Baba, That’s Not a Dog

It took some work.  But I managed to convince one of my daughters to join me on a walk, for our first morning in the jungle.  Without internet, without television, without much by way of light, we all headed to bed very early. I was up before the dawn and so was my little one.   In the end, she was the only one I could convince or to be fair, order, to join me. 

I considered our jungle map.  The circle track seemed like a sensible place to start.  I went down to the dining hall and asked for directions.  “You know where the canopy trail is?” The staff member asked me. I had no idea.  “Sure.”  “Just follow the trail there and after a few hundred meters you’ll see the sign.”  The morning light was approaching but it was still rather dark.  “I want to go back,”  said my daughter.  “Come on.  This is the best time for the jungle.”  “What’s that noise?”  “I think it’s a dog.”  “That’s not a dog baba.”

We headed down a path and within minutes it came back to me, like a language I had forgotten:  the sensibility of the rainforest.  The earth smells alive.  The slow competition for sunlight, the race to the canopy plays out in every direction.  Below, there were leaf cutter ants.  To the right, a lizard, or was it something else, has dashed into the leaves.  “Baba, look!”  “Wow!”  A ground bird, I would later learn was a curassow, crested, black, the size of a wild turkey, was jumping off the path, up ahead. 

The screaming sound was getting notably louder.  “Baba, that’s not a dog.”  “You’re right.  It’s not.”  We crossed over one canopy bridge to a center pivot, which was anchored to an enormous tree.  From here another chasm was crossed at a right angle by another plastic bridge.  At the far end was the source of the ferocious scream.  “I want to go back.”  “Be brave.”  “What is it?”  “I think . . . I’m not sure, I think it’s a, a howler monkey.”  “What’s that?”  I don’t know where I dug that explanation up.  It sounded correct, suddenly.  “How big is it?” “Oh, you know, it’s like this big.” I gestured to something about two feet high.  “Don’t worry.  It eats mangos.” 

Howler monkeys, I later found out, can project their voice further than any other land animal.  This is apparently the morning ritual where members of the pack signal to each other across their patch of the forest, that they are awake.  Later during our trip, voice confirmed, howler monkeys spotted, they became just another loud curiosity.  Crossing the second bridge, heading directly for these remarkable yells, into the unknown, trying to reassure someone else who was depending on me, I found myself frightened.