Monkeys are Evil!

You know the saying, "Monkey hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil?" Well, I think monkeys ARE evil. Before any animal activists get on my case, hear my personal interactions with monkeys. Of all my monkey interactions, none have left me with warm fuzzies!

Baboons are the scariest. First of all, they are mean looking creatures, tall and very aggressive. One of the older MKs bought a baboon from somewhere and thought it would be a good idea to drug it, force it into a cage and chain the cage to the top of a van full of kids for the 6 hour trip down to school. It pooped all over the roof, but it did get us through the border stops quite quickly. When we got to school, the baboon was chained to a tree next to the guy's dorm. He paced back and forth and kinda grunted at us. They ended up having to shoot him because he bit someone or had some disease.

Okay, so the real trauma for me started with a dorm pet. A chimpanzee named "Lulu." She was caged outside the dorm, but the middle schoolers would get her out and let her climb on them and take her all over campus. Sometimes they would bring her in the dorm. All of us little kids would call out, "Lulu down the hall!" You could hear kids jumping under beds and into closets. Then the bravest would peek out and check when she was gone, so that we could come out of hiding.

I had a fear of Lulu from the beginning, but it escalated one year on my birthday. I came into the dorm, standing in the doorway without realizing Lulu was in the dorm. Like a slo-mo movie I saw Lulu across the living room, she turned towards me and started galloping on her front knuckles and back feet, lips tightened to show All of her teeth. She ran straight for me and I was so paralyzed, I just stood there. Of course she grabbed onto my leg and took a bite. I started screaming, shaking my leg, trying to get her off. She leaned back her head and started screeching like Chimps do. Need I go on? Now you see why monkeys are evil? I was only 7 or 8, had turned it just that day!

During vacations, when we lived in the city, we stayed on a mission station that was surrounded by walls on every side. In one corner of the station one of the missionaries was raising rabbits, which we loved to play with. The only problem was that there was a little green monkey leashed to a zip line that went from his tree all the the way across to the wall. We would wait until he was up in his tree and try to run under him to the back. He would fly out of the tree and grab us by the hair, biting whatever he could get. Then when we made it to the other side, hearts beating wildly and screaming, we would look back to find him taunting us. He would jump up and down, eyes wide, mouth wide, showing all of his teeth. He was about the size of a house cat, but we were terrified of him.

A mile down from our boarding school was a zoo. We could hear the monkeys and lions if the wind blew right down the valley. Sometimes we would visit the zoo. The monkeys were chained to the trees, not caged. When you walked by, even at a distance, you would often hear a "ping" or feel a "wump" as a mango seed or rock hit. There was one huge chimp who was very laid back. If fact people had taught him some vulgar sign language, which he showed off to everyone. He also was taught to smoke. He would walk around with a cigarette in his mouth and if someone lit it, he would smoke, no lie! So he was the only monkey that came close to redeeming the whole kingdom of monkeys for me. Sorry, monkey-lovers, but from personal experience, monkeys are evil!