Get
To Know
The White-Thighed Sirili is arboreal and lives amongst the sub-montane
forests and swamp areas of the Thai-Malay Peninsula, the Riau Archipelago
and Sumatra. Their diet consists of seeds, fruits and leaf shoots.
They have also been seen consuming flowers. They are characterized
by the white patches located on the outside of their legs--which
is what gives them their name-and they range from 41-69 cm tall
and weighting 5-6.7 kg. They have a brown-grey fur coat on their
backs, with white fur covering their bellies and dark fur on their
head. Their tails--typically covered in dark fur--can extend roughly
58-85 cm. Compared to adults, infants are born with very light fur
with crosses of dark fur along their arms and back. They live in
small unimale-multifemale groups. After mating, females give birth
to single infants to which the group of females care for. Due to
their arboreal lifestyle, reliance on detection of predators is
vital. Male group members are able to call or display a distraction
for predators to protect group members. Their current status is
near threatened. They are mainly affected by agriculture, harvesting
of wood, as well as hunting. In regards to logging, the production
of access roads into forests has increased the deforestation rate
by 8% which reduces their habitat and creates a huge reduction of
seeds, leaves and fruit available. To compensate for their lost
food supply, they have been found to raid crops on the plantations--for
instance, leaves of the oil palm--which increases reports of capturing
and killing the primates. As well, they are sometimes kept as pets
or used in the entertainment industry and that has led to their
decimation in some regions of their domain.
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Public Education
by
Ken Poyner
It is the teachers who fail our children.
Our children: prepared with You-tube,
Facebook, Twitter,
Conflict television,
Attack radio,
American Idol,
Jersey Shore,
Cell phone responsibilities.
Our children: unintended
Consequences of an unguarded act;
Expenses thereafter.
Bother.
The schedule stretched too thin.
No time to sit down to dinner.
The reason to survive with a minivan.
Our children: the marker by which
Our personal territory is extended.
A probe.
A stick of me
Pushed into the world's eye.
Evidence of competition.
Bribed quiet.
Then overcrowded,
Aged buildings.
Socialization on the fly.
Fractured personalities mending.
The first adult not smitten.
The teachers' union must go.
After years of impersonating a Systems Engineer, Ken has retired to watch
his wife of forty-one years continue to break both Masters and Open world
raw powerlifting records. Ken’s two current poetry and two short fiction
collections are available from Barking Moose Press, Amazon, and Sundial
Books in Chincoteague, where Ken and Karen go to escape irreality.
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