Pat surprised me one evening just before dinner. She had recently returned from Walmart where she had purchased several tiny baby outfits. She called me and started showing me one baby suit after another.
At first I thought, "Oh my goodness! Am I? Is she? Oh No!!"
Pat must have read the expression on my face. "Don't have a cow," she said, and then explained why she bought the outfits.
"If you are going to civilize your gorilla, then you had better start by putting some clothes on him."
Oh my. How many times have I needed to correct my sweet wife. Butch is not a gorilla. He is a pig tailed monkey, a direct descendent of the famous rock apes. He would never grow to be as tall as King Kong, and he would never be as popular as Mighty Joe Young. Butch was three-feet tall. That was plenty big enough for me.
However, Pat had a good point. Butch had come a long way. After 15-years of living naked, maybe it was time that he got dressed. And so it was with thoughts of keenest delight as I looked over the baby outfits under a much relieved composure.
One baby playsuit in particular caught my eye. It was a two-piece outfit. The pull over shirt was yellow with a picture of a locomotive engine blocking a busy intersection. There was an engineer in the cab with a big grin on his face. He had one hand on the throttle and was waving the other hand. He looked suspiciously like my good friend Mickey, who works at the Crest.
The pants bottom was red. Together, they looked like they were just made for Butch. Tomorrow would be a good day for both of us. So it was that the early morning Sun found me carrying my selection and Butch's breakfast outside to his cage where he had spent a beautiful night under the stars.
As I walked up to the cage, I could see that Butch was already wide awake and hungry. He probably smelled the food that I had for him because he was "Ooh-ing!" at me so loudly. Laying the baby outfit down on a chair I pulled out two boiled eggs, already shelled. When I held them out to Butch, he snatched them from my hand and stuffed them into the pouches of his mouth. Then he slipped his hand inside my shirt pocket and pulled out some Concord grapes. Eight grapes were squeezed inside the pouches with the boiled eggs. Then Butch found a banana in another pocket. He peeled it like a pro. He then tried to force it inside of his pouches too, but it was a little too much food. His little face looked like a balloon about to pop.
I sat down near Butch and waited about twenty-minutes for him to finish eating. I mused to myself as to whether I could ever get him to eat with silverware -- probably not.
Walking over to the chair, I picked up his new playsuit and held it out to him. "Come over here, son," I said, "And lets see how you look all dressed up."
Butch came over and sniffed the shirt and pants. I got behind him and tried to pick him up and place his feet inside of each leg of the shorts. Soothingly I spoke to him, coaxing him, reassuring him that everything was all right. I don't think he believed me. He began to get nervous and tried to twist out of my hands.
"Hold on, you knuckle head," I grunted, the sweat beginning to pop out on my forehead, "I'm not hurting you. Easy, Son, take it easy." The harder I tried to hold him, the more he struggled to get free.
Butch is deceptively stronger than he look. In no time at all he broke away from my grip and ran to the other end of the cage. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that dressing him up was going to take a lot longer than I thought it would. Tightly gripping the playsuit, I followed him all over the cage until my clothes were soaked with perspiration.
Maybe Butch was getting tired too. He allowed me to get beside him again. "See, son, these clothes won't hurt you." He suspiciously sniffed them again. Carefully, I slipped the shirt over his head, then his two arms went thru the sleefes. "There!" He had it on. "Oh Butch, you look so pretty. Daddy's big boy!"
Butch really likes it when I talk that way to him. He kept feeling of the shirt. pulling at it, tugging it this way and that. "You'll get used to it in just a little while, son."
I continued talking baby talk to him and I was able to slip the shorts on him. He offered little resistance this time. Then I stepped back to behold a very pretty monkey.
Butch continued to feel of his clothes, but he didn't try to pull them off. Excitement gripped me. I decided right then that I had to have a photograph of this. "Mona!" I shouted, "Mona! Where are You?"
In a moment, the back door swung open and she stood in the doorway looking in my direction. "Bring the camera out here. I've got to get a picture of Butch."
Three minutes later, with the camera in my hands, I snapped Butch's picture. "There!" I said, "Clothes really do make the Monkey."
I called up several of our friends to come over and see Butch model his new playsuit. For over an hour, everyone watched Butch. Jimmy asked me where Butch was going. "Going," I thought? He wasn't going anywhere. The poor little monkey -- He was all dressed up with no place to go. My, my!
Duce is the penname of Carman J.W. Vance at the Crest Yard in Fort Worth.
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