Get
To Know
The Myanmar Snub-Nosed Monkey is mostly black, with
protruding white ear tufts, a mostly naked face with pale pink skin,
a "moustache" of whitish hairs above the upper lip, and a distinct
white chin beard. The lips are prominent, and the nose upturned,
allegedly causing the animal to sneeze in rainy weather. As an adult
male, it has a length of 55.5 centimetres, and a tail 78 cm long.
They spend their summer months in northern Burma and China in temperate
mixed forests at upper altitudes of their range, and descend to
lower ground in the winter to escape snow. The species is known
in local dialects of Lisu people as mey nwoah and Law Waw people
as myuk na tok te, both of which mean "monkey with an upturned face,"
and when first discovered in 2010, they only were known to live
in three or four groups of 260 to 330 individuals within a 270 square
kilometres range at 1,700 to 3,200 metres above sea level in the
eastern Himalayas, in the north-eastern section of Kachin State,
the northernmost part of Burma. In 2011, a small population of a
hundred was discovered in Lushui County, Yunnan, China in the Gaoligongshan
National Nature Reserve. The species is isolated from other snub-nosed
Rhinopithecus by the Mekong and the Salween rivers; the other 4
species, golden, black, gray and Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys, are
found in China and Vietnam. The snub-nosed group of monkeys diverged
from other Asian monkeys about 6.8-6 million years ago, and from
Nasalis and Simia clade about 1.2 Ma. Various species of the snub-nosed
group split from each other about 730,000-400,000 years ago. It
is recognized as critically endangered by the IUCN; its unique appearance,
behaviour and vulnerability make it outstanding in conservation
issues, but it is seriously threatened by hunting and wildlife trade,
illegal logging and forest destruction linked to hydropower schemes
and associated infrastructure development.
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I buy my own evil
At the corner stand, from a man
Named Tony, who thinks up his offered evils
All on his own. No supermarket evil for me.
I go with the genuine, hand sculpted evil,
Each one made with a quirk: unique.
In the markets the evils lie
Individually wrapped, end to end,
Hopelessly long counters of them,
Each picked over by an unimaginable,
Unpredictable legion of patrons.
I want nothing of lukewarm,
Half hearted evils. Someone
Doing their worst only by script
Is not for me -- industrial
Cruelty, assembly line horror,
The personality of pain almost gone,
Replaced with, yes, efficiency, yes, purely
Mass consumption. Tony
Slaps up an evil made to order,
Similar to, but not entirely like,
Any other evil he will make today,
One whose application and consequences
Bear me in mind: created for my talents
And needs, my likely counter balance. Tony
Gives that wide sulfurous grin, flame hinted
At the edge of his mouth, handing the evil
Across the cheap igneous metal of his
Regulation vendor's cart, curiously
Whole and dumbstruck heavy,
Body temperature warm, saying
In his licensed push cart vendor's voice,
Only you, only you.
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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