Phaye, the Monkey, and the Accountant

Yesterday (Monday) was like herding monkeys. I brought in Bethann, our new accountant, to show her the office. Since I was looking at the office from a visitor’s point of view, the first thing I thought was, Wow, this place has a wicked nasty monkey poop smell.

Then we found Phaye in the break room, curled up asleep on a popped inflatable mattress, gauze all over the floor and Space the capuchin monkey quietly, methodically, grooming Phaye’s clothes for something to clean or eat. The gauze on the floor must have been Space’s work, since it led to a single twist around poor Phaye’s dried blood-covered hand.

Bethann shouted, Phaye jumped up, Space was startled and leapt onto the counter, and knocked the espresso machine onto the floor. The espresso machine. Whatever this place is, it is no place without strong coffee. The room, and monkey, were very still. The Bethann excused herself and left the office.

If I had heard of anyone else doing what I’ve been doing I would be furious, horrified, pitiless. Those dipwads had a dangerous, wild animal in their office for 3 days? What did they expect? I’m an idiot. I had Sia drive Phaye to the doctor’s while Tom called the Humane Society. He didn’t say I told you so. In my defense, one of the stipulations of the grant for the Being & Nothingness Cam Project is that we are supposed to, more or less, accept whatever happens. This includes monkeys showing up in wicker baskets.

Of course, by the time the Humane Society arrived we couldn't find Space the monkey--just broken stuff and primate poop. They’ve been looking for almost 24 hours. Currently some poor guy is creeping (for the second time) between the floor and the hard-packed dirt foundation under us hunting for a monkey.

Then there’s the thing of Phaye, without telling anyone, making the monkey-problems posting, as well as posting a Being Cam image capture that is a revelation. We’re looking over the latest images and…I don’t know. What I do know is that I can’t have a serious talk with Phaye when she’s sitting there semi-stoned on painkillers with a big old bandage on her hand.

This may be why people complain about Mondays. I used to hang around in my jammies until 10 AM, eating dry Cheerios out of the box and flipping through vast piles of New Yorker’s and National Geographic’s. Ignorance is bliss.