understand statistics, so she had a box with a clear front with a whole bunch of red balls and a few white balls. On one randomly decided condition she pulls out a white ball supposidly from inside the box but its fixed, and on another she pulls out a a red one. Another experiment is a similar set up where they pour from a pitcer of blue water into a clear cup, then with a piece of cardboard cover up the aparatus. When it is lifted the cup is placed under 1 of 4 conditions on a little thingy so that the cup is tilted, all fixed where the cup is traded and filled with dried colored play dough. In two the play dough is flat, ungiving to the proper forces of gravity, one with blue dough and the other with yellow. In the other two the play dough is made to look as if it is indeed flowing the direction it would while tilted, one blue and one yellow. Once they go through their data with looking times they will gain an understanding of the implicit intelligences of rehsus macaques.
The other type of experiments the Yale kids have are searching experiments, where they give the monkeys different amounts of information about where food may be, and then see where the monkeys will explore. In one there are levers and fake bananas, which the monkeys destroyed, frustrating the hell out of its creator. The other involved ramps and two grapes. It was originally called Grand Theft Auto, where grapes were placed on stickes taped to the top of two remote control cars. It's a theory of mind experiment, where the experimenter places grapes in two separate places, then turns away so the monekys "think" he cannot see, and the grapes move, the top to the position of the second, and the second to a position on the bottom of the aparatus. Then the monkeys are allowed to approach and supposidly if they have a theory of mind, they will go for the grape that is at the botoom, that the experimenter does not know about. Its been fun to see the stagest this experiment has gon through, becasue the first 2 set ups needed to be adjusted. Now it is just ramps and rollilng grapes, and is called "Grand Theft Grape."
All the Yale Kids have a certain number of monkeys have to run through the experiment to gain proper statistical power, and some the monkeys are very interested in watching and some not. They roam around the island with their aparatus in groups of two, one recording one with the experiment in hand. They have to find monkeys that are alone, and who will pay attention. Its fun to watch, because in order to get a monkeys attention they set up in front of it, and then yell "monkey, MONKEY!" or something of the sort. Sometimes the monkeys respond well, sometimes they charge as soon as two grapes are presented, sometimes they walk away.
The Third group of researchers are the Hardvard Guys, working with Marc Hauser with his cognitive science lab. Hauser is a very well known and very cutting edge in the literature of cogsci. If you go to the Cayo Santiago website under literature, all of his papers are posted. Some that are of interest to me deal with neurological elements of facial expressions. They've found that in slow mo, different sides of the face produce facial expressions milisecons before the other, showing neural hemisphere differentiation for respective corresponding emotions. Anyway, they are currently doing play back experiments, where they electronically mess around with rhesus calls, and have speakers set up to play back to them noises in different frequencies, volumes, orders, you name it. They then record how the monkeys responed. Interesting stuff. The other day I was working next to Doreen and we heard a WIERD noises, kind of like elephand shouts, looked at each other and realized it was the playback experiments. Maria soon after asked us, sounding pretty frightened, what exacly the noise was. Funny.
Oh yes, a final note on the Yale kids: they create all their aparati(?) once they get here. They are all made out of foam board, mass quantities of duck tape, and whatever other materials necessary from walmart, in a creative manner. These make the experiments cheap, and easy to replace if they get attacked by the monkeys, which they often are.
We all enjoy talking about the fine elements of DOING research that are not mentioned in scientific papers. These include rediculous miniscule elements that make or break an experiment, for me purple berries, for them flat groud, whacky noises that attract monkey attention, knee pads, keeping the video camera charged, rain, not to mention heat, exhaustion, and hunger for us all.