An email from John

John greed to let us share this email he sent to his friend:

Dear Andrew,
We started school three days ago. It is really fun at school. We have seen a few monkeys while we are here. Alot of people set monkey traps here . They catch them to get rid of the other monkeys. Two weeks ago, I was walking outside and my neighbor, Jake Kreamer (he is Taylor's age) was riding his bike and he asked me "have you seen the monkey?" We went and looked in another neighbor's back yard. In the trap was a mother monkey with a very little baby monkey on her stomach. The monkey was looking at us and trying to get out. When we were approaching the cage two older monkeys (teenagers) ran up into the tree. Jake and I thought that the mother in the cage was the mother of those two monkeys. By the way, the traps are cages that have a banana or corn on a hook. When the monkey grabs the bait the door shuts without harming the monkey. Our village staff either puts a bell around the monkeys neck and lets it go so it will scare away monkeys or takes the monkeys to a wildlife preserve. The next day Jake told me that the two teenage monkeys in the tree were trapped as well. All the monkey was taken to a wildlife preserve.
Something I forgot to tell you about. We went to a giraffe farm our first week here. We drove out of our village area to the giraffe farm. There is a big platform where you stand and feed the giraffes. You get a handful of pellets at a time and hold one out to a giraffe and their long tongue comes and takes the pellet. You can also "kiss the giraffe". The way you do this is to hold a longer pellet in your lips and approach the giraffe. hte giraffe will come and lick it out of your mouth. There is also a wart hog and some giant tortoises.

John

Ps. We will try to take pictures next time of the monkeys here and send them to you. For now here is a picture of me feeding a monkey at the tea farm we visited.