ESTESBOG

by Peter Walker

            “You aren’t going to believe this one,” said the young Maine game warden as he poured himself a cup of coffee in the office of the fish hatchery in northern Maine one late fall day.

            Of course that got our full attention and all craned his way to hear every juicy detail. Not much goes on a typical day in an outpost village on the edge of the boreal forest.

            The state salmon, trout, and char hatchery where I worked that fall lay nestled in the balsam fir forest just downhill from the little village of Enfield, Maine. The next township to the southeast, and the last partially settled area before the start of the vast corporate timber holdings of Diamond International and Georgia Pacific, was Passadumkeag. The name is Abnaki Indian, but the locals simply shorten it to  “Dunky.”

            That morning the game warden received a radio call from the State Police dispatcher that a party was requesting a game warden’s assistance at a residence in Passadumkeag. The wildlife officer was definitely not prepared for what he found.

            It seemed a young wife, 8 months pregnant, took advantage of the crisp sunny early November day to hang a load of washing on the clothesline behind her house. As she did so, something rather small and creepy feeling suddenly leaped onto her back at the base of her neck. In a sudden panic she reached back and tried to dislodge the object. It snarled and chattered back at her! She realized it was a small monkey! No matter how she tried, it would not get off.

            Sobbing and on the verge of total hysteria, the woman went into the kitchen, the monkey still riding on her back, and called the paper mill in Lincoln, some 25 miles to the north where her husband worked. She had him paged. When he answered she screamed out, “There’s a monkey on my back! Come help me!”

            The poor fellow must have assumed the stresses of pregnancy had pushed his bride over the edge. He jumped in his car and sped home not knowing what to expect, and certainly not taking the monkey comment literally. But when he pulled into the driveway, there she stood, sobbing incoherently while a tiny but extremely feisty monkey clung tenaciously to her back.

            For a few minutes the man tried to dislodge the monkey from its perch. But each time he approached, the monkey bared its fangs and very persuasively “told” him to back off. It was at that point that the call went out for a game warden. After all, who else would you call if your wife had a monkey on her back?

            By the time the young district warden pulled up, the monkey had been in possession of his “ride” for the greater portion of the morning. The very pregnant object of his/her affection was by now a whimpering basket case.

The warden first tried heavy leather gloves, the kind used to handle injured hawks and owls. But injured hawks and owls are much less agile than small monkeys plus they lack the ability to communicate their feelings the way we primates can. The game warden soon began to sympathize with the little animal. It was terrified and obviously desperate for solace. Nevertheless, he knew that he had to get the creature off quickly or he and the monkey might well be sharing midwife duties.

The warden tried a fish net, but the monkey had hands and could fend it off with great dexterity. Next he found a short board in the garage and used it as a long-handled pry. That did the trick. When the monkey realized it had no defense against the tactic, it made a mighty leap off the woman’s shoulder out onto the lawn and scurried for the dense evergreen timber at the edge of the cleared house lot. In a few seconds it disappeared into the tangle.

The woman recovered. She carried her baby to full term. The warden wrote what must have been one of the more unique incident reports in the history of the Maine Warden Service. As for the monkey, no one reported seeing it ever again. Maine winters are especially bitter in Enfield and Passadumkeag and there is little likelihood that a monkey could survive there unless perhaps it found a more willing back to ride. Its origin and its destiny will probably never be known.