The years slip by, each one faster than the last. Like children who outgrow their clothes, so Butch outgrew one cage then another.
Butch is our fast growing pig tailed monkey, a relative of the rock ape family. Years ago, when we first saw him in an exotic pet store, the owner said that Butch would always stay a little monkey. I can see now that he knew absolutely nothing about pig tailed monkeys.
Ten years after we bought him, Butch stood as tall as the dinner table in our house, and that was as tall as he ever grew. After ten years, he weighed around 45-pounds.
With the high prices like they were I couldn't afford to keep buying him one metal cage after another, so I started building them myself, from two-by-fours and chain-link fencing.
Butch was hard on cages and they didn't seem to last him very long before I had to build another one. I tried to construct each cage a little bigger than the one before it.
One day, I realized I was fighting a losing battle. As fast as Butch was growing it seemed that our house and yard were shrinking. There was no doubt about it; Pat and I needed a bigger place. Something had to happen. It did.
In December of 1985, we moved to Granbury, Texas. I bought five and one half acres and had a double wide mobile home brought in. I also bought two huge sheds and had them set up behind our new home.
Pat told me to, "make a place in the shed for the gorilla to live." After ten years she wasn't "going to turn her new home into a zoo like her last one."
I really couldn't blame her. Butch creates a certain monkey odor in the house after being in there all day.
Therefore, I built him a cage and put it inside one of the sheds next to a window. Now he could look out and see what was going on. I also put a water cooler in another window of the shed to cool him off in the summer and an electric heater to keep him warm in the winter. I got that idea from watching "Bill and Tammy" on television.
Our home seemed almost deserted now. I had the feeling this was how parents felt when their children moved away from home. Suddenly for the first time, we were overwhelmed by the silence that seemed to engulf our home. This would take some getting used to.
In the first weeks, that passed, I wondered a lot about Butch. Was he lonely staying in the shed by himself: I had a lot of work to do now that we had a bigger place. I didn't have as much free time to play with him like I used to.
At times, I could hear him "Ooh-ing" from several acres away. Then I would catch his face in the shed window straining to see where I was. Within six-months, I began to wonder if this move to the country was such a good idea after all. I guess only time would tell.
Duce is the penname of Carman J.W. Vance at the Crest Yard in Fort Worth.
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