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"It would be very bad for you to get out of the boat." Joseph, a lifelong fisherman and ersatz guide, makes an exaggerated show of clicking his teeth together. "They bite." I had come to the small fishing village of Marshall, Liberia, located just over an hour by car from the capital of Monrovia, to visit what locals affectionately dubbed "Monkey Island." Our rudimentary safety briefing out of the way, Joseph and I settle on a price and set off toward the riverbank, sweating in the thick heat of monsoon season. We pass through a short maze of tin-roofed shacks and wooden tables, where the day's catch has been left to dry in the sun. Further along, a pair of hand-carved canoes wait at the shore, and beside them other fishermen nap in the dappled shade of a palm tree. I climb aboard and Joseph eases the canoe out into the river. After a few tries the outboard belches oily smoke and thrums to life, and as we follow the river, Joseph explains how Monkey Island--actually a collection of six separate islands--came to be. By his telling, an American biomedical research company had been using chimpanzees as test subjects in the development of vaccines for hepatitis, river blindness, and other infectious diseases. When the Liberian Civil War broke out, the company pulled up stakes, and the chimpanzees, unable to swim, were abandoned on the islands as a quarantine measure. As we close in on the nearest island, there is sudden movement. A lone sentry, barely visible, has spotted our canoe. He lets out a short scream and plunges back into the treeline, and a moment later, Joseph stops the canoe only feet away from the island. I hear them before I see them. A cacophony of hooting and high-pitched cries that rise to a crescendo and collapse into eerie silence. Then half a dozen chimpanzees burst through the tangled undergrowth, barreling up to the water's edge, pacing, baring their teeth. Hardly out of arm's reach, they are undeniably intimidating, well-muscled and scarred by fighting and disease. Joseph points out one of the larger chimps. "Sometimes he likes to throw mangoes." The chimpanzees regard us for a moment, and then, concluding that we aren't a threat, begin to eat. There is a startling moment of recognition at their human behavior--several of the chimps wash their hands in the river before eating, and others rinse sand off of their fruit. "I think they learned from the Americans," Joseph says. The smaller chimps swallow their mangoes in greedy mouthfuls before escaping into the trees with extra fruit in each hand, while the older, larger individuals lounge on the ground and eat at a leisurely pace. When they have finished, they amble off into the dense brush without a backward glance. It's a short encounter with animals that I could easily watch for hours, and Joseph seems to read my mind. "There's another island not too far," he says. "There's a big one there. The biggest one. Last time I went he even grabbed the boat." I tell him that I'll have to save that encounter for my next visit, and Joseph laughs. "Next time," he says, as he starts up the engine and leads us back to land.