Mommy loves monkeys

After a seemingly long day spent with Virginie and Lily, home from school, I decided to take the girls for a swim in the pool.  They were both so excited to show off their new tricks and a swim usually calms us all down enough to pass out pretty quickly at bedtime.  There were a few downpours this afternoon so I feared the water would be chilly, but it was gorgeous.  Calm and relaxing and the sun, by now preparing to recede on the horizon, was not too bright or intense.  Lily got in first, wearing her floaty bathing suit with a few floaties removed.  She didn't want to wear it, but it is too hard for me to keep my eye on them both in the pool and this was a safety net for Mommy really.  Virginie and I followed and she immediately started her paddle, paddle, paddle, kick, kick, kick routine from swimming lessons.

As they practiced jumping in the pool and swimming to Mommy, I noticed a small audience forming on the roof of the guesthouse.  My eagle eyes are trained for any sudden movements in the landscape and I homed in on them immediately.  Monkeys.  Seven of them.  Two of them were tiny blue babies, but they were still watching us.  They were all pretty curious as the girls screamed with delight jumping and swimming and floating on their swimming noodles.  The mothers with babies were cautious, but realized that we were pretty far away and harmless.

My my.  What a difference nearly a year.  When we first arrived in Barbados, I wouldn't so much as walk to the window if I felt the presence of the monkeys in the garden.  The kids would be confined to their rooms while I assessed the level of danger and prepared for battle with the tree swingers.  I would leave laundry hanging haphazardly on the line and run inside to avoid confrontation and here we were swimming and playing and sharing the garden with our guests rather peacefully.  Don't get me wrong.  We'd meant to shower outside and that was certainly now out of the question and I never did take my eyes off of them, talking to Lily with one eye peering over her head.  But I showed them to the girls.  Chatted about the babies and why they were blue.  (The yellowish fur that grows over their blue skin makes them appear green, hence the name Green Monkeys.)  I acted like a zoologist, specialist in primates and the girls were dazzled.

I did pick the girls up and put them over the fence, closer to the house, when we were done swimming to avoid walking them past the guesthouse.  Well, relatively close to the guesthouse.  I guess from the pool it is about 10 yards, but you get the picture.  And I did back out of the pool gate holding a swimming noodle as a weapon, maintaining my position as alpha mammal on the property.  They didn't seem to give a damn but did hold on to their babies when they saw the noodle.  As I scrambled to the patio and met the girls, the monkeys swung down from the trees, galloped across the garden, under the swing set and over the wall to the house next door.  And just like that they were gone and I was a monkey pro.


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