witness to an angry monkey
luckily i have never been attacked by an animal, but i have been a witness to several animal attacks on my dear mum. the best one ever was the time she upset this little monkey in a cage at her cousin's house while we were visiting on holiday. you see, my 2nd cousin has wild animals in a sort of wildlife reserve, and this monkey was caged and really pissed.

my mum loves animals, so when she saw this baby monkey she went right up to him and started speaking in a calm voice. the monkey looked at her with those adorable monkey eyes and extended its hand to her through the bars. she took it, thinking he wanted to play. the monkey got excited and started yanking on my mum's finger viciously, mashing her hand into the cage. when it couldn't accomplish the goal of ripping her entire hand off, he bit her several times! mum, being the calm lady that she is, on the receiving end of a terribly excited monkey, just said something soothing to it like, "no, it's not ok for you to bite me, that's not a nice monkey!" and finally dislodged her finger so she could back away quickly...

...but when she turned around to leave, the monkey was having none of that. it let out several ear piercing screeches and reached out for revenge. it was like slow motion as i stood there and watched this primate reach beyond the bars of the cage, for my mum's head, and gripped a handful of her hair before she could finish turning all the way around. it was jumping up and down and howling while it proceeded to bang her head repeatedly against the bars, in a vain attempt to, err... well, i don't know what he wanted. this went on for about a minute while she just stood there, half bent backwards, letting him do it while somehow maintaining that calm "please stop torturing me!" voice. it took several people to pry his claws off of her head. she ended up with a small tuft of hair missing and a bruised and bloodied finger.

the funniest part to me was that my dad just watched the whole thing and didn't even try to help. i think the monkey scared him and he didn't want a piece of that shit. not that i blame him.
( mayonessa, Fri 3 Jun 2005, 4:13, Reply)