Monkey business in Cambodia

Monkey business in Cambodia

For some crazy reason, foreigners who decide to live in Southeast Asia seem to consistently feel the urge to get a monkey. It's some sort of mark that you have decided to become an official expatriate.

Nearly every long term Cambodian expat I know has had a monkey - usually a macaque - at some point in their stay. They all tell the same stories. Monkeys are lovely to look at, but a nightmare to hold.

There are many reasons not to have a monkey - not the least of it being that according to several wildlife organizations, it isn't technically legal. We should look at this as a law to protect us from ourselves.

As a former member of the monkey club, so I can speak from bitter experience. I went into a Phnom Penh pet shop at the beginning of the new millennium looking for a dog for companionship. After being quoted $400 for the mangiest looking Alsatian I have ever seen, I thought again but wandered around looking through the store anyway.

Suddenly, my skirt was caught by what seemed like a dozen tiny black hands and ripped apart. I tried to jump away, but a cage full of macaques was not going to let me go that easily. Then a little voice from the other side of the aisle chattered angrily in monkey and an even tinier hand reached out and pulled me free. I had met Bob, the short tailed macaque, and her sad little eyes begged me to rescue her from her miniscule cage.

She was a baby, and the wound on her head suggested she had been roughly captured. Because she had a circle of hair around her head and was nearly bald on top, I called her Bob after Sir Bobby Charlton, the Manchester United legend.

I never meant to keep Bob forever. I wanted to have a baby of my own, and even I knew monkeys and babies don't mix, plus I lived in a small apartment. The purpose was always to find her a good home with trees and a view where she could be happy.

Monkeys missed the evolutionary train. They got to the point where they know how to destroy things, but never reached the point where they could put them back together. They have no manners, they have serious jealousy issues and they have no respect for anything.

I first put Bob on the balcony, where she happily destroyed all my plants, and then the neighbor's. Angry shouts soon alerted me to the fact that throwing dung at passersby on the street two storeys below caused her endless amusement. So I moved her inside.

She seemed to enjoy watching my tropical fish, so I thought she would be fine there - until one day I came home to find her deftly fishing the very last angel fish out of the tank and sprinted across the floor too late to stop her daintily slipping it down her throat like a Sydney rock oyster.

I bought a bag of raw garnets for a bargain price in Rattanakiri. She ate them too - along with a bag of dragon fruit, making sifting through the dung to retrieve the gems a task too difficult to contemplate.

She insisted on drinking out of toilets and promptly kissing horrified strangers as they entered to use the facilities. She was fascinated with the balls they put in urinals to keep them smelling fresh - and how far they could travel with a round arm throw.

If we went out, she honed her latent maternal instincts with pool balls, insisting on leaping into the middle of games and rescuing the balls before huddling them close to her stomach and shaking her fists at the hapless players if they tried to retrieve them. One day we visited the FCC and she sent Happy Hour into complete disarray by picking a fight with a dog and then clinging to his head like a rodeo rider, single handedly barring her entire race from the restaurant.

Bob was also extremely jealous. Trying to have a conversation with a jealous monkey planted on your head chattering and making angry faces is - well - as difficult as it sounds. In fact the only person she liked was a world famous veteran war photographer who introduced himself one day. Unfortunately she showed her approval as he reached out to shake my hand by scuttling down my arm and neatly pooping in it. Being pooped on by a monkey is a definite conversation stopper, in all the wrong ways.

It's not easy finding a good home for an animal in Cambodia. Whether because of Buddhism or in spite of it, Khmers are often not great with animals. You see monkeys around the country pacing forlornly on very short chains. I once visited a private zoo where a man had stationed himself out the front and was actually selling sticks to poke the animals with.

But finally we found an orphanage by the sea where the children adored her and there were plenty of trees. Once taken from the wild, it is near impossible to reintegrate a macaque into a wild troupe where they belong because they run the risk of being attacked or rejected. Taking a macaque into captivity virtually assures it of a lonely life.

Now if I was trying to find her a home, I would probably take her to Tahkmao Zoo, which can provide expert care, but back then, I was told the zoo was struggling for funds and was already overwhelmed with rescued macaques.

Bob ruined my house and killed my social life. No other pet will leave dirty footprints on your roof. But she also gave me an excuse for some of the best lines I will ever use.

When we met a particularly dense moto taxi driver one day, I lost my temper and screamed at him "that's it, you sit on the back - the monkey can drive".

And when my ex rolled in one night drunk as usual and stinking of cheap perfume to find Bob asleep on his pillow and not at all happy to be woken up, he yelled "Ok, that's it, it's me or the monkey"

And then I finally got to say it, the dream breakup line. Yes, that's right. I said: "It's the monkey."