GorillaSound

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 30 2009 | By: gorillasound

Sorry for the lack of blog posts over the past few weeks. The satellite internet connection didn’t work for awhile but is now back online.

October is not a great month. It’s the rainy season so it rains nearly every day. If it rains during the night the gorillas will all be up in the trees in the morning, trying to warm up by being closer to the sun. Then once they’ve come down from the trees they sleep a lot. If it starts raining during the day they’ll find a tree to sleep under. This can be interesting if you are already under the tree Kingo wants to be under. There aren’t many fruits in the forest so they spend a lot of time in the ebuka thickets eating herbaceous vegetation. They have been in the same area of the forest for awhile now and sadly for us its near a sweat bee tree so there have been some days with a million sweat bees crawling all over our faces and arms. And with all this sleeping during the day they aren’t vocalising much. So it’s a wet boring month at Mondika!

Although every day something interesting happens. I’ve been following Kusu and Ekendi so I’ve become more aware of their behaviour. I just realised that when Kusu charges past us and then stops in a travel pose, he’s not trying to freak us out. Well he could be, since I’m not a mind reader, but it is exactly the same way he initiates play with Ekendi. However we just stand or sit there and ignore him, instead of chasing after him and wrestling him to the ground like Ekendi does. So Kusu must think we are the biggest boring kill joys this side of the Mondika river.

And yesterday I was following Kingo through Ebuka thickets. The vegetation is really thick and spiny but there are paths. The problem is if Kingo wants to come back the way he has come and you are still in his way because there often isn’t anywhere to go. So Kingo was eating some leaves and then he decides to go back down the path towards us. Bakombo, Bakanga and I all start squeezing ourselves into this little gap in the vegetation off the path so Kingo can get past. But no, Kingo decides he’ll go off the path and cut through the vegetation in a way that intersects directly where we are all now squeezed together. So he growled at us. Anyway at the time this was hilarious, the whole trying to get away from him but ending up even more in his way, that we were laughing our heads off for about five minutes. I realise that it doesn’t sound very funny when you read it, but you had to be there, it was hilarious!!