No Surprise There.
Monkeys are intelligent and agile, well-adapted for jungle life as they swing happily from tree to tree. As a monkey, you are a social animal who eats a wide range of food, is quick to learn new things and loves to climb. A monkey’s tiny primate features are irresistable, as is her gregarious personality!You were almost a: Pony or a Lamb
You are least like a: Kitten or a TurtleDiscover What Cute Animal You Are!
When I was born, a monkey was my older sister. She was a Squirrel Monkey, like the one in the picture, but she was the runt of the litter, so a) Dad got her for a good price and b) she was frailer and more delicate looking than this one. Frodo was five years old when I was born, and so well into Squirrel Monkey maturity.
As older sisters go, she was a bit different from most. She never tried to braid my hair, but she did steal all the green pepper off the pizza before the rest of the family got to eat it. And screamed defiance at us if we tried to dissuade her.
Dad was the Alpha Male in her troupe. If she did something that contravened his law, he’d drizzle cold water over her head. Once, when she bit him in a fit of pique, he bit her tail. She never bit any of us bigger primates again, but threatened plenty. Good call, Dad.
She hated balloons, helium in particular. I love balloons now, and I know I’d have loved them as a young child, except for the fact that one-and-a-half pounds of avenging primate always tried to protect our family unit from the mysterious and possibly predatory things. She’d leap on them, shrieking, and sink her teeth into them for the immediate satisfaction of them dying at her feet. Helium presented no challenge. For a muscular structure developed to leap from bough to bough in South American jungles, a mere jump from lamp-top to sofa-back can easily accomodate the timely dispatching of an unwary balloon. The result was that, if there were balloons in the house, she wouldn’t rest until she’d ‘killed’ all of them. As a result, I didn’t like balloons, because I never knew when one would explode close to me, courtesy of my stealth-mode older sister, trying to keep me safe.
Frodo lived til I was 7 years old. She was pretty crotchety at the end. But wouldn’t you be, surrounded by beings much bigger and more powerful than you, whose laws seemed to contradict your own understanding of family? (Bringing new people in who were not biologically hardwired to you? IE, friends of my parents’, not family?)
When Frodo died, it was the first time I’d ever seen my dad cry. Family is family, and she was his first daugher.
Some Stuff | Liz October 26, 2005 | 
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