Monkey Madness

["Roberta Jenkins" <robertajenkins@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

2:15pm.  Awoken from a sound sleep by a commotion outside my guesthouse
room.  Erik's ammused and insistent voice calling "You!  You!  You! 
What have you got?!!" into the usually empty space above the courtyard. 
Laughing.  

Struggling to wake, I join him and Josh (one of the 2 other guests on
our level of the house) at the waist-high wall that forms the edge
overlooking the courtyard below and up the extra storey to the roof
above.  A mid-sized female monkey is sitting on the ledge above us,
hurriedly cramming bananas into her already bulging cheek pockets.   On
the neighbouring rooftop, a small line of monkeys is eyeing her up.

Soon, monkeys in the house.  A large male swings by and drops down into
the courtyard after 3 bananas dropped by the first.  A smaller female
takes half an onion off the ledge beside me and sits down to chomp
contentedly.  2 more go up and down the stairs in front of Erik
(brandishing a broom), baring their teeth and snarling at him.  Monkey
madness - and all my fault!  The bananas they are eating - the ones that
attracted them - are mine!!

I have often been warned about the monkeys in this town.  That they like
shiny things, food.  That they will come right into a room after them. 
But they are very inconspicuous here, on the rooftops, and I forget that
they're around.  Coming back from the fruit stall down the road, tired,
I left the bag on a chair outside of Erik's room before laying down for
my nap.  Amazing that they could smell them over all our human stinks
and laundry, back from the edge and in the middle of the house.  But
they could.

While laughing at being mildly overrun, Josh related that not long after
he arrived in Varanasi, as he sat eating his breakfast watched by two
small monkeys and thinking "aha!  I have taming these wild creatures!",
a third, larger one, had crept into his room and stolen all the rest of
his food.  Makes you wonder who the smarter species is!!

In the end, no harm, no foul.  I happily sacrifice the few rupees spent
on the fruit to have witnessed the (admittedly small!) invasion.  Seems
a small price to pay.  Still, glad there are no monkeys in Changwon to
worry about - one fruit-stealing rabbit is enough of a pest "problem"
for me!