It always starts innocently enough.

Last Sunday my husband, cat and I were enjoying a sunny day in the yard. I was slightly hungover from the five gin and tonics I had consumed during the course of our Thanksgiving dinner and subsequent Thanksgiving trip to the Platinum nightclub the night before and thought that lying around in the hammock would be a good way to recover. We had only been outside for about ten minutes when my husband yelled, “sweetie, look!” and I turned around to see this on the wall behind me:

Alright, it was actually more like this:

Who knows how long the evil primate had been surveilling us. It had something furry and long-dead in its hand, which it threw down on the ground and came after us, its teeth bared. We sprung up and ran towards the porch and the front door. (A girl I went to high school with died from monkey poo--I shit you not and no pun intended.) Thinking quickly, my husband grabbed Snega (our cat) and threw it at the rabid monkey, but it was not deterred. It came closer and my husband picked one a metal chair over his head ready to knock the living monkey shit out of it. It scampered up one of the porch columns to a monkey friend waiting on the roof (a coordinated attack).

After the narrow escape we went over to examine the dead furry thing. It was a baby monkey. Abush, our guard, picked the carcass up with a stick and flung it at the monkey who then jumped over the neighbors’ fence.

So, what was learned from this experience?

1. Monkeys will rip your face off without notice or provocation;

2. Monkeys are sneaky little bastards and surprisingly quiet;

3. Chucking white cats at monkeys will not save you (however, cats of other colors have not been field tested and may prove effective);

4. If you are hungover from drinking too much gin the night before you are better off staying in bed.

Ah, the excitement of living in Africa…