Pissing Monkey Redux

My friend JadedJ over at A Banquet of Consequences did a post the other day which featured a pissing monkey. If you haven't seen it, I'll spare you the gory details, just go over there a look. However, as the photo to the left illustrates, strange behavior isn't limited to monkeys. Or, maybe so, to one degree or another, but that's another subject. JJ's pissing monkey reminded me of an entertaining afternoon I once spent at an eccentric animal farm on the west coast of Florida called Noel's Ark. This was some years ago, mid 80s maybe, so I doubt the place is still there. It was actually a retreat for unwanted circus animals. Noel and his wife, both retired circus performers, couldn't stand the thought of the animals they had worked with being destroyed after they had gotten too old to travel with the circus so they bought some land and opened their animal retreat with the idea that it could also be a profitable tourist attraction. It wasn't. In fact, by all appearances, the place was just barely hanging on. It was a pretty motley collection of great apes, an old elephant and an even older, slime covered alligator with a fifth leg growing out of his back. The animals were caged in small, filthy, confinements. But to Noel's credit, they really cared for the animals and did the best for them they could. In one cage was an old, gray muzzled Chimp. He was lazily swinging in his cage when a family of tourists gathered to watch him. His arms could pretty much reach from one side of the cage to the other, and he had a grip on each side and was swinging back and forth. When he had everyone's attention, he got a big hard-on and began swinging more fervently than ever, his pecker clicking across the bars like a pencil across the back of a chair... clickity, clickity, clickity... grinning from ear to ear all the while. The tourists were horrified. Mothers covered their children's eyes as they quickly gathered them up and shepherded them away. The men straining to keep from laughing out loud. I followed them over to the gorilla's enclosure. He was a big silver-back and lived in a semi-truck trailer, the kind you see on the highway. One side of the trailer had been cut out and replaced with bars. The floor of the trailer was covered with food, feces and wet straw. There was a rope swing and a large truck tire for him to play with. When I arrived, he was eating a piece of water melon. I've never seen a human eat a melon with as much delicacy as that gorilla. Savoring every bite. Carefully spitting out the seeds. When people gathered to watch him, maybe a dozen or so, he turned his back on us. This didn't set well with some of the tourists, after all, they had paid good money and they wanted to watch him eat. Some of them had dry roasted peanuts and began throwing them at the great ape to get his attention. Some even picked up small pebbles and the like. Once or twice the gorilla glared over his shoulder at the taunters. I could smell trouble coming and backed away. Just it time too, as he soon grabbed the truck tire and in one giant motion, swept it across the floor of the trailer, spraying the onlookers with a grimy mix of water, straw, poop and pee. You could hear them wailing a block away. I was laughing so hard I had to move away for fear they would lynch me. They streamed towards the exit as the realization settled in, that, for a least the next hour or so, they were going to have to live with themselves covered with the worst kind of stink, on a hot summer day. Life has its rewards.