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Thursday, September 14, 2017

Swamp Monkeys

You can hear crying.  It sounds like . . . like a toddler or a child?  It's coming from the wooded area across the field.  The swampy area.  You hate that area.  There are snakes and crawling, slimy things over there.  The mosquitos redefine "unbearable" over there.  It's always either raining or about to rain.  And there's no real ground.  It's like mud that can't quite get its act together so it just sloshes around among the rocks and tree roots.  It's the swamp.  Nature's landfill.  All the yuck settles here.  People only go there when there is no other option.  That appears to the be the case now.

You follow the sound across the field and into the swamp.  You've brought your knee-high rubber boots and hope you won't have to go back and get the waist-high waders. But the crying continues and you solider on.  It gets louder and . . . odder.  The crying has overtones of screeching.  Almost like nails on a blackboard?  It both raises the level of alarm within you and also snags your curiosity.  What on earth is going on in that swamp?!

Another minute slogging nearly knee-deep through what looks like moldy carpet brings the sound louder and clearer.  There is a scraggly tree up ahead.  At some point in the past lightning struck and killed off most of it, but a branch here and there hangs on.  There, on one of the mostly-alive branches, draped with moss and alien-appearing lichen, is the source of the crying.  It's not a toddler, which is good.  Because how on earth would a baby get out here in the first place?  It's a little monkey.  Monkies belong in swamps, yes? Well, no.  Not really.  At least not in twenty-first century North America, last time you checked Google for . . . monkies.  Ok, it's fair to say you have never done an internet search for North American monkies, but you'd be willing to bet your Sane Grown Up card monkies don't normally live here.  You look closer.  Especially not monkies with sparkly collars and name tags.  This little guy belongs to someone.

You slowly approach and get a better look at the creature.  You're no zoologist, but the monkey seems particularly small and fuzzy.  So, it's not a human baby, but it is a baby.  Your heart melts a little.  This poor tiny thing is just a baby and it's lost and trapped.  It's a sure bet it got itself out here, probably jumping from tree to tree, not giving a single thought to where its going, just enjoying the freedom of motion and movement.  And then all of a sudden it realized it was stuck on this raggedy tree, in the middle of yuck.  Poor baby.

You reach up to the little monkey and it scampers higher up the tree, panicking because it's scared and freaking out.  You can see its real terror and your heart breaks a little more for it.  With a soft voice and gentle motions, you convince it to creep out on the limb to you.  It hesitates and then scampers up your arm.  And clamps on to the top of your head.  Up until now, you have no personal experience with the term "death grip."  Now you do.  It means the type of grip where the gripee imbeds every possible attachment point in to the object of perceived safety.  In this case, your scalp and neck.  It's quite surprising how much pain can be sensed by the scalp.  You remind yourself that this little creature is a just a baby and its terrified.  And scalps heal. 

With slow steps, you begin making your way back across the green murky stretch of swamp back to dry land.  You're a bit shocked when you look up and realize you walked quite a bit farther than you thought you had.  Of course, on the way out, you didn't have twenty tiny claws digging into your head.  That probably affects perceived time.  Like, when you're in the dentist's chair and, between the dentist and his assistant, there are probably elevent different foreign objects being jabbed into your sensitive gums and he says, "Almost done," and then you feel actual continental drift happen before he starts removing his tools from your face?  That kind of perceived time.

Around the third step, the fuzzy baby monkey decides he needs to start serenading your travels together.  It's a repetitive shriek that hits the required sound wave length to send a spike straight from your ear to your entire spine.  Every 1.4 seconds.  You coo and try to quiet the little creature but it just thinks you're joining in and it shrieks louder and adds a few hoots for added fun.  But, the sounds seem to calm it and it relaxes its grip on your head.  So, it's a win of sorts.

It relaxes a bit more and starts to bounce and hoot at the same time.  While the sound and motion grate on your nerves, the monkey does pull out the rest of the claws.  It also starts to swish its tail around.  It discovers it can wrap its tail around you, in fact.  Right around your face and over your eyes.  It discovers this just as you are about to step over a dead log in the mud.  With right leg lifted, you suddenly lose sight and inhale monkey fur seasoned with poo. Since not even Spider-Man could have maintained both his cool and his balance at this point, and you are quite certain you are not Spider-Man, you stumble.  Your shin rediscovers the fallen log and you are pretty sure you're about to get a face full of mud when your fall is stopped by your knee collapsing on to the dead log.  So, you've traded mud up the nose for probable below the knee paralysis.  A draw, then?  

The sudden altitude shift has caused your passenger to re-secure its position atop your cranium with all available attachment options, with the tail now being wrapped around your neck.  But at least you can see.  It occurs to you that you don't have to be doing this and that you outweigh the monkey by a factor of a thousand.  Maybe a million.  Math isn't your strong suit.  One thing you do know is one grab and fling of your arm and this would be over with.  You could probably be home and in a nice warm shower within the hour.  Then a tiny little face lowers itself down over your eyes and looks at you.  "Eep?" It asks in a little voice.  And you make the deadly mistake of looking it in the eyes.  There is real fright there.  And confusion.  It really is just a baby.  It doesn't mean to be stabbing you with multiple implements of torture, causing you pain that will probably keep you up at nights for the next week.  It just is.  You sigh and pull yourself up.

Several millennia later, you reach the . . . well, "shore" doesn't really work when you're talking about a swamp, so we'll say more solid sludge, and you shake off the excess ick from your legs.  Little monkey has once again calmed down and has returned to adding its own sound track to your journey.  Your progress on to solidity causes it to take notice of its surroundings and it spots a tree not far away with ripe fruit.  Without a backward glance, it springs from your head, taking great care to anchor itself securely to your hair follicles before leaping.  You watch it bound away, trailing significant locks of your hair as it goes.  In another moment, it is sitting up in a branch bouncing happily and munching fruit.  You walk over to it and look up.

What are you expecting?  Well, you don't know.  It's a swamp monkey, after all.  They don't talk, so it's not going to sing weeping praises of your bravery in saving it.  They don't shop at Godiva, so you can be pretty certain not to expect a thank you gift.  And if it could write, you're quite certain any thank you note it might send would be written in an "ink" you would not prefer.  But something, dang it.  That little beast literally drew blood from your body and used you as a ferry.  Ok, yes, you offered yourself as a ferry because it was tiny and small and scared.  You sigh and look up once more at it.  It blows a raspberry at you.  You give it a frown and move to turn.  But just before you do, it leaps down from the branch, wraps its little arms around you and smooshes its little face into your cheek.  You pat it on its little head and then it hops back up into the tree.  A warm happy feeling floods your being and you know for a moment what joy is.  You smile and turn away, feeling the depth of happiness all humans feel when they know they have done good.  Your chest still feels warm and you wonder at the lingering emotion.  You look down.  The swamp monkey has crapped on you.

And that, my friends, is life with a middle schooler.  

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