The Monkey and the Tampon

The weirdest stuff happens to me.

Case in point:  today a monkey tried to steal a tampon out of my purse.  I challenge you to find one other person who has had that happen to them.

Rex and I were spending a fun Sunday afternoon at the zoo.  There is a really cool zoo about 45 minutes from Las Vegas that was started by two veterinarians who wanted to show off their exotic pets collection.  It grew into an awesome zoo where visitors are allowed to play with almost all of the animals.  Today I held a baby kangaroo, had a toucan perch on my shoulder, let a tarantula crawl up my arm, and had a lemur jump onto me, just to name a few things that happened. 

The funniest, however, was the monkey.

There was a little Capuchin monkey who was out playing with the visitors, so I dutifully waited in line for my turn to play with him.  When it was my turn, the little guy came and sat in my lap.  He looked up at me with his cute baby monkey eyes, and I think I fell in love.  I must have a monkey someday.  Anyway,  he crawled up to my shoulder and looked down at my purse - lots of fun stuff in there!  He jumped down to rifle through my things.  I didn't really mind, but I kept an eye on him because I wasn't sure what was in there and didn't want him to pull out anything embarrassing in front of all of the zoo people. 

Good thing I was watching, because it turns out that a tampon has a shiny wrapper to grab a monkey's attention, and it happens to be the perfect size to fit in a little monkey hand.  He grabbed my tampon and was about to pull it out to show the zoo people his prize, but I grabbed it out of his hand while it was still in my purse and shoved it down to the bottom under some other stuff as if to say "choose something else, monkey!"  

Apparently the monkey thought that meant, "Let's play hide the tampon!" since he started digging through my stuff to find it again (which he did).  I grabbed it again and put it back in my purse again, but I was getting a little desperate.  I needed to find a diversion.  I grabbed the first thing I saw, a pack of Ice Breakers breath mints, and shook them like a rattle.  Babies like rattles, so I figured monkeys probably did too.

I was right.  The monkey abandoned the tampon and grabbed the mints out of my hand.  If it had been a baby, the baby would have contentedly shook the mint box and maybe gnawed on it a little.  I wasn't dealing with a baby, though, remember?  Do you know what a monkey does with a box of mints?  He opens it and dumps all of the mints on his head.  Then he runs around picking them up and eating them.

The people standing around started cracking up, and I looked guiltily at the zookeeper.  I wasn't sure whether or not monkeys are allowed to eat mints. I guess they are, because the zookeeper didn't freak out or anything.  He even ran up to her and put one in her mouth as if to say, "Here!  Try this!"  It was really funny.  

All's well that ends well.  I wasn't too horribly embarrassed, and the next guest will thank me because the monkey has really fresh breath now.