"Who needs who more?"

by Louise Strope

This is a very true story about a 76 yr old lady with Alzheimer’s Disease  (my mother) and a Baby Monkey named Chase who really  needed to be loved  and not moved from house to house.  My mother came to live with me Oct 2000 because she was unable to live by herself any longer.  Mother has always gotten alone well with my Java named KIKKI who is 6yrs old.  Kikki loves to sit and groom mother but, they both take little “naps” also while watch the Discovery Channel.

A good friend of mine (who of course) has monkeys, came by with a baby Spider Monkey named Selena.  Selena  was holding onto her HUGGY, and wasn’t moving around a lot and we sat Selena in my mothers lap.  Mother didn’t have any reaction.  I said mother what do you think about the baby monkey.  She looked at me saying something to the effect of you girls are just fooling me.  I said mother that monkey is real.

Well, my friend pulled Selena off of her HUGGY and she SCREAMED.  I thought my mother would just fall in the floor.  She then grabbed that monkey & huggy and held onto them the rest of the time they were there.  For the next several days mother just kept on and on to any and everybody about that BABY Monkey.  And she was constantly asking me where the baby was.

Finally, I decided if she keeps talking about that Monkey I’m gonna get another Baby.  At my home now I have a Java 6yrs old, green monkey (vervet) who is 8 yrs old and a special 6yrs old Snow Monkey.

Okay, you guessed it, she kept talking about the Baby.  So I called my friends and said GET ME A BABY.  Within 72 hours they had found a little fellow 9 weeks old that was in his 2^nd home .  I said get him ! 

Baby Chase, had not been Loved, yet.  He didn’t even have a HUGGY, he had just recently acquired a blanket of his own.  Let me tell you those days have changed.

Baby Chase has his NEW Grand-mom eating out of his hands.  When she gets up in the mornings she looks and checks on the Baby.  Mother’s Nurse and a friend of mine & myself change his diaper, and feed him. But, the joy that little fellow brings to mother is well worth it.  Chase and mother crawl around in the floor playing “hide-N-seek”, are just playing.  I checked on mother one afternoon, (knowing that she was napping) and she was sitting in her rocker asleep and he was laying across her shoulders sleeping.

I’ve been asked how much did you pay for him, and my reply is IF he was $100,000.00 he would be worth every penny, because of the smiles and laugh’s  we are having with him.

So to me it goes without saying, WHO NEEDS WHO MORE ?