"Mischief"

by Kendra Lester

Part 2 - Monkey settles in

That drive seemed like the longest of my young life.  Twenty-five miles over twisting, serpentine, dirt roads with a frightened, wailing monkey voicing her dismay at every turn.   It wasn't long before a rather pungent odor assaulted my nostrils and sent them quivering in defense. But even this unpleasant aroma couldn't dampen my enthusiasm for the fragile, little monkey gal in the back of my van. I just held my breath and drove between breaths.  Alternating between gasping for breath and a huge smile plastered on my face probably made me look like some kind of serial killer to the motorists I met, but in my delirium I was oblivious to it all.

Driving home with Monkey, was the cumulation of all my dreams.  I fell in love with my first monkey when I was a gawky nine years old. One had just been delivered to our local neighborhood pet store.  Thirty-five years later, I can not remember what kind it was. But I do remember my heart lurched as I leaned over that crate and peered into the cutest little baby face in the world. I stood stone still, in shocked surprise when the owner told me that real people could actually buy one.  I remember talking all kinds of silly, babbling baby talk to it, watching it's little face and just about dying when it reached it's tiny little arms out to me. I was hooked right then and there. I turned to my poor daddy and started begging and pleading to let me have it.  I wanted it more than anything I could ever remember wanting.  But the reality of living in a dirt-poor family with seven kids, is the reality that such expensive and unnecessary things are always beyond your reach.  But it didn't stop my yearning or my dreaming. 

Driving home that day with Monkey in my van, I could have died and I would not have cared, for I had reached an euphoric high that can only come from ones' wishes being granted when least expected or almost forgotten. With the help of my curious and willing neighbors, the unloading and settling in of her cage went fairly smooth. But, it didn't take a rocket scientist to know that that ratty, dilapidated cage had to go.  I called my cabinetmaker neighbor to come see my new baby.  And while he was there I started wheeling and dealing on the price for a new cage. He started taking measurements and we discovered if I moved everything out of my 14 x 14 dining room, I could fit a perfect cage in there.  After a little more discussion he told me he would also build me an outdoor cage for her to use on pretty days.  After settling the caging question, I was ready to move on to other problems.  How to set about finding out what she liked and didn't like?  Food? That was the next area to tackle.  Her coat (what there was of it) was dull, and her belly bulged (and it didn't seem to be from good food either). As I pondered what I had and what she might like, I decided on some apples, leftover meatloaf and some juicy white grapes.  I sliced the apples into pieces small enough to fit through the chicken wire. 

If I had any real guts I guess I would have opened the door and placed the food in her cage like a civilized person.  But honestly, I was too afraid of what she might do if I tried opening the  door. Would she bite me, dash out the door and run away, would she tear the door from my hands and refuse to go back in the cage?  I had no idea what she might do and no experience in reading monkey faces. My dream was for her to come running to me, jump into my arms, her arms around my neck, like one of those mushy, romantic commercials.   But the distrust I saw in her intelligent, amber eyes spoke volumes.  The watchfulness in her eyes, the ramrod stiff way she held her body was a clear message in any language, she would not be jumping into my arms anytime soon.  Common sense won out over fantasy and I dropped the food through the wire and backed away.  She wouldn't meet my eyes head on, but I could see her watching everything I did, from out of the corner of her sad ones.  When I backed away from the door, pretending to be busy with other things, she came forward.  Gently lifting each and every thing to her nose to test it's smell I suppose.  The quizzical looks she gave the meatloaf was comical, it was clear she had never seen nor smelt a food such as this before. I watched with silent wonder at the diversified   expressions playing across that monkey face, as she sampled each item.   I watched almost appalled as she gather it all up into her arms, dashing to the corner with it, as though some demon would soon be  back to take it all away.  She was almost choking as she stuffed food in her mouth as fast as she could.  She was so terrified that she was quivering as she crammed her face full.  My own fear almost overpowering me, as I stood there afraid that she would choke herself to death and helpless to stop her feeding frenzy.  Well one thing was clear, I would need to introduce everything to her a little slower and in smaller amounts next time. 

