17 Monkeys and a Postcard

One morning, a man drove into the park with a big van and got a site for the night. In the afternoon, he released 17 monkeys on the grounds. The monkeys ran around the park and ran onto the different sites to explore the occupants and their properties.

These were brown monkeys with white faces and white bums. Kind of like Curious George. Some of the kids were thrilled, some cried. Some people tried to whack the monkeys off their site with a broom or whatever they had. Most people just scratched their heads at the monkeys wondering what’s going.

Nash, one of the park residents, tried to gave beer to a monkey beer and tried to show him how to smoke cigarettes. The monkey ate the cigarette instead. The monkey man came running and cursing, saying Nash was corrupting his prize monkey.

Dean was beside himself. He said this is a trailer park for people, not for wild monkeys. He runs a campground, not a zoo. He was making such a ruckus about the monkeys and wanting to get rid of them that people said to him, “C’mon, calm down, Dean. They’re cute. Let’em stay.”

The monkeys’ owner, Abe Aberdeen, said he was an animal trainer. He was training these monkeys for the circus. He said the monkeys were not wild animals, they were highly trained performers. And to show how well trained the monkeys were, he blew a whistle in two short bursts. It was amazing. All the monkeys stopped what they were doing. It looked like monkeys came out of nowhere and ran to Abe’s site. Each monkey paired up with a partner and lined up two by two, in two straight lines, except for the monkey in front. He stood by himself. They all looked at Abe and waited for their next instruction.

Abe made a wide circle with his arm and the monkeys started walking around in a circle holding hands. When Abe clapped his hands, all the monkeys stopped, stood in two lines and faced Abe.

Then Abe said, “Front roll,” gesturing his hand in small forward circles low to the ground. The first two pairs of monkeys did front rolls across the grass.

Abe raised one arm over his head, said, “Twirl,” and made spinning circles with his other hand. The next two pairs of monkeys raised an arm each and spun slowly across the grass like ballerinas.

Then Abe took out a fiddle, held it up to his chin and played a few notes. He said, “Square dance.” The next four pairs of monkeys stood in a square facing each other. The lone monkey stood in the middle of the square. Abe played a dance tune and to everyone’s amazement, the monkey in the middle flapped its arms and stomped its feet, doing its own dance. The other monkeys did square dance steps. Sure, they bumped into each other but they sure did walk around in opposite directions, meeting up with new partners, almost to the fiddle’s beat.

Abe said to everyone, “We’re still working on that.” Turning to the monkeys, he said, “Bow to the nice people,” and he showed them how by bowing to them. All the monkeys mimicked him and made several bows to the people standing around.

The whole time, everyone was clapping, squealing, hooting and hollering. We were just so amazed to see monkeys could do these tricks.

Well there was nothing Dean could do but let the monkeys stay. He told Abe, “How are you going to follow each one to stoop and scoop?”

Abe said, “Sir, my monkeys do not defecate in public. They require privacy to do their business. They go inside the van.”

“You have to leave tomorrow or I could lose my operating licence. And keep them inside your van for the night.”

“You allow pets in here, sir,” said Abe, “these are highly trained pets, better behaved than some of your children here, I bet.” He looked around at everyone, and they clapped and nodded their heads.

It was such great fun. After that, people sort of went their own ways. Abe and his monkeys stayed more or less on his site. Some monkeys went off visiting.

Abe was obviously smiling with pride. He looked around and saw me still looking at him and the monkeys from my site. So he gave something to one of his monkeys and whispered something to him.

The monkey came bouncing up to me. He was holding something in his hand alright. It was a card. He shoved it at me. So I took it and put it down on the table and said, “Thanks.”

The monkey picked up the card again and put it back in my hand. He jumped up and down and went, “Eeek, eeek, eeek.” I guess he wanted me to look at the card.

The card had a picture of a camel crossing a busy city street as if it was the dessert, completely unaware it was stopping traffic. I flipped the card over. It was a postcard. And it was addressed to me at the park. It said,

Dear Mindy,

I hope you and Jesse are doing okay. I’m okay. I did what I could for you and Jesse. I guess this is it for us. I hope you have a good life. Good bye.

Love,

Mitch

The first thought that came into my head was, Thank god I don’t have to return the money. I’d already put in an order for a new trailer that’s got room for a few kegs of beer inside.