The $500 Monkey

It was snowing. Thankfully, it hadn’t started sticking yet, but it was beginning to look slushy outside. That was just my luck—the inclement weather waited until I got out of school to begin its assault. The afternoon, like so many others that winter, wasn’t shaping up to be all that exciting.

I showed up about thirty minutes early for my five-to-nine o’clock shift at Warehouse for Pets. The store looked dead. Maybe one or two people were milling around in the back, but it was otherwise a ghost town. Willie, my boss, said it had been slow most of the day.

Willie had a mullet long after they were popular and long before their glorious second wave. He was an old-school punk rocker who found himself working as a middle-aged pet store manager. He said there wasn’t a ton of work to do, and he might send me home if business didn’t pick up.

I hung out at the register and talked with him for a bit. We made the usual small talk about the store’s inner workings and the new animals we hoped to get while I waited to clock in. As we were discussing the nuances of algae blooms in guppy tanks and the less-than-glamorous business of ferret feces, I saw the sign.

Someone had scrawled “Monkey for sale, $500” on a piece of torn notebook paper and taped it up behind the cash register. It was in full view of anyone checking out. I can’t explain why, but I got irrationally excited. When I mentioned the sign to Willie, it was almost as if providence, fate, or some primate god intervened. No lie—the guy who had written the sign was still scuttling around the store and had just made his way to the register.

The snow outside turned into an aggressive flurry, sticking to the bushes and mulch beds in front of the store. My luck—and the landscape outside—seemed to be changing.

I struck up a conversation with the simian salesman. I tried to sound knowledgeable, mentioning that my mom had monkeys when she was younger and that I’d always wanted one. Even though $500 seemed ridiculously cheap for what I thought a monkey should cost, it could have been a million dollars to me. I was sixteen years old and made $5.50 an hour cleaning animal poop. There was no way I could afford it, but I didn’t let on.

Maybe sensing my curiosity, the man asked, “Do you wanna go see her?” I was elated. I asked my boss if I could punch in later since the store was slow, and thankfully he obliged.

Here’s where it gets weird. This guy was a complete stranger. My boss didn’t know him, and he wasn’t a regular customer. Cell phones weren’t common yet, especially not for teenagers. The only mobile phone I’d ever seen was the monstrosity mounted permanently in my stepdad’s car and the Motorola flip phone my mom had just gotten.

Looking back, what I was about to do was extremely sketchy. I was going into the unknown without a safety net and no way to call for help. But sometimes, when it comes to animals, my decision-making skills aren’t the best. This was one of those blurry times.

As I got into his late-80s Oldsmobile, I thought, “This might be a bad idea.” He said, “Just move that trash to the back seat.” I can’t remember if I ever got his name. Thinking back, there were so many red flags. I shoved his cigarette cartons and old newspapers into the back seat and settled into the worn passenger side. He lit an off-brand cigarette and started the car. The snow was still falling, but thankfully the roads weren’t too bad yet.

After what felt like forever, I asked if we were close. He rattled off the name of some small town I’d never heard of. “We’re almost there,” he said, sounding annoyed. I looked at my watch—we had been driving for almost an hour. So to recap: stranger danger, falling snow, at least an hour from home, destination unknown, monkey unseen. Oh boy. I was an idiot.

Finally, we turned off the main road and into a neighborhood. To make things sketchier, it was a run-down trailer park. Not the nice kind. The kind where the trailers had no underpinning, and at least one or two cars sat on blocks with weeds growing through them. These were all beat-up single-wides. I have nothing against trailers—I’ve lived in them myself—but the picture this painted for me was ominous.

As I climbed the sagging porch steps, I realized I had no idea what a bonnet macaque monkey even was. I’d never seen one on TV, and Google was just a funny word with no meaning at the time. When the man opened the front door, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

There before me was a primate in a large dog kennel. Its conditions—and the house—were abysmal. It smelled like stale beer, cigarettes, and a wet urine-soaked diaper. Definitely not a Yankee Candle scent. I regretted my decision, but since I was already there, I went through the motions.

Without hesitation, the man unlatched the kennel. At that moment, the trailer door slammed shut behind me. I jumped at the sound. The large, diapered monkey scrambled onto the man’s shoulder in one terrifying motion. He leaned toward me and placed her on my shoulder.

“Whatever you do, DO NOT let go of her tail,” he warned.

I held the filthy, wet tail as the monkey explored my shoulders. But when she started to climb down my back, I loosened my grip. I didn’t want to hurt her, and I had no idea what she was doing. This was the first monkey I’d ever seen in real life, but I knew enough from the Discovery Channel to understand a cornered primate was nothing to mess with. So, I let go.

Chaos exploded instantly.

“Why’d you let her go?!” the man shouted.

The monkey leaped from my back to the refrigerator, scattering alphabet magnets and children’s artwork across the floor. She tore down a hanging pothos plant, then landed on the kitchen island to feast on cigarette butts in an ashtray. The man and his wife eventually corralled her back into the kennel.

Once things settled, I asked if he could take me back. He happily agreed to get me, the agent of chaos, out of his tiny trailer.

The ride back was long and silent. He barely slowed the car as I jumped out in front of the store. I didn’t look back. I ran inside, clocked in, and assured myself he had left before starting my shift.

When my boss asked how the monkey was, I just shook my head. I realized then I should probably make better life choices. I’d like to say that was the last time I got into a stranger’s car to see animals, but I’d be lying. That’s a story for another day.

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Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently living in Bethania, North Carolina with his wife Jess and their house full of animals. He split his time growing up between chasing wildlife and screaming on stages in hardcore bands you’ve never heard of. He has been published by Dead Reckoning Collective, The Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, and many others. He filmed and directed a documentary called “Hammer Down” about his 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in with Alpha Battery 5-113^th of the NC Army National Guard. You can find his books, collected works, and social media accounts at www.stanlakecreates.com

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.