The Tale of the Snow Monkeys

Snow monkeys. Have you ever seen a monkey before? They look kind of human like share the majority of our DNA, but at the same time they are filthy. Covered with hair, poop into their hands and eat it. There is definitely a bit of a missing link between us as species, well at least most of us. Regardless of their imperfection, you can almost see the human in them. Apart from leathery skin, hair and poop, their eyes and gestures sometimes seem like us.

So cute or so I thought at first.

Now Imagine a baby monkey and how cute it is. Change that brown hair to mostly white and that the monkey’s don’t live in a forest canopy and play in a hot spring. Their lives revolve around frolicking in the snow. I wish I could do that.



 
If you can imagine that then you’ve thought of something truly magical in Japan (No, not the magic kingdom in Tokyo, which is cool. Instead of spinning teacups they have spinning sushi, just kidding).
As I mentioned before snow monkeys are very cute, but at the same time you have to take precautions. They are stronger than us and have an attitude when challenged. We were told don’t look directly into the monkey’s eyes as that means you are challenging them. The bigger ones have arms the size of crowbars and can tear a human male in half if they wanted to (in theory anyways). They seemed docile enough as we approached. I looked into the babies eyes. At first I saw his hands that looked so human like except their nails looked painted black and the palms of the hand more leathery.

One angry snow monkey.

One monkey seemed not impressed I was looking at the baby and charged me. I turned my eyes the other way. I saw all the monkeys playing in the hot spring. I thought how cute it was and it seemed like they were having a bath in a jacuzzi together. Then I thought wow this is amazing maybe I can jump in with them and swim around. That cute thought abruptly ended when I saw a mother monkey take a number 2 (aka feces) into the hot spring on her baby. The baby picked it up and ate some, sick! How much DNA do they share with us again?
I saw them running around like dogs a bit and throwing feces at each other, that’s cute I thought, just don’t get any on me.

 

Then I saw two monkeys rolling up a big ball of snow. What the heck are they doing? Then for a brief moment I thought I had a telepathic moment with one of the monkeys, its human eyes staring at me. They were building a snowman? Maybe they could use fecal matter instead of a carrot for a nose. Perhaps I could teach them, the teacher always comes right out of me at the most appropriate times.I guess my telepathic power of persuasion didn’t work because the biggest monkey picked up the ball and threw it on the head of a smaller monkey who now ran away and cried with its hyena cackle. I picked up a snowball myself just in case this monkey wanted to engage in Mortal Kombat. 

The monkey made the right choice and left the second large ball of snow on the ground. Had he chosen to fight me, I would have face washed him. He would have been getting snow out of his nose and mouth for days! Cute, but definitely not the most perfect of god’s creations. Made in our image but not close enough it seems. I still suggest you see them at least once. Heed my advice, don’t stare in their eyes they will either suck you in with their cute looks or cause you to run away screaming like a little girl hoping they won’t kill you. I did a bit of both to be honest.

Don't jump in. Its not clean even though it looks kind of magical.

To see more about snow monkeys see Wikipedia article at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_macaque

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Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

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http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


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