ALCOHOLIC, JEWELLERY STEALING MONKEYS!

One of the island stops on our Caribbean cruise was the beautiful country of St. Kitts.

Whilst talking to the local market-traders and tourist entertainers in the plaza, we stumbled across a man holding around four or five small monkeys. Of course, we had to stop and find out more!

These monkeys are called Vervet monkeys and were about 35cm long when standing upright, not even the length of my arm! The gentleman explained to us that the monkeys were very friendly creatures (if not in the wild) and generally didn't scratch or bite unless they felt threatened. After much deliberation (due to my 'slight' fear of anything that moves), I decided to hold one...

I was told to hold out my hands in a cupping motion and await the monkey to run across my shoulder – which she did! The monkey I had was called Trina and was extremely playful! She had huge brown eyes and a face that didn't give much away! She also had a similar hairstyle to mine.. Except her hair (or fur should I say?) was a browny-orange colour ;) It didn't take long for me to see that she was indeed playful... so much in fact, that she tried to pinch my ear rings! As you can tell by the slightly embarrassing photo above, I was scared shitless! I know what you are thinking – the monkey wouldn't hurt me – which I knew, but I just get freaked out by anything with a pulse (besides humans.. sometimes).

Anyway, Trina was very interactive and ran all along my shoulders, arms, sat on my head and then attached herself to my boobs....kind of awkward for both me and the gentleman when it came to taking her back...

Once he did take her back (eventually), he explained that these monkeys were child-friendly (simply because they had been tamed) whereas the wild Vervets may not be as friendly and offered for my nephews, who were six and almost three, to hold one. Kai, my younger nephew at the time completely showed me up! He had a whale of a time with his little monkey who (I think) was called Millie and actually didn't want to give her back! Like me, my oldest nephew Kinya was not as easily swayed...

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, fun fact – in St. Kitts (and a few other Caribbean islands) this breed of monkey is pretty well known for being ALCOHOLICS! Of course the locals are not feeding the monkeys alcohol, but they frequently scamper into the beach bars and huts to steal a cheeky cocktail or other sweet alcoholic drinks such as rum punch – a popular drink consumed in the Caribbean.

Luckily for me, none of our drinks were guzzled by monkeys but it was so interesting to learn a little about their history and (drunken) habits.