Affenberg (Monkey Mountain) 5/19/2011

So today we went to Salem, Germany (about 1 hour away) with our friends Melanie, Martin and Max to visit Monkey Mountain. It is a place that has about 200 Barbary Macaques (Monkeys) that wander freely within a 20 acre area. They are an old world monkey species that is native to Africa but are endangered so there are a few areas that have habitats for them in hopes of preserving them. So when you go you wander along a path with popcorn in your hands and the monkeys will come to you and you can feed them popcorn. I really wasn't sure Elise would like doing this but I think it helped to have Max to watch because after the first couple of monkeys came she had the hang of it and wanted to fed every monkey she saw. It helped too that Spencer and her found an old, lazy monkey that just sat there and carefully took the popcorn from her.

They have regular feeding spots that they feed the monkeys at, at specific times of day so that they will gather and people can see a lot of them. The caretaker also told us some about the monkeys and pointed out the oldest, youngest, leader, etc.

Elise found a very eager monkey while she was watching them feed the monkeys. A younger monkey came and sat on the fence by her so she held out her had to give it popcorn. One problem, you are supposed to put one piece of popcorn in an open hand for the monkeys to take because they want all the popcorn they can see. Well Elise had a piece in her fingers that she was trying to hand him but she also had a handful of popcorn in her fist. The monkey kept trying to take the popcorn in her fist because there was more but Elise kept telling it no and pulling her hand back so it could have what was in her fingers. After a couple of rounds of this the monkey grabbed Elise's hand and went after the popcorn. After freeing Elise I thought she wouldn't want to feed anymore monkeys but somehow that didn't deter her at all.

Elise and Max climbed up onto this log bench to sit and then all of a sudden two little monkeys climbed on just like you see them. Elise was not so sure about monkeys surrounding her and didn't want to sit there for very long.

Elise and Max telling us all about...everything!

There were a few other animals outside of the monkeys area like deer, frogs, ducks and storks. I'm not sure I have ever seen a place where storks nest but there are a lot here and it was really cool to see. All the roof tops have at least one nest and this time of year they were all full with baby storks.