Hark the Herald Monkeys Swing

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house…not a creature was stirring…

Except for the frickin’ monkey.

It’s no secret sometimes pets and Christmas trees don’t mix. I had a beagle who somehow thought ornaments constituted a new food group. That was good for four or five days of sparkly poop.

And cats…cats got a thing for tinsel. At least this one Siamese cat I had did. Kai Ling liked to decorate in her own way. Usually this resulted in spreading the damn stuff everywhere, including places a cat should never have been able to reach, like spiderwebs in ceiling corners. It’s still a mystery how she got up there. But she also liked to swallow it. Tinsel does not digest well and glittery cat puke is not a pleasant discovery—and waaaay too often that discovery comes via a slipper, or worse, a bare foot—Christmas morning.

But monkeys and trees…

Oh, yeah. His name was Porky and he was a red macaque. One of those stubby monkeys with virtually no tail and a little red ass that made him look like he’d spent a bit too much time at the local House of Pain. He had a bit of an attitude when it came to the Christmas tree. Whenever he was out of his cage, he gave it the evil monkey eye. I can’t imagine what was going through his simian mind when he stared at that multi-colored, glowing glittering faux fir, but you just knew Santa had a poop fling with his name on it.

Porky managed to figure a way out of his cage one not-so-funny Christmas Eve. Did you know monkeys like to fling Christmas balls? It’s why I only use the plastic ones now. Glass balls…oh, they shattered way too easily. And what they hit shattered too, sometimes. At least we lost two lamps that way.

That loud crash? Well, that wasn’t Jolly Old St. Nick coming down the chimney. Something came down, all right. With a loud boom and a shrill monkey screech.

We got up to find faux fir D-O-A in the middle of the living room, along with the two deceased lamps. Christmas balls—the ones that survived—had to be dug out of various places—behind the couch, chairs, Aunt Edna’s Urn (just kidding on the Urn!) Tinsel was everywhere, including wrapped about the monkey like a shiny new silver coat. The Christmas Angel tree topper? Well, we still miss her...

And Porky himself? Porky was hanging from one of those ceiling lamps that had the chain-encompassed cord running down the wall (this was late 60s, so cut me a break). The look on his face was one of fear mixed with a weird monkey satisfaction. I think he was pretty happy he’d finally given that fake tree its just desserts.

Well, at least he hadn’t eaten any tinsel, so flying silver poop or hurled foil vomit wasn’t a problem.

He wasn’t big on Easter, either. I’ll tell you about that some other time…