Welcoming Lucky into my Home

I was brought up in the 1950s, when boys didn't play with dolls or stuffed animals and so, true to my upbringing, I didn't have a stuffed animal until recently. But then, in March or April 2007, after I misspelled guenon (a kind of monkey--Cercocebus sabaeus--pronounced "gee KNOWN") at a spelling bee, a friend got me a monkey stuffed animal, to which I promptly bequeathed the name "Gary the Guenon." I laid it on the pillow next to me on my bed. Each day, then, as I entered and exited my bedroom, I would be forced to look on "Gary" and mentally spell "guenon." And I decided that I had to learn at least 20 types of monkeys, to atone for my mistake of not knowing guenon. So, I studied monkeys and their relatives like the marmoset, colobus, guenon, lemur, mangabay, mandrill, proboscis, rhesus, saki, celebes, capuchin, baboon, langur, tamarin, uakari and titi.

But my misspelling of guenon actually led to much better results than that--it led me to get several books out of the library on primates and then on trees and other living things. It eventuated in my taking dozens of "tree" walks last summer, as I decided to try to learn the rudiments, and depths, of the Linnaean classification system. When I would go on a trip (which I did to Charleston in September 2007), I would go a few days early to visit botanical gardens along the way. I now have voluminous yellow pads covered with Latin names of all kinds of living things. I hope to be able to return to this study in 2008, even if one friend described my efforts as "somewhat obsessive."

Finding Gary's "Mate"

Well, as luck would have it, this week I went outside during the day and discovered on my sidewalk a large stuffed monkey. Since I live two houses from a high school, it no doubt had fallen from the backpack of one of the girls (do HS boys collect this type of thing?). It was larger than Gary the Guenon, with a straight smile and a more rounded visage, but had the typical white and black fur of all the stuffed monkeys. I almost decided to take it inside with me, but then I suffered a momentary pang of guilt. Suppose the girl was checking her backpack at this very moment, and realized that she had lost her beloved monkey. She certainly would retrace her steps and, if I didn't leave it there, she might never find it.

So, convinced by this argument, I left the nameless monkey on the sidewalk. I sort of felt bad for it, since the rain was coming down pretty hard and its white fur was beginning to discolor, but I decided that it really was the best thing to do. As the day wore on I looked out, and saw the monkey still lying in front of my house. Later still in the day, I went out to find it was not where I had placed it. Thinking that it was now in the hands of its rightful owner, I turned and was just about ready to go inside when I saw it lying with limbs splayed out in all four directions about twenty feet from the original spot. I quickly went over to it, straightened its arms and legs, and decided to leave it there one more day. This was Thursday, January 3, when the kids had gone back to school.

Friday, January 4

Early Friday morning I looked out my front window and saw a woman walking her two large dogs. One of them stopped at the place where I left the monkey the night before and, next thing I knew, had taken it up in its mouth and began walking along with its owner, slobbering all over my little monkey. I began to feel sad, thinking that the ultimate fate of the unnamed monkey was to be torn to shreds by a few German shepherds. But then the owner, aware of what its dog was doing, made the dog disgorge, or at least release the hold on, the monkey. Down it fell, right in front of my house, with glistening slaver running down the monkey's now-grey fur. The woman led her dogs away and I looked out at the bedraggled monkey and noted that its eyes were looking right at me, with its widely-smiling face seeming to be directed right at me. Just then a friend of mine drove up. Seeing the monkey and the way it seemed to be training its gaze on me, she scooped it up, brought it inside and told me that the monkey now was mine. It obviously had been trying to "communicate" that it wanted to come in out of the rain and be with me, and so here it was. That was my friend's "take" on the situation, at least.

Well, what do you do with a drenched stuffed monkey, with hair askew and fur shining with the slobber of a mammoth dog? I first put it down on a throw rug to dry, but then decided that the stench from the dog would still be on the monkey, and so I immersed my newest family member in the kitchen sink and washed it the best I could in soap and warm water. For the last 24 hours it has been drying, and now it is just about ready to take its place next to Gary the Guenon.

Conclusion

I asked my friend if she wanted to give my new stuffed monkey a name. She immediately replied, "Call him Lucky." When she mentioned it, we laughed, and thought how appropriate the name seemed to be. After all, I had rescued it from the wet and inhospitable Oregon January climate. We had saved it from the clutches of dogs which would like nothing better than bite through Lucky until it was a shredded monkey. It was a lucky monkey indeed. But then, in the quiet of the evening, as I checked hourly to see how dry Lucky was becoming, I began to look at his name differently. Indeed, I was the lucky one, who now have two stuffed animals who can share their lives and my life. I think, if I am not mistaken, that Lucky's smile now is just a bit broader than it was when he was lying drenched in front of my house. I, truly, am the lucky one.

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