The Fear of Monkeys - The Best E-Zine on the Web for Politically Conscious WritingThe Silvered Leaf Monkey - Issue Nine
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The Silvered Leaf Monkey, photo from Christian ArtusoThe Silvery Lutung, also known as the silvered leaf monkey, is an Old World arboreal monkey living in coastal, mangrove, and riverine forests in Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo. Its grey-tipped, dark brown or black fur, gives it a uniform silvery appearance. The silvery lutung is a specialist folivore, including a high proportion of leaves in its diet. Silvery lutings are diurnal, and travel in groups of around 9-40 individuals with one adult male and many adult females communally caring for infants. They rarely leave the trees, which provide them protection from ground-dwelling predators, and rapidly flee if threatened. The entire group shelters in a single tree at night. Local predators able to feed on silvery lutungs include leopards, tigers, humans, dholes, and some large snakes. The silvery lutung is classed as Near Threatened , for its habitat is heavily threatened throughout its range by logging and the development of oil plantations. The species is also threatened by hunting for meat and by capture for the pet trade. Likewise, because they are unusually susceptible to human diseases, including AIDS, they have therefore been widely used in medical research.

   


Fernando

By

Silvio E. Cascino

He was a cool dude, ya know… He always thought that acting different was a cool thing to do, but he never thought that this cool game of being someone else, just in public…to enjoy the sweet attention of everybody surrounding him, was gonna take him to a weird journey.

-Yea, he was a nice dude-, Brian, his brother, said to me that afternoon standing beside the casket, - just didn’t do much for the cause- he added - he just preached but didn’t live to it - said with a weird face.

I never understood funerals, just thought they were boring, but hell ya can hear the truth about the truth just by paying the minimal attention to what these creeps have to say about the dead.

Then mother went up to the box, and snored (some how whispering) something, just like she was right beside his ear, so intensely that ya could swear he actually understood what she meant.

Jees!!! that was freaky!!

And then the drop that overflowed the cup, was this group of people saying a bunch of really creepy things to this piece of dead meat called Fernando laying into the casket. A nice dude, of whom a lot of people from this little town didn’t know much about… The best to his only friend, and no one ever met this guy… And a guy that somehow everybody knew he existed, just like AIDS.

Well, I guess we are clear in what I think about this guy, and so does the rest of the town, all congregated in this room trying to smell and dress nice right beside to a decaying body.

I heard this nice little chubby gal, apparently his lover, I thought, since nobody knew her and she kissed the side of the box leaving lipstick on it. His sister-in-law was licking the side of the box and getting hard nipples.

Some kid the town did never know who’s son he was, getting close to the box and whispering - “bye dad” - really convinced me this guy was a little out of whack. And town wasn’t gonna miss him at all.

But well, he was gone, and for good. Yea! I saw the sealing in that coffin, glued like a shell when it is just captured to be bait. A real sarcophagus, a real jail that was screaming: At last!!!!.

After that day the family were never gonna remember him again, since they just took advantage of this moment to tell him what they thought and wanted to say to him but never could.

Interesting, I thought. I’ll stay close to him. Since the dead is the most fun guest in this party, why not make a friend. So I did, and I heard so much that by the time I was about to go home I felt I knew the guy.

Things turned a little bit wrong when I heard part of the family yelling around, really pissed, as if they had somehow missed the lotto for one number.

Yes, Fernando just walked in the funeral really wasted, potted, inebriated, sauced, reeking alcohol and party with the next to the mayor’s whorehouse most expensive prostitute. And town declared this guy dead only 2 days after his disappearance? That was a fast judging.

Hold on!! Shouldn’t we be happy after such a thing happened? Not with Fernando. He was a hand full. And there I was, standing.

When this kind of things becomes your amusement, it’s time to move out of the village. Time to see different breeds in their own habitat.

Not really a nice place any more.

But the question remains still, who is the one in the casket?

Who he had been was already answered.


Silvio Cascino resides in Neuquen where he sells bowls and, flourishing his hijo de dueno card at his customers, discusses politics and possibilities.
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