Parenting for Primates

"Chartier and Joe were expecting again and I was dreading it. It was always the same. I would be awakened at midnight by the screams of terrified baby monkeys being forcefully rejected by their parents. I would leap out of bed and race into the monkey room, where I would carefully pry the babies' fingers from the cage wire, to which they were desperately clutching, or gingerly lift out the bodies of the ones who had been killed. When they survived the rejection, I rescued them. I warmed and cleaned them, and then I fed them, wrapped them in a soft furry cloth, and placed them on a heating pad. After the crisis was over I'd realize that I had once again signed on for two months of caretaking for two infant cottontop tamarins. I would be sleep-deprived and grumpy; I would be unable to go out for more than a couple of hours unless I hired a monkey-sitter or took the babies with me. What can I do, I thought, to teach Chartier and Joe how to parent their own babies?"Smith, Harriet J. is the author of 'Parenting for Primates ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780674019386 and ISBN 0674019385.