Monkey House Miasma

Among all of the animals that I've worked with over the years, the only group that I can say I've generally been... less fond of have been the primates.   I've worked with a variety of lemurs (which, to be fair, I thought were halfway decent), as well as Old World and New World monkeys and gibbons, as well as (for one hellish day) great apes.  Compared to carnivores, hoofstock, small mammals, birds, and reptiles, I've found it to be a generally unpleasant experience.

Part of it is because I became a zookeeper in order to not deal with people, and monkeys and apes are just too close to my liking.  They exude personality, it's true - but the personality tends to be awful.  

Mostly because I just hate having to go to the bathroom all the time.  Especially in the winter.

When I first started working with non-human primates, the older keepers joked to me about what they called "the Monkey House Curse."  They noticed that, working with the monkeys indoors in the winter (as opposed to the summer, when the animals were outdoors), they had to go to the bathroom.  All.  The.  Time.  This building did not have a functioning toilet, so they'd have to make a hike to go, do their business, come back... and then feel the need to go again, soon.

Part of it, they suspected, was the smell of the monkeys in close-quarters, and I will agree, the ripest smell I've ever encountered from a (live) mammal was a pair of black howler monkeys that I unloaded from a shipping crate once, which sent me gagging into the next room.  Skunks had nothing on it.  Secondly, they theorized that the monkeys were always pooping everywhere, and the power of suggestion weighed on their subconscious until they had to go, too.

I laughed... until after my third trip that morning.  By lunch, I was very familiar with all of the graffiti on the bathroom walls, and was mentally composing a few tentative additions of my own.  Most of which were derogatory towards monkeys.

Winter was especially unpleasant because the monkeys were all inside and the air was heated, making the smell that much more pungent.  Plus, we were already wearing plenty of layers of clothes, making each departure and return a production of putting on and taking off our gear.  It took forever to get the basic cleaning done on those mornings what with all the necessary field trips away from the building.

The worst part?  I can still sometimes smell it, all these years later.