Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of the mind monkeys; those thoughts that collect in our craniums and then take off like a bunch of rhesus monkeys swinging through almost every hour of the day, touching on dozens of ideas that just end up scattering across all those time zones that come with travel.
Hey! I’m not monkeying around here; Buddha, maybe, but not me. He gets all the credit for coming up with the ‘monkey mind’ metaphor. I’m just the guinea pig, or should I say flying monkey, trying to cope.
On the other hand, Colonel Tooey gets most of the credit for the real monkeys I saw freely running around central Florida on one tiny island. Those monkeys are coping very well; much better than mine. After all, Florida is the closest thing to a jungle in North America.
Ever the entrepreneur looking for a little monkey business of his own, Colonel Tooey decided a few monkeys might add some interest (and dividends) to his Jungle Cruise on the Silver River running through Homosassa, now home to one of the state’s most impressive wildlife parks and rehabilitation facilities.
Six rhesus monkeys later and some prime Florida real estate (a new man-made island for the monkeys), and Tooey’s guests went bananas over his new blockbuster.
Don’t you just love free enterprise!
Of course, the Colonel’s capers just meant the knockoffs would spread across Florida as rapidly as the monkeys (how was Tooey to know Curious George and all his buddies would learn to swim?). Never mind there are about 1,000 feral monkeys living in 21st century Florida.
Five of those feral monkeys are living on this 1960’s knockoff courtesy of "Mr. Homosassa" himself, G.A. (Furgy) Furgason. Well; I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but not my monkeys – they were in the middle of another feeding frenzy, going bananas if you will! I focused on taking a few pictures in hopes of pacifying the primates. My secret’s out of the bag; or the trees, as the case may be. Without my camera, I'd be certifiable.
As they say, when in roam . . . .