One of all the cats in Dianes house is a young, redish nine-month-old called Leo. He is really wild and playful and likes to scratch things. I find him completely charming, but then I’ve always had a weak spot for the unruly ones.
He likes to jump on my bed, which is a thick and wide matress on the floor in the wwoofer room. The other night, he sat completely still next to me, looking intently at my hands while I was flossing my teeth. I could see in his eyes that he wanted to jump, to catch the floss in my hand and that he didn’t care for a second what consequenses his sharp claws might have on my face.
That made me think of another rascal I knew once, one that also showed a particular interest in human dentistry. His name was Baby and he was a capuchin monkey. This was when I was working at the animal rescue / nature reserve in Villa Tunari, Bolivia. Baby had once been living in the quarantine, which was where I was working, but he was too smart for that, he always managed to escape from his cage and finally the vets at the park gave up. They let him out into the actual park, but he wouldn’t stay there either. He always kept returning to the main building, the clinic and the quarantine to do mischief and create chaos.
He stole my copy of “Open Veins of Latin America” by Eduardo Galeano from a cupboard, but didn’t find it interesting enough so he left it on the beam right below the ceiling in the quarantine kitchen. He helped the other quarantine monkeys to escape, and then sat on the roof watching us trying to catch the fugitives. And once, I’m pretty sure I saw him sitting with a knife, trying to cut a carrot into smaller, more easily eatable pieces.
And on my last day at the park, I was standing outside brushing my teeth when Baby came by, watched me for a while and then, as if wanting to take part in the action, climed up on my shoulder and grabbed my toothbrush. (And, you now, capuchin monkeys have sharp teeth and extremely strong jaws, so if one of them is sitting by your artery and wants something, you give it to him.) At first, he just put the brush in his own mouth and tasted the tooth paste. But when nothing exciting happened, he turned his attention to my mouth.
And that’s when he showed his acute ability of perception. With the determination of a pro, he tried to get the tooth brush back into my mouth, to help me brush my teeth. I really didn’t know if I should laugh or panic. As mostly when I’m in a stressed situation, I did the former, but with my lips tightly pressed shut. Luckily, one of my fellow volunteers walked by just then and managed to get hold of my camera – so I even have this Baby incident documented on photo.
Finally, when I wouldn’t let him become my new dentist, Baby lost interest and jumped off my shoulder and run off to the jungle with my green tooth brush as his new toy.
And Leo, with his intense yellowish eyes watching me flossing with extreme attention, doesn’t seem at all that different from the thieving, practical joking, aspiring dentist apprentice monkey that I once knew.
Katja Malmborg 