NON-SEQUEL TO THE MONKEY THAT WASN'T ACTUALLY CHASING THE WOMAN WITH THE DOG STORY

From the archives, October 2002

Passing by O's house on our way to a hike up the mountain, saw the monkey who had chased the woman with the dog, the monkey's presence in the middle of the road now eliciting from O the factual finish of that story I'd heard from E about the pounding on the door one day that turned out to be Mrs. T from upmountain, who had been out walking and had asked permission to cross our land to get to the other road to help a woman walking her dog who was being chased by a monkey. I'd never heard any more of the story, until now here was the very monkey!

It turned out that the monkey liked dogs (which is why it was at that moment hanging around O's dogs) and had in fact simply been trying to be friendly with the dog the woman was walking, the monkey approaching the dog, whose owner drew away, causing the dog to also draw away and the monkey to again approach, more earnestly, a cycle that quickly escalated into what was perceived as fleeing woman with dog being chased by monkey, the fear thus eliciting its cause...

Anyway, here before us now was the very same monkey, a young female apparently not tribally minded, that as we approached at first withdrew into the roadside trees and sat in a tree crotch near the road very quietly and at home as in an easy chair, legs dangling, not feeling at all comical sitting in a tree by the side of the road-- not that it should feel comical of course, it's just that the monkey's complete lack of the comical sense was comical in that circumstance; anthropomorphism has many layers.

Later, on our way back downmountain from our hike, because we came bearing many wild persimmons we were well appreciated by the monkey, who drew close at our approach; while talking again with O we gave the monkey one ripe persimmon, which she took off to her roadside hangout to eat so that we wouldn't get any, and when she was finished rejoined us as we stood there in the road talking: two women, one man and a she-monkey, standing there in a tight-knit and mutually interested group, the monkey on her haunches part of the conversation, insofar as it might pertain to persimmons, looking from human to persimmon to human and SMILING, baring her little baby-human monkey adult dentition at us in what could only be humanly interpreted as the kind of abashed smile one uses when poorly concealing desire in a question, such as "Isn't the persimmon a wonderful fruit?"

But the monkey's eyes remained unchanged while the smile was flashing on and off like a neon sign, and I was plunged thereby to the roots of our own smiles, the monkey now and then stepping aside a moment to look down into the roadside grating just in case there might be something down there more worthwhile than a human conversation, then back to join us again, and I suppose somewhere deep in our depths we all wanted to go over and look down into that grating, see what was down there, but we didn't, we're grownup humans after all, we just talked and smiled at each other now and then, after persimmons of some kind...