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I suppose I
was 12 or 13 when that I “put in” with my mother to buy a pet monkey. In those
days you could purchase squirrel monkeys in pet shops, though to my knowledge
one would need a special pet handling license to do so now.
At any rate,
the day dawned when mama succumbed to my wishes and drove me to the local pet
shop, and we proceeded to browse the “monkey section” of the store. Of course,
given that we lived in a lightly inhabited area of the state, you might imagine
the selection was a bit thin. I suppose there may have been all of two or three
monkeys from which to choose.
To this day
I don’t recall what sort of home-going receptacle the store keeper packed the
little critter in, nor the name which I ultimately gave him, nor what I fed
him, but we someone managed to do the deed, and he was mine.
To say I was
ill-prepared to take care of the tiny imp would be an understatement, since
when we got home I placed the little guy in a relatively small cage behind the
house, and did whatever amateurish things I did to care for him. And I might
well have added one more item to the list of variables in the previous
paragraph.
How long I
had him.
Almost six
decades have come and gone since that season in my life, but if memory serves
me well, the little tyke “came and went” during the course of a few days.
It soon
became apparent that there would be no holding of, nor playing with my newfound
“friend,” since to do so would have resulted in a mauling of the hands,
shoulders, neck and face I would not soon forget. And I can be quite sure this
was the case, since before I “knew better” he gave me a couple of unexpected
scratches and bites which put me on my guard for some rare tropical disease.
It may have
been the same week I adopted him, or the next that I gingerly opened the door
of his cage to feed him a banana or bunch of grapes, when he darted out said
door, and scrambled up a nearby oak tree. As I reflect upon it now there can be
little doubt that he’d been longingly looking up into the tree above him, and
making plans to escape; as surely as you can say, “Shawshank Redemption.”
And as “Mrs. Fairfax” of the book and movie, “Jane Eyre” might have mused,
“What to do?
What to do?”
There seemed
to be little that I could do. I recall standing beneath that old oak tree,
looking up, and he sat among the top branches of the tree, looking down. It was
then that I shouted a few choice four letter words, kicked over the cage, and
stood there watching the little guy celebrate his escape for an hour or more.
No doubt, I enlisted the help of my dad, and no doubt he informed me of the
hopelessness of my predicament. Like putting toothpaste back into a tube, no
coxing managed to lure the creature back into the cage.
There was
little I could do but set a course for my nearby back door, and leave the fate
of my fuzzy friend to Providence.
Odd how
sometimes we never know the ultimate outcome of this or that momentary
occurrence, or sometimes we live out multiplied decades; when things suddenly
become as recognizable as a completed thousand piece puzzle.
It was only
last year that I happened to mention that ancient one-monkey zoo, and the
occupant thereof, to my brother, Wayne. And it was then that I saw something
register in his eyes. For it seems he was endowed with a missing piece of that
puzzle, and had “kept it in his pocket” for well over half a century.
“I heard
that little critter lived in those trees surrounding Mr. Pickens’ house for
years.”
My brother’s
informational tidbit caught me off guard, and no doubt I responded with a,
“Say what?”
Mr. Pickens
owned a commercial plant nursery which was located a few hundred yards from my
house, and I worked part-time for him after school during my teen years. But in
spite of this, I’d never heard this story, and I found myself relieved that the
tiny ape had managed to survive longer than I might have hoped at the time.
The State of
Florida is home to numerous exotic native and non-native species. Black bears,
panthers, alligators, crocodiles, boa constrictors, manatees, and monkeys of
every breed and variety prowl the swamps, forests and waterways of our
peninsula.
On a
peripheral note, I vividly remember my 40 day National Guard stint in Homestead
after Hurricane Andrew. The 2/116 Field Artillery had “set up shop” on the
property of the Metro Zoo; or what was left of it. We were informed that a
research facility on the grounds of the zoo had been wiped out during this
Category 5 storm, and that dozens of HIV-infected monkeys had escaped; not
unlike the previous escapade of my little friend. And we were admonished,
should we see one, to shoot the critter on sight. None, however were sighted,
and none, however were shot. It has been conjectured that these research
animals made their way into the Florida Everglades, and proceeded to practice
un-safe sex the past two and a half decades. As a result, there might well be
hundreds of HIV-infected monkeys roaming a full third of our state.
I like to
think my little friend lived out a full, contented, (though admittedly solitary)
life “on the lamb.” No doubt, he was better for having made his escape from his
outdoor prison, and from the well-intended, but amateurish likes of me.
Somehow I’m
glad he, like all those other exotic creatures which populate my native
environment, was given the opportunity to live and to die free, and that in my
latter years I was provided with some understanding of his ultimate fate.
I am once
again reminded that knowledge is a gift. Not unlike the recognition which comes
with the completion of a tedious puzzle.
I can see
him now; enjoying those wild, ecstatic moments amongst the branches.
