Kevin’s Monkey of the Week

My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys. My monkey of the week goes out to any primate who is a service monkey (it’s not what you think, I don’t love monkeys that much). Service monkeys are like seeing eye dogs, but can perform roughly 170 more life tasks than an average canine. These include dialing the telephone, making the bed, and assisting in the loading of a DVD or audio tape. They also provide love and friendship to their helpmates. I like to say, “A dog can roll over, but can he do backwards and forward somersaults, too?”

Most service monkeys are capuchin monkeys, which are slender bodied, arboreal animals. It is poetic justice that the capuchin monkey has finally realized it’s potential as a useful contributor to society, as it was the capuchin monkey that labored for so many years as a punch line next to carnival organ grinders. Of course, most any ape is smart enough to be a service monkey. In the early eighties, though, when monkeys were first being trained for assistive purposes, an incident occurred and it was decided that giving control of a silverback gorilla (and it’s ability to snap limbs) to disabled people who also generally suffer from bi-polar disorder and manic mood swings was not a good idea.

It makes me angry when these primate friends of ours are mistreated even today, as demonstrated in the recent news story about a two-year old in a supermarket who kept pulling on a monkey’s hair until he got bit. Yet, for some reason, it is not the two-year old who is threatened with being locked up. I trace the disrespect back to the 80’s horror movie Monkey Shines, which featured a service monkey trying to butcher his human companion with a scalpel. All the good that Project X had done, like teaching us that chimps could fly jet planes, was wiped out. I think it’s about time this country reexamines it’s attitude toward these special creatures. I don’t even need a service monkey, but sometimes I wish I was a quadriplegic just so I could have one. If I did have one, I would name him Frodo. My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys.