Siri in Isolation

When I grabbed my purse and keys to leave the house for the first time in almost 4 months, Zaffy understood at once and ran to her leash. We were driving, which was fine with her - she loves a ride in the car. She and I settled in the back seat and Oswaldo started the car and pressed the remote for the garage. It didn’t work immediately, and he got flustered as Zaffy started barking terribly at a person passing in the street. I had to get out of the car to jiggle the gate, but finally - impressed with how jittery we felt - we were on our way. We picked up my masked walking friend, Ann, who slid into the front seat and presented her closed fist to Zaffy for recognition.  After a cautious sniff Zaffy responded by licking her mask. Oswaldo dropped the two of us at the deserted side access, and we started walking through the familiar shortcut into the park. Near the entrance staff wearing masks and visors waived us through – “ Não precisa tocar nada - No need to touch anything,”...

  I know monkeys are in the area when I hear their high-pitched chatter followed by startling and angry jungle screams. Then a band of young brown monkeys - the kind I remember from reading CAPS FOR SALE aloud for my son when he was little, swing through the tall jackfruit trees on our property. With long tails curling at the end and little squished faces surrounded by stiff beards they bend the branches and release them in swishing flow of movements. As they move, they jump by instinct, traversing even quite large open spaces without hesitation, at the last minute grasping the nearest branch. Birds flutter away in alarm, and our German Shepherd, who seems more attuned to the birds, runs back and forth on the terrasse beneath the trees barking with a tennis ball in her mouth. She jumps heavily trying to catch the birds but ignores the monkeys unless a different sound makes her crash trough the undergrowth in search of whatever she heard. Then she too leaves a trail of moving foliag...