Close Encounter with Green Monkey

So I had a really close encounter with a green monkey yesterday evening, and it was so exciting. I was sitting on my back deck enjoying the late afternoon/early evening with a drink, and noticed a family of monkeys playing at the foot of a huge tree behind my property.

There was a mother with a tiny new baby, a couple juveniles swinging from low hanging branches, and there was a male with an injured foot. At first I was just paying attention to this male to try and get an idea of the extent of his injury, and eventually figured out that it was literally his foot. There was no sign of blood or obvious distortion and his leg seemed fine, but there had been lots of bush fires recently, so I guess it’s possible that he stepped on a bit of hot debris.

Anyhow, I decided to get the binoculars to get a better look at the mother and baby, so I went inside as quietly as possible to fetch them. By the time I came back a minute later, one of the juveniles was on my deck railing just sitting and looking around with interest. One of our cats was sitting nearby and paying attention but did not seem to be remotely distressed.

I stood there at the door for a long while just watching. I didn’t want to frighten him/her away. The monkey went back and forth on the deck railing a bit, checking things out, and then jumped down onto the deck, went straight to the cat water bowl that was just a few feet away from me, and had a drink of fresh water. He/she seemed to know exactly where it was going, so I presume it’s done this before. He looked up at me, saw me and continued drinking - too comfortable around humans for his/her own safety I think.

Then it jumped up onto the side railing and climbed the nearby palm tree to eat some of the peanut-sized nuts. Once it had gone out of view up the tree, I quietly opened my screen door and went onto the deck and sat on my little bench where I had been earlier. The monkey heard me and peeped down to see what had made a noise and continued eating the little nuts. So I just sat and watched.

When the monkey was done eating, it scampered back to re-join the family that was still at the base of the tree. Meanwhile, the male with the bad foot had gone around the side of the building and was no longer in view.

With binoculars in hand I proceeded to examine the mother and baby plus the juveniles that were still playing in the lower branches. It was fascinating. With my binoculars trained on one of the juveniles, it started to come towards me. Back it came onto my deck and up into the palm tree to grab some more nuts, before scampering off into the tree. The sun had set by this time and all the remaining monkeys climbed up into the tree to settle for the night. And this morning, bright and early, my little juvenile friend was back on my deck drinking water.

If you’d like to read more about Barbados, please visit my other blog, Things Barbados.