When she first started eating her food, I was more intent on if she was going to try the food and what I might need to do if she hurt herself or refused to eat.  I was so intent on this facet of her care that I had not begin to notice anything about her physical being, like how she carried her self or how erect she held her body.  Without noticing these things, I still sensed something was a little out of kilter, something I couldn't quite pinpoint.  But when she moved back across the cage, gathering all the lose pieces that she had dropped in her mad dash, I began to realized what was wrong.  She did not walk upright but half scooted herself along the bottom of the wire cage.   Now I wasn't an experienced monkey keeper by any stretch of the imagination, but even I could not remember seeing monkeys at the zoo or on TV moving in this way.  In fact, it seemed that the ones that were not swinging themselves through the trees, were if not walking upright or least walking semi-upright on their knuckles.  I nudged the drawers in my mind and could not ever recall seeing a single monkey scooting around, even the babies seemed to have at the least crawled.

After mulling it over in my mind, I decided to call my vet and ask his opinion.  After his laughter abated, he said this one had to be the craziest pet I had sprung on him yet. This country vet never had a dull moment with my crew as his patients. He had over the years treated my skunks, snakes, turtles, parrots, caiman and opossums.  And though he fancied himself a jack of all animals, he said this one might be a little out of his league.  But he knew I would not rest or let him have any peace until he found me someone, so he volunteered to call around and see if he could find someone to see her.  Even with my limited information and his limited primate knowledge he knew that we needed to be doing something to improve her lot.  So he suggested I  give her some of my dog vitamins, you know the ones that looked more like horse pills than anything else.

In the mean time, I loaded my weary self up and headed for the library and our local pet store.  Neither which had anything worth while on monkeys as pets. But the library did at least have some basic books on monkeys, so I checked out an armload and headed home for some serious studying.

When I got home the first thing I offered her was one of these wonderful doggy vitamins, you know the kind all the doggies love, or so my vet says.  She smelled it, turned it around and around, took one bite and spit it on the floor. So the next order of business was some good old kid's vitamins that smelled good and tasted even better, not that I would know.  Anyway  those she ate two of.  I figured as poor of condition as she was in, two would heal her faster. 

I started looking around her cage and noticed she did not have a blanket and she seemed to be shivering.  So I rounded up some of Kenneth's old baby blankets and stuffed a couple through her wire.  She totally ignored them, but latter when I came back through the room, she was sitting on one and the other was draped over her thin shoulders.  Yet even with two blankets, she was still shivering, her skinny form just trembling.  I felt a lump the size of a tennis ball in my throat, I wanted so hard to take her out and hold her, until she felt warm and loved.  But years of animal rescue had taught me to respect their space. So back to the animal closet I went, I pulling out a reflector lamp. This I set up on one end of the cage so she could decide how warm she wanted to be.  On my next trip through the room, both she and her blankets were under it.  Mission accomplished, she was fed, warm and not screaming.  I guess that was as good as I could hope for on the first day in her new home. 

With the night settling rapidly upon the house, and the other creatures living there starting their nighttime bedding sounds, I decided to take one last look at her before retiring myself. She seemed settled and as content as she could be under the circumstances. So I reached up and turned off the room lights, standing in the doorway for quite a while, just watching her sleepy eyes drooping and listening to her soft little ooh noises. The lamp gave off a cozy glow in the darkness and cast tiny shadows on the sharp planes of her face. Both sleep and shadows softening the harden lines on her face, until she looked like a hundred other babies, safe in bosom of their families, the world over.   Time, was going to be the one thing we both needed and the hardest to live with. After all the years of waiting, the child in me wanted to play with my new playmate.  The mother in me just wanted to mother her and make all the bad memories go away.  But the realist in me knew that it wouldn't be that easy or that quick and if I moved too fast I could destroy the trust we both so badly needed. I knew with time you could move mountains, build bridges and mend one poor little monkey's body and soul. The realist won, time it would be!!!!!

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