Zombieland?

For the first week or so here, Rob and I reacted oddly calmly, when every evening as we were eating dinner we would hear distant, clear moaning. I think we both assumed that it just must be something from jungle life. Maybe cows? No, way too deep and eerie for mooing... Maybe horses? No, definitely not horses. Rob even joked once that he felt like we were in "28 Days Later" and that at any moment the zombies were going to burst though our walls and rip our heads off.

Well, it turned out to be Howler Monkeys. And boy, do they howl. It's pretty awesome. They tend to howl in the early morning and late afternoon and their deep, territorial calls travel easily through the forest. We haven't seen any yet, although we're hoping... They live way up in the canopy and are quieter and better behaved than the white-faced monkey terrorists who were, most recently, seen ripping the siding off our guest house. So, the Howlers are harder to see.

Speaking of the monkeys who live above our house: I swear that every morning, mildly bored with their effortless swinging and graceful tree hoping, they say to each other, "Let's go to the roof and have a good stomp." And that's how I imagine them, lying in my bed at 5:30am, envisioning spider monkeys lifting their long arms and legs high above them and then stomping on our roof.