 The
Andean Night Monkey
- Issue Eight |
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by You can hear the rattle of the spray paint can as it rolls down the street, but nobody's listening. There is no rising to the boy's chest, nothing like breathing. "Jesus, all his ribs must be broken," says one of the uniformed men, all of them dressed up in grey jumpsuits with monosyllabic nicknames stitched into the chest. They gather around the corpse like children mystified by the body of a jellyfish, fleshy and completely limp. Behind them there is a miniature fire truck, complete with a high pressure hose for cleaning walls. For cleaning up the city. The kid has what now looks like a comically huge afro, like even his hair was splattered across the sidewalk when his ribs were crushed. Beads of water slide down the strands of his hair slowly on their way to drip and pool on the sidewalk. The glorified janitors know this is a heavy thing they've done, someone is asking around for a gun to plant on him before anybody calls the cops. "Or at least a knife, does anybody have a goddamn knife?" The moon is reflected in the puddles on the sidewalk, and although they do their work under the cover of the early night, it is getting to be dangerously late for these janitors to be out. The wall next to their truck is covered with half erased gang signs. Nicholas Wilczynski was born and raised in the United States Virgin Islands. His earliest and most cherished memories are of prolifically crafting graphic novels and poetry in the solitude of homeschooling in the Charlotte Amalie. He moved to North Carolina as a teenager, where he eventually graduated from a Christian High School, where he moved on to short stories and political articles (published on various websites) and was involved in the newspaper. For a short time he was a sponsored Halo player and wrote one of the most read blogs in Pro Halo, in addition to anti-war Halo fan fiction published on various websites. He currently studies Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and continues to write subversive prose.
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The
Andean Night Monkey Night monkeys are found in the Andes range throughout
South America. Night monkeys inhabit evergreen tropical rainforests and
deciduous scrub forests, as well as habitat along rivers. They prefer
dense middle-level canopies and understories with tangled vines that provide
cover for sleeping sites. They also like hollows in old trees (Note the
photo). Night monkeys eat mainly fruits, but also consume leaves, flowers,
insects, tree frogs, spiders, bats, birds, and eggs. They forage for food
at all levels of the forest, from the canopy down to the forest floor.
Night monkeys are hunted for their meat and fur by native people and poachers
and are sold as pets and used for medical research. The IUCN lists the
Andean night monkey as Vulnerable, facing a high risk of extinction in
the wild, because of small populations and habitat destruction from deforestation.