Last big trip for the year is coming up: Panama (cue Van Halen song)

My twitter pal, Natalie (@_nctaylor) is in Costa Rica right now and has had the pleasure of discovering Howler Monkeys, which of course is cool, because I love it when anyone finds Howler Monkeys interesting. (Who wouldn’t?)

Sharing in Natalie’s excitement over Howler Monkeys, combined with my own thrill in preparing for our upcoming trip to Panama prompted me to dig up this video from last year’s trip to Panama. You can hear (but not see) the two groups of Howler Monkeys battling it with their lungs in a bit of a territory dispute as we listened atop the tower near the Discovery Center at Pipeline Road. They’re in the distance, but imagine being in the very same jungle with these guys. My heart was beating very fast with both joy and terror. But mostly joy because I wasn’t in the way of these howlers.

The real treat, though, is Steve’s spot-on impersonation at the tail end of this. Go ahead, give it a play. It’s short and totally worth it if you’ve never heard a howler monkey before. (Or if you’ve never met my husband either.)

Yeah, that’s my husband. He’s a Howler Monkey. And this is him birding, too: