When Animals Attack: A Troop of Monkeys

One of my favorite parts about visiting India was the abundance of wildlife. Yes, much of it attacked me, but I still loved being able to see peacocks and water buffalo outside of my car windows driving down the crazy highways. I loved that Indians have reverence for all animals and that the animals really do make themselves at home in the middle of the human realm.

I've always felt a kinship with monkeys. I was born in the year of the monkey, I am fascinated by the Hindu monkey god, Hanuman, and I like to think I share some of the same traits as monkeys. I was elated to see so many of them just hanging out in India. We were fortunate enough to stay at this palace converted to a hotel and there was a troop that made their home in the forest behind the rooms. I'm sure it was all the food possibilities from tourists that had them living there.

The first night there, I didn't see them, I just stepped in their feces. I was listening to some Bad English on a walkman, dancing around barefoot in the grass. It was during twilight and it took me awhile to figure out what was so squishy all over the grass. Obviously, you should probably never go barefoot or listen to Bad English in India, but I am a rule breaker. Since it was getting darker, I didn't see the monkeys, but I knew we'd have fun times in the morning.

I spent a lot of time either completely sick or terribly starving on that trip. It was hard to eat and not get ill there. I mainly stuck to bags of chips and peanut butter brought from home. That morning, I was having my usual breakfast of chips outside waiting for the monkeys to appear. It didn't take long for them to arrive because I'm sure the hydrogenated oils lured them out of the trees. There might have been about 5 of them and there was clearly a leader. I decided she was The Queen, even though I never had the chance to determine the gender. I thought it might be nice to give her a chip so I held one out to her like an offering. Instead of taking my chip, she took the whole bag like a greedy bitch and ran for the woods with her pals. That was my food for the day and she wasn't going to get away with it!

I ran after them and tried to snatch the bag out of her hands. It was a bad move on my part because her loyal subjects bared their teeth and started to come after me. With a great deal of cursing and shrieking, I ran back to the safety of my room. I saw the empty bag later on in the day torn to pieces and strewn all over the lawn in the middle of all the monkey shit. I was had.

Surprisingly, I still love monkeys. They are bold and bad ass. I don't really like Bad English anymore though.