Wednesday, August 6, 2008

And They Weren't Singing "Last Train to Clarksville"...

Saturday was an interesting day at Zen Gardens.

I had some errands to run on Saturday morning. As I was waiting for the elevator I happened to glance out the window and saw something rather unexpected. Two monkeys were walking on the 8th floor ledge of "B" Tower (Zen has two towers, A & B, I live in A).

I immediately ran over to Todd's apartment and said "You've got to come and see this....". Fortunately his partner Daven was visiting and being a visitor had a camera with him at all times so we got some pictures.




After watching them walk around on the ledge, climb onto a few balconies and try to enter a few windows I thought it would be prudent to close my balcony doors to monkey-proof my apartment. After assuring myself that my apartment was safe from unexpected visitors I finally started on my errands. Before leaving however, I sent a text message to all the other Target-Zenians letting them know they should close their doors and windows because there are monkeys on the building. This prompted a lot of "Are you serious?" responses. As if "I" would really make up something like that as a joke (actually I'm sorry I didn't think of it before the real monkeys showed up - they seem to know me pretty well....)

I was walking home after finishing my errands when I realized, for the first time in 9 months, I had forgotten my apartment key. This was incredibly ironic because as Todd and Daven came out of their apartment earlier I specifically said "Make sure one of you has a key in case the door blows shut." Fortunately my landlord lives in an 8th floor penthouse in "B" tower. I went over to see if he had a spare key for my apartment. Karma was on my side because he did. While I was there he told me to watch out for monkeys. They had gotten into his apartment and eaten some bananas from his table (obviously these monkeys don't care about being cliche). They had also destroyed plants on the balcony of the apartment next door.

After reassuring him that I had seen the monkeys earlier and taken appropriate precautions, I went with the spare key to my apartment. I was literally typing a follow-up text message to let everyone know the monkeys had gotten into two apartments when I heard a crash from the kitchen. Now you have to understand that with three apartment buildings going up around Zen hearing crashes is not uncommon. I almost ignored it before deciding to go take a look and of course I was greeted by a monkey sitting on top of my refrigerator. I didn't think of running for my camera but it looked something like this:
Everyone keeps a scale model of 1930's New York City on top of their refrigerator don't they?

Karma was really with me because this monkey, and his friend sitting on my dryer, spoke English. When I yelled "Hey Monkey! Get Otta Here" they quickly left the same way they had gotten in; through the laundry room window I had forgotten to close. They are also very tidy as they took a pair of rubber cleaning gloves with them.

Now the next time someone talks about having a squirrel or bat in their house I can say "That ain't nothing, let me tell you about the time I had a monkey sitting on my fridge."