Spruce Knob
West Virginia
May 2014
We are hiking to the peak of Spruce Knob, the summit of West Virginia. What better song for us to be singing than If You Wanna Be Happy by Jimmy Soul. As the music winds down, Rod and Diane tell us about the monkey balls.
They were vacationing in Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica. Arriving, they got out of their car and whack! Rod gets smacked right in the noggin. What smacked him remains a mystery. Let me be more precise. A monkey threw a thing, perhaps a nut or a large seed, right at Rod’s head and he connected. Score!
Before they had much of a chance to even begin looking for the culprit, another projectile came sailing by. Our vacationers looked up in the trees and there was an animated troop of small monkeys, jumping about, gesturing.
Rod tells us, “There are monkeys everywhere down in that area of the world and in this particular troop they apparently had the Roberto Clemente of monkeys. I don’t know if they were being territorial or just laughing their asses off at their big slow cousins who had lost the ability to brachiate through the trees over the past million years or so.”
What were they throwing? Were they throwing monkey balls? It could have been seeds, some kind of fruit. It must be known; monkeys get great delight in hurling their poo. This is a totally appropriate trail conversation.