Who Made the Monkeys?

My son, Will, always good to share his travels with me, sent me this selfie of him with a head full of monkeys. He knew it would make me smile or even laugh. Which it did.

Will and his family encountered these monkeys while vacationing in Dominican Republic. They enjoyed feeding them, talking to them, playing with them and even having them climb on their heads. There were monkeys everywhere, they said, on that preserve. Visitors were given a container of monkey food. The monkeys came after that food, clamoring up bodies and along arms, sometimes squealing in sheer delight. I think the humans were squealing too!

Will’s daughter, Mattie, said the monkeys’ feet felt so funny on her skin. Their webbed feet felt a little, she thought, like frogs’ feet, though she’s never had that many frogs scrambling up her body making her giggle. This funny feeling may be caused by the fact that these tiny fellows sweat through their feet making them clammy and cool. The feeding of squirrel monkeys was as short as it was hilarious. They assailed a visitor with a cup of food until that food was gone, then headed to the next guest.

Mattie and I agreed that, however cute the squirrel monkeys are, we’d rather play with them in a preserve than have one as a pet. I was reminded of a time years ago when I dropped by the animal hospital. The whole staff was frantically trying to corner a very fast, extremely agile squirrel monkey for some kind of treatment. I decided then that a monkey could be as difficult to contain as a flying squirrel and I would just laugh at the antics of someone else’s monkey.

The picture of Will reminded me of the time when we were vacationing in England and the pigeons took me over. We were in Trafalgar Square where hundreds of pigeons roosted, fed, and played. We read a plaque about Lord Nelson at the foot of his lofty statue. We took pictures of our children climbing on one of the four huge lion figures. All the time I was wishing just one pigeon would light on my shoulder. That would be so exciting, I thought. Suddenly it happened. One pigeon landed on my shoulder, another on my head; they lit on my arms and literally covered me so that the picture my laughing family took hardly shows my face at all. Maybe pigeons aren’t quite as funny as the monkeys but they are certainly lively and dramatic!

Have you ever considered, or heard someone else comment, that God is stern, condemning, and against anyone’s having fun or laughing? Then take a look at the monkeys and the pigeons. Or read about the platypus or a baby elephant taking his first bath. God, who made the monkeys, surely enjoys our laughter. He made these creatures for our well being and enjoyment. One way we can say thank you is with our laughter.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them. Psalm 126:2