Now, don’t get me wrong.  There are some great teenage boys out there: respectful, fun, frightfully entertaining.  I should know because I taught many.  But in the baboon world, teenage boys seem to mostly suck.  They’re all bravado and chest-popping, unable to challenge the big boys so the pick on their moms.  And me.

In many ways a teenage male baboon is just like a teenage male human.  They’re gangly and awkward, their limbs getting long quickly but without any muscle to back them up.  Their faces stretch to an approximation of their future selves but it mostly just makes them look skinnier.  Their voices deepen.  They roughhouse with each other constantly, gnawing on and surprising their friends, chasing each other in crazy, spirited loops, bumping into old ladies as they go (no apology).  But in a world where dominance is key, you have to start practicing early, so teenage males become street corner punks, scaring young women as they walk by, charging old ladies, threatening mom.

In my groups there are exactly four teenage males.  And all of them but Aloso has given me attitude.  Culprit Number One (and chronic offender) is Windmill (the guys call him “Winimili” because Windmill is hard to say in a Swahili-speaking mouth).  Windmill has threatened me numerous times: raising his eyebrows, slapping the ground in front of me, given me a hard stare-down.  I not-so-affectionately refer to him as “Winimili The (insert really bad word here)” every time I see him.  We are not friends.  Never have a deserved any of his advances, yet whenever I’m close to him, I eye him askance because I know he’s thinking evil thoughts.  In one of our last meetings (thankfully we don’t have many more), I sauntered past him in pursuit of a female and when I stopped to write something down the little twat either firmly grabbed my pants or actually nibbled my leg.  By the time I whirled around to give him a hard look, he had moved off.  Jerk.

Next comes Yalimu.  To be fair Yalimu is just a devoted member of his family and has only really threatened me when he thought I was getting fresh with his little brother or older sister.  Both times though he gave me a little fake charge, an eyebrow raise, and defiant little ground-sweep (males do this a lot to threaten others, sweeping their hand across the ground in front of them to make a little noise).  The rest of the time Yalimu just eyes me warily, the only baboon I can safely say 100% doesn’t trust me.  After 7 months together he still runs off when he sees me coming (though several minutes later he’ll forget I’m even there).  He would definitely pick a fight if he had to, though.

And, finally, there’s Antigua.  Antigua is older than the other boys and usually doesn’t involve himself in their games, or their antics.  In fact, until today, I sort of thought of him as being much more mature.  Of course, then, while walking across a log he turned around and swatted a tiny little kid who fell of the log and landed at me feet, screaming.  Surprised (and always wary of screaming babies, since they may bring angry males), I took a step back and looked up to find Antigua standing stiff-armed, eyebrows raised to high heaven, ready to lunge.  I turned away to avoid eye contact and he eventually moved off.  But how is it that Wambura’s fall was my fault???  HE was the one who pushed her!  Vaguely indignant, I avoided Antigua the rest of the day (though baboons tend to hold grudges for approximately 28 seconds at most).

Of course, these are only the teenage males I know.  I’m also routinely harassed by the young turks who live in camp, some of them snatching at my pants as I walk by, or, as happened yesterday, dipping themselves in bravado and threatening me from the office window (whenever I walked close to them, they promptly scattered).  Soon they’ll be roar-grunting, stiff-arm-threatening, thick-shouldered males and then I won’t have to worry about them.  But then, of course, there will always be a new batch of young upstarts who like making the white lady stumble.