Monkey In My Kitchen

The electricity was out so I was cooking my "cutta dahl*" in the dimness of the late evening by just the light of the gas flame. I caught something out of the corner of my eye and thought a large stray dog had come into my kitchen. Not a pleasing thought but believe me when I say that it would have been preferable to turning around and seeing a very LARGE monkey throwing onions over his shoulder out of my vegetable baskets. (I think he was looking for a raw potato but unfortunately for him, I was out).

Now these are not cute, nice monkeys. They're big, ugly and mean.** This particular one was about 3' high seated, probably weighted about 80lbs and his tail was long enough to cross my whole kitchen.

I don't think he saw me standing there or he wouldn't have come in in the first place, and I was backed against the counter with nowhere to go so I was reluctant to gain his notice. If he came at me I was cornered.

I needed a weapon.

I stepped over his tail, crossed to the other side of the kitchen and got one of our long handled reed brooms. With that raised high I went back to my former position about four feet away from the monkey who was still searching for potatoes. I must have made a noise in there at some point because he turned and saw me and jumped back so he ended up in the middle of the kitchen.

I raised up the broom again and he jumped the rest of the way out the kitchen door and sat on the wall behind it contentedly eating a mango pit that he had previously picked out of our garbage.

I shut the door and made the rest of my dinner by candlelight.

* Cutta Dahl is lentils with pieces of raw mango added to make it tangy. Yum.
** See pictures from my post on March 18, 2006 "Monkeys Visited On Thursday." I have no idea how to do one of those link things where you just click it and go there. Sorry.