After spending more than a week in Bantayan Island, Joe managed to come back to Bogo City for a day before his return to Cebu City and then heads back to Metro Manila.
He’s had quite the adventure during his six week stay in the Philippines. He treated Jessie and I to BBQ and after some chit chat we returned to my home for a few hours.
Joe was traveling with a couple of beautiful Filipina friends. The two came to visit at our home to meet Juliet, our Philippine Monkey.
Gay Gay and Beth
Juliet was quick to voice her displeasure. Actually, she always acts aggressive to strangers. After a while, they can usually make friends but guarded friends. She did take fairly quickly and much better to Mindanao Bob though.
One of the girls, Beth, decided to give the other girl, Gay Gay, a gentle push
Beth on Our Front Porch
toward Juliet’s cage which sent her into a wild display and nearly gave Gay Gay a heart attack. 
While we were talking, a cat came up trying to get some of Juliet’s scraps. I had brought her some scraps from the BBQ that I can’t eat. She can’t or wont eat it all, and drops it to the bottom of the cage. Its mostly fat from our pork chops and that brings the cats up. Juliet does not want it but she really doesn’t want those cats to get it. The cats get really aggressive though in trying to get that meat!
One cat inching toward the meat was close enough for Juliet to touch. When
Gay Gay
she did, the cat moved a little further away and stopped. Juliet then tried to reach through the cage to grab it and the cat tried to slap her paw. That resulted in a monkey vs cat stare down. The cat finally got some fat and quickly got out of there. The cats know that she will get distracted and they will get their chance.
After a while, I got Juliet out of her cage and chained her to the front porch. Jessie gave her some milk and honey. Juliet really loves that honey. If we give her just milk, she might drink half of it then dump it out. When it has honey with it, she is all business about drinking that milk!
After she finished it, she then throw the can at our guest. Joe picked it up, well he tried to and Juliet went into attack mode. So I picked it up and gave it to Joe. Juliet watched this and kept her eyes on Joe.
I told Joe that if he tossed it she might play catch with him. Juliet turned and walked away just as he tossed it in the air. It came smashing down right beside her with a loud clang.
Philippine Monkey Drinking Milk and Honey
Juliet Shows Her Wild Side
She then charged Joe! Screaming and chattering in a way I’ve not heard before. Full on wild monkey showing her teeth and meaning business. She couldn’t reach Joe but he was trying to back up even though there were windows and burglar bars behind him. She was really hacked off. I reached my hand out to her and that calmed her down a bit.
She pulled hard enough on her chain that she hurt her leg a bit. She’s got a leg that has a chronic injury. She will limp on it from time to time but I have not seen her do so in a long time. I think the injury is in the hip, tendons or ligaments. It wont ever be completely healed.
She calmed down and went back to just keeping an eye on Joe. She liked to jump on the porch from time to time to threaten our visitors and make sure they know who is boss.
As the Joe was leaving, Juliet made one more charge at him. It would have made a great picture as Joe was backing up and bowing his body away from her in an arch shaped escape maneuver. It would have made an awesome picture if I had been ready for it. Video of the full on attempted attack would have been awesome but as those things go, one rarely gets to capture such moments.
Joe is likely back in Manila today, with only a few days before his trip is over and he heads back to the states.
Popularity: 2%
Yeah, that whole debacle with Juliet was insane. Video of that would have been priceless, and I bet that the youtube popularity would be driving tons of people to our blogs right now if we had only been able to record video then. I got back early morning on August 30th, after flying from Manila to Tokyo to Detroit to Minneapolis to Pittsburgh. It pretty much took forever. I’m looking forward to going back in April or May. Keep me posted about places for rent there, if you don’t mind. By the way, our crazy friend spells her name “Gaigai” or possibly “Gai Gai”. I always word it as the former, “Gaigai” in my posts.
Its too bad I didn’t have video cam running. I’m out of tape, have been for a while. Cell phone will do it but not as well.. The camera too.
Jessie told me your camera leaked? You gonna send it back to Olympus? Did you take it too deep?
I’m thinking that it might have helped if I had used silicone grease on the seals of those 2 doors on the camera body. I think I remember some mention of greasing the seals in the manual when I first got the camera. I just emailed Olympus today to ask them how I go about getting it replaced under warranty (I just bought it on June 4th, so I’m sure it’s under warranty). I pulled the battery and xd card out and let it air out some overnight after we came back from snorkeling. When I tried the camera the next day, it hulked back up and began to work just fine again. But for the rest of the trip, it was really flaky, sometimes being non-responsive to pressing the power button in an attempt to turn it on. So sometimes it was useless, and other times it would work just fine. I’m pretty sure there is some procedure they recommend for maintaining these cams, and when they send me a new one I will surely pay much heed to their recommendations to maintain those waterproof seals. The seals seemed to work great during my day at Hagimit Falls on Samal Island a few weeks prior, but maybe you are supposed to grease the seals/gaskets after having the cam submerged in water. I bet you will soon be googling this
I hope they replace it for you and they don’t say you voided the warranty by taking it to deep. They probably will, its better than bad press.
Let me know how it turns out!
Yeah, they better just replace it with the least possible amount of stress and headache involved for me. Man, I really miss being there. I even miss those rats, especially the giant one that I call Spike
Do you know if these tarsier monkeys are the only type of monkey in the Philippines?
Wow you have pet monkey you really are living the life over there I am envious