Monkey In The Middle
It was snowing. Thankfully it hadn’t started sticking yet, but it was beginning to look slushy outside. That was just my luck. The inclement weather waited for me to get out of school to begin its assault. The afternoon, like so many others that winter, wasn’t shaping up to be all that exciting. I showed up about thirty minutes early for my five to nine o clock shift at Warehouse for Pets. The store looked like it was dead.
There was maybe one or two people milling around in the back, but it was otherwise a ghost town. Willie, my boss, said it’d been slow most of the day. Willie had a mullet long after they were popular and long before their glorious second wave. He was an old school punk rocker and found himself as a middle-aged pet store manager. He said that there wasn’t a ton of work to do, and he may send me home if business didn’t pick up. I hung out at the register and talked with him for a bit. We made the typical small talk about the store’s inner workings, and new animals we hoped to get while I waited to clock in. As we were discussing the nuances of algae blooms in guppy tanks, and the ferret fecal happenings, I saw the sign.
Someone scrawled “Monkey for sale, $500” on a piece of torn notebook paper and it was posted up behind the cash register. It was in full view of anyone checking out. I can’t describe why, but I got irrationally excited. When I mentioned the sign to Willie, it was almost as if providence, fate, or some primate god intervened. No lie, the guy who authored the sign was still scuttling around the store and had just made his way up to the register. The snow’s pace outside increased to an aggressive flurry, sticking to the bushes and mulch beds in front of the store. My luck, and the landscape outside, seemed to be changing.
I struck up a conversation with the simian salesman. I tried to sound educated and mentioned that my mom had monkeys growing up, and that I’d always wanted one. Even though $500 was extremely cheap for what I assumed a monkey should cost, it could have been a million dollars to me. I was sixteen years old and made $5.50 an hour cleaning animal poop. I didn’t let on that I couldn’t raise that kind of money. He had to know that I was just a dumb kid. I kept talking and just let my curiosity inform the words that spilled out of my mouth. I think the guy just wanted to get out of the store, and maybe in an attempt to call my bluff said “do you wanna go see her?” I was elated. I asked my boss if I could punch in a little later since we were slow and thankfully he obliged.
Here’s where it gets weird. This guy was a complete stranger to me. My boss didn’t know him, and he wasn’t a regular customer. Cell phones weren’t common yet, especially not for teenagers. Most of us were still tied to landlines. Actually, the only mobile phone I’d ever seen at that point in my life was this monstrosity that permanently stayed mounted in my step-dad’s car, and the Motorola flip phone my mom had just gotten. I say all of that to say what I was doing was extremely sketchy. I was going into the unknown without a safety net and no way to call for help. Sometimes, when it comes to animals, my decision-making skills aren’t the most well developed. This was one of those blurry times.
As I got into his late 80s Oldsmobile, I had the thought that perhaps this was a bad idea. “Just move that trash to the back seat” the man said. I can’t remember if I ever even got his name. Thinking back, there were so many red flags in this “adventure.” I shuffled his refuse, cigarette cartons, and old newspapers into the back seat. As I settled into the well-worn passenger seat, he lit an off-brand cigarette and started the car. The snow was still falling and so far, it hadn’t stuck to the roads yet. There was one more small detail I forgot to ask before I got into this strange man’s car; exactly where are we going?
After we’d been driving for what felt like a really long time, I finally asked him if we were close, and where he lived exactly. He rattled off the name of some small town I’d never heard of. “We’re almost there,” he retorted, as if by my asking I’d annoyed him somehow. I looked at my watch and we had been on the road almost an hour at that time. So, to recap; stranger danger, falling snow, at least an hour from home, destination unknown, monkey unseen. Oh boy. I’m an idiot.
Finally, we turned off the main road and headed into a neighborhood. As if this story couldn’t get any sketchier, the neighborhood was an old run-down trailer park. Not the nice kind. The type of park where the trailers had no underpinning and there was at least one or two cars on blocks with plants growing through them. High class stuff. There were no doublewides. These were all beat down single wide trailers. Please don’t misunderstand me here, I have nothing against trailers, trailer parks, or even single wides…I’ve lived in all of the above. This is just painting a more ominous picture for me as the car creaked to a halt in his gravel driveway.
As I made my way up the sagging front porch steps, I realized I had no idea what a bonnet macaque monkey even was. I’d never seen one on T.V. and google was just a funny word with no meaning at that time. When the man opened the front door, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. There before me, thankfully, was a primate in a large dog kennel. It’s conditions, and the house, were abysmal. It smelled like a mix of stale beer, cigarettes and a wet urine-soaked diaper. The kind of smell they don’t advertise in the Yankee Candle Company. I regretted my decision to take this ride and see this poor monkey, but since I was here, I’d at least go through the motions. I had convinced myself there was likely no way I’d be able to afford the monkey, and my mom definitely wouldn’t condone a primate house guest having grown up with smaller monkeys, she knew what would be in store. I was clueless.
The man, without skipping a beat, walked over to the kennel and unlatched its gate. At that exact moment the trailer door slammed closed behind me somewhat threateningly. I jumped at the sound. I was immediately refocused on the large diapered monkey that sat before me. She scrambled up on to the man’s shoulder in one terrifying motion. He leaned towards me and placed her on my shoulder saying “Whatever you do, DO NOT let go of her tail.”
I held that filthy wet tail as the monkey explored my shoulders, but as soon as she started to climb down my back, I released the tension. I didn’t want to hurt the monkey by holding its tail too tight and I had no idea what it was doing on my back. This was the first time I’d ever seen a monkey in real life but I knew enough of animal behavior from the Discovery Channel to know that a cornered or threatened primate was nothing to play with. I released her tail. The room immediately exploded in chaos.
“Why’d you let her go!” The man shouted at me. The truth is, I was scared. That monkey had to be as big or bigger than the biggest house cat I’d ever seen and well, they have HUGE teeth. I mean massive sharp teeth. The macaque launched itself from my back onto the counter and immediately onto the face of the refrigerator. With one swipe of her arm, she threw all of the alphabet magnets from the front of the refrigerator to the floor. The trailer children’s bad artwork fell from the fridge to the sticky floor like autumn leaves. Without losing momentum, she leaped to the top of the cabinets and yanked a hanging pothos plant to the floor.
The primate bounced from the wreckage of the potted plant and immediately landed on the center kitchen island. At this point she settled, briefly, but only to eat the cigarette butts piled up in the ash tray. The man and his very rotund wife were able to corral her back into the kennel. Once the commotion died down, I asked if he could take me back to the pet store. He was more than happy to get me, the agent of chaos, out of his tiny trailer. It was a LONG ride back to work in silence. I guess picking up a stranger was a risk for him too…
He barely stopped the car in front of the pet store as I got out. I thanked him but I didn’t even look back. I practically ran inside the store. I went straight to the time clock and punched in for my shift. After I hung out in the break room long enough to assure that he had left, I started working. My boss asked me how the monkey was and I just shook my head no. I realized I should probably make better life choices. I’d like to say that was the last time I got in the car with a stranger to see animals, but I’d be lying. That’s a story for another day.
What a great story Stan!
Great story, and yes, I have had several "monkeys" on my back throughout life, though none as real as yours!
Enjoyed the read!!