Monkeys...what else

I’m sure all of you must be familiar with the saying...I don’t go looking for trouble but monkeys somehow always find me. Yes… monkeys. I was seven years old when I first had an encounter with my extended family. It was sitting near a trash can eating a banana, a baby monkey, the most adorable thing I had ever seen, naturally I started jumping and pointing, but my joy was short lived. Unfortunately for

me, mom monkey was lurking somewhere behind me and when she saw a potential kidnapper she gave me the old claws in the back. I had to get six shots so that I wouldn’t turn into a monkey(that’s the reason my parents gave me).

Ironically ever since that day I have had a fascination with monkeys but it wasn’t the only time I was going to come face to face with one

Few years later... there were a series of break-ins in our neighborhood. The thief was stealing all sorts of things …tomatoes, milk and bananas. So one day when I was watching TV and enjoying my lunch, I saw somebody come into the room. At first I thought that it was my brother because well the resemblance was striking but then I noticed a tail and really sharp teeth. So while I crouched in a corner clutching the remote the monkey helped himself to my lunch. Even today with our rocky past I still adore these creatures. My favorite are the orangutans, highly endangered species found in Sumatra and Borneo. In fact one of the things on my ‘do before dying’ list is to visit these islands and help rescue orangutans that are captured and abused by locals there. I feel that if I won’t care about them then who will? Look at it this way, they are like our helpless old relatives who sit in a corner at family functions except in this case they have a tail and love bananas.