Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1914 — MONKEYS EASY PREY [ARTICLE]

MONKEYS EASY PREY

JUNGLE LEOPARDS HAVE NO TROUBLE GETTING A DINNER. Mere Clicking of Animal’s Teeth Frighten Simians Until in Their Excitement They Fall From the Trees; - a How the leopards of the low country jungle of Ceylon capture monkeys is told by L. S. Woolf in a letter to the London Times. “Native Singhalese, who knew the jungle well,” he writes, “always assured me that no form of food, except perhaps the dog, is so acceptable to the leopard as the large gray Wanderoo monkey. I have several times found the remains of monkeys that had obviously furnished the leopard’s meal in the caves which serve the leopards for a lair —and the Inside of a dead leopard has shown further proof. “The Singhalese had often told me that leopards do not attempt to climb trees in search of their prey. “Whenever monkeys see' a leopard slinking under the trees they become excited and all chatter. As soon as the leopard hears this he lies down under a bush begins to click his teeth. ... “This noise seems to fill the monkey with terror and excitement. They huddle together in the tree top above the leopard’s head, jumping up and down on the branches, shrieking and chattering. Below the leopard waits motionless, clicking its teeth, until suddenly one of the monkeys misses its footing and comes to the ground with a thud—and then the leopard is on it in a bound. “I had always received this inforTnatioir with some doubt until I one day saw, at any rate, the first acts of the tragedy. I was traveling in thick jungle aiJd my bullock carts having gone on in the early afternoon, I was following later in the evening down the same sandy track. I noticed that a large leopard had been following behind the bulls and that he had suddenly turned aside down a small game track. “At the same moment I became aware of a tremendous chattering of monkeys in the distance, I had a Singhalese with me and we crept through the thick jungle toward the nisse. ;

“After crawling about 150 yards I saw to twenty monkeys jumping up and down excitedly on the top of a small tree. They seemed to be looking down at something on the other side of a large bush which was in front of me and when they saw us they kept on turning their heads first at us and then to something else, leaping up and down and shrieking perpetually and —as it appeared to me—gesticulating and beckoning to us with the.r long, thing gray arms. “The same thought came to the Singhalese, for he whispered to me: ‘They are beckoning you to shoot.’ I lay still for a moment thinking which side of the bush it was best to crawl around, and then I distinctly heard the click, click, click of the leopard’s teeth behind it. I chose the wrong side, for as I came around all I saw was the leopard disappear in a great curving bound into the thick jungle beydnd.” —-