Wednesday, January 4

Bio-Dome

There are two calimico monkeys that live at the Bio-Dome.
I named one Jabari and one Al (short for Alice).
They have furry little black faces and bodies and
cute little pink tongues you can see when they eat.
The plaque outside their little enclosure says
they eat fruits, insects and small vertebrates
and shows where in the world they are from:
just one little red area in Ecuador.
Both of them can jump three to four metres standing
but Al can jump farther than Jabari, I’ve decided.
When I saw them Jabari was in the high branches,
rubbing his scent on a tree trunk, as usual,
and Al was on a tree stump with apple slices,
pretending not to notice me and the busloads of Koreans.
Calimicos are excellent communicators
and I think Al and Jabari are friends.
Not the kind of friends that you’d really do things
like play paintball or paint pottery with;
more like the kind whom you call your best friend
even though you only ever see them
when you’re each with your boyfriend or girlfriend
at the occasional get together of your circle of friends,
and you’d never call to say what’s up—
unless you want to call up some old memories
of participating in an extreme sport
or doing some creative but practically useful activity together—
because you’ve known each other for so long
that you can’t really be original with them anymore.
Jabari and Al are those kinds of friends.
Only they also live together, groom each other,
eat only fruits, insects, and small vertebrates,
can leap three to four metres from standing,
are dispossessed from their little red homeland,
were never secretly in love with each other
but were too young and afraid to admit it, and
have furry little black faces with cute little pink tongues.