Maat is having a rough week.  He’s an older fellow, not the quickest of the bunch, and now he looks as though he took a shotgun blast to the back of the head.  The wound seemed small at first, but once nimble baboon fingers groomed away all the hair (they always seem to do this for their wounded friends), we can now see that it takes up the whole back of his scalp and head.  It does not smell pleasant.  In fact, he reminds me of that kid who makes a cameo in The Sixth Sense, who played with his father gun.  Or Massive Headwound Harry (which I have started calling him) from Saturday Night Live!  Looking generally upset, Maat just sits by himself, at turns staring or whirling around in frenzied circles, trying to get at the flies that plague him.  Even the butterflies won’t leave him alone.  He looks like a mad man, suffering from hallucinations, scanning the air with fevered eyes, snatching at tiny bugs that I can’t even see.  When he’s not moping, he’s plodding up to other baboons and begging for a grooming, utilizing the subtle technique employed by all males, of walking in front of some random female and just standing in front of her face.  Only the females mostly walk away.  I watched him go from female to female yesterday, planting himself in front of each, only to have her stand up and walk away.  He would follow.  She would move further.  Even ugly Umea, a female that looks exactly like the dog in In Bruges (a reference I realize most people won’t get…suffice it to say that it’s a face only a mother could love and, perhaps, only while intoxicated), won’t groom him.  Children just walk up to him a stare.  They gape.  Sometimes they’ll pick at the edges of the wound.  But mostly they’re just in awe.  After watching Maat get rejected six or seven times, I started to get that tingly sad feeling you get when watching something truly pathetic.

And then Amix came along.

Adult males don’t groom other males.  It’s a rule.  It’s like the social stigma the surrounds men holding hands, men linking arms, the taboo responsible for the awkward handshake-back-thump man-hug.  Grooming is between a man and a woman.  Or women.  Or children.  Just not dudes.  But Amix did it.  He sidled up to Maat, who sat forlornly staring at a tuft of grass, and very carefully began to groom his heinous head wound (and, for all I know, Amix was the one who gave it to him…I choose to believe that this is unlikely…impossible even).  I didn’t tear up, but I could have.  It made me want to give Amix a big old snuggly hug (I was slightly deterred by the knowlede that he would tear me in half if I tried).  Instead I just stood there and documented this adorable moment of man-love that seems all but non-existent in my new baboon friends.  Amix is my new favorite.