I Was Gone a Week. Punch Chose His Father Anyway

[00:00:01]He is back on the shoulders.

[00:00:04]Last week it was Shano's arms. Yesterday it was Mia Kushi's.

[00:00:09]The one we call Papa Besito for the kiss he gave punch right before the zoo announced they were changing the way the mountain gets fed. Two laps, two buckets, and a monkey who did not come down for either of them. We are going to see all of it. We are also going to see Oruran Mama. She came out this week the way she does once a week now. And then it rained.

[00:00:36]What happened after that is one of the saddest images since Punch was born. And there are worse moments in these two days than the one you are expecting.

[00:00:46]Stay here.

[00:00:49]Ichiawa is burning.

[00:00:53]Heat is not just heat for a macac. Heat is sleep. Punch spends most of the day asleep. Sometimes with someone, sometimes on stone alone, arms folded underneath him like something being kept. A body 11 months old at this temperature is doing arithmetic all day.

[00:01:13]Everything it spends, it has to earn back. So he sleeps. And sometimes one of the older ones walks past and decides that he shouldn't.

[00:01:32]Several of you asked the same question this week. Why does his face go so red?

[00:01:39]Japanese macaks barely sweat. The face is one of the only places on the body where the skin is bare and underneath it the capillaries sit close to the surface.

[00:01:50]When the body needs to dump heat, those vessels open and the blood rises. That is not an expression. That is a window.

[00:01:59]And it is the same mechanism as a human blush. Not a similar one, the same one.

[00:02:07]Heat will do it. Effort will do it. Fear will do it. The color does not tell you which.

[00:02:17]You already know the square in the wall.

[00:02:21]It is the way into the interior.

[00:02:24]It is where the shade is.

[00:02:27]It is where the whole troop goes when the sun is like this. There are bars.

[00:02:33]They stack up against them until there is no floor left. Yesterday, the coolest place in the enclosure was full. A baby was nearby. The mother was inside.

[00:02:45]You know which mother?

[00:02:47]She is the one from the bite. If you did not see that video, the link is above.

[00:02:54]Punch went in.

[00:02:58]They put him out.

[00:03:12]He sat on the edge. the exact line where the cool ends and July begins his back to everyone who was already in.

[00:03:22]Then he left.

[00:03:24]Some doors are not closed. They are only full.

[00:03:31]Then a blue uniform came into the enclosure with a bucket.

[00:03:36]Two laps.

[00:03:39]Makoshi walked the whole enclosure twice, throwing food to every monkey in it, to the ones with mothers, to the ones with rank, to the ones who had just put punch out of the square.

[00:03:54]And the whole time on his shoulders, a monkey who did not come down.

[00:04:00]Not for the first lap, not for the second.

[00:04:07]a meter and a half off the ground. There is no hierarchy.

[00:04:11]There is no matroline.

[00:04:13]There is nobody up there who can decide you do not belong.

[00:04:18]Punch ate outside yesterday above all of them.

[00:04:23]On the body of the one he treats as his father.

[00:04:51]Then Mochan came. It had been a while.

[00:04:55]She has the babies now. She has less time than she used to have. She did not stop. She has less time.

[00:05:04]She groomed him properly. Belly, back, belly. Again, if you want to know what grooming actually is, what it does to a macak's body, why it was never about cleaning, we made a whole video about it yesterday.

[00:05:28]The link is above.

[00:05:34]And then Sotomaru walked past. You already know what happens when somebody asks Sotomaru whether he wants grooming.

[00:05:42]Soaru always says yes.

[00:05:54]Today it rained out of pure heat. Oruran mama was in the enclosure.

[00:06:02]once a week. Now, that is what the ending of something looks like when it is done slowly and on purpose. The others went for her.

[00:06:47]Punch had a bad time and then they called him to eat inside.

[00:06:54]Watch him run. Watch how fast a body moves when it knows a sound is meant for it. Not for the troop, for him. We do not know what he is hearing. It might be his name. It might be a noise that has always arrived with food and hands and safety.

[00:07:13]Nobody can tell you which. Not us. Not the keepers.

[00:07:20]What do you think he hears?

[00:07:23]Miaakoshi went inside.

[00:07:25]Oran Mama stayed out, face down in the water, arms open, rain landing on a back that has been held harder than most real ones.

[00:07:37]And at the railing, a man in a blue uniform stood and looked at her. Rain does not know the difference between a mother and the idea of one. Neither, it turns out, does anyone else.

[00:07:54]Wild presence in every animal. Something human.