By James and Ellen Perry

It’s a balmy afternoon with the temperatures hitting the 90s, but I’m comfortable on my porch as the afternoon shadows get long. The birds and squirrels are searching for their supper in my yard and trees.
While watching this late afternoon daily happenings I am hit with an old memory that almost ruins my afternoon reverie.
My thoughts go back to my earlier and more naïve life. As a younger man, I wanted to live my life on the ocean in a southern region.
I began to think of how I could make a living for my family and still have time to enjoy fishing, scuba diving and watching beautiful sunrises.
I conjured up different jobs or businesses to allow me and my family to have personal time to have such a pleasant life. I finally settled on the perfect occupation for me.
I decided to become a Hurdy-Gurdy Man and set up shop in Panama City, Florida. I found a location on the beach near all the popular resorts, clubs, and restaurants on the Miracle Mile at Panama City Beach. I should make enough from spring break to Labor Day to carry us through ‘til the next season. Well, I bought myself four complete Hurdy Gurdy suits, which cost me $1,000 and a Hurdy Gurdy music grinder for $600.
Then I started looking for a monkey. I wanted to buy a monkey that had experience in the trade and came with the monkey’s uniforms and also a tether to keep monsieur monkey from trying to escape.
I searched and searched and finally heard of the perfect monkey in Southern Louisiana. I drove over to near Bel Chase, Louisiana, to take a look at this monkey and to make sure that the monkey and I could work together.
You see in the Hurdy Gurdy business, the man plays the music and the monkey dances, collects the money in a little cup, then gives the money to the Hurdy Gurdy man.
A perfect job is to be a Hurdy Gurdy Man. He plays music on the box and the monkey does all the work I thought. Well, I negotiated with this Cajun on the price for his monkey. We finally settled on $500, which at the time was high, but this monkey was surprisingly trained and experienced. I paid the Cajun $500 as he grinned and smiled.
Little did I know how devious this monkey was. The monkey and I drove back to Panama City, Florida to kick off this new business venture with the spring break starting the next week. The first few weeks went by with the money coming in every day.
The high school and college girls loved to see the monkey dance and beg for money, so their boyfriends had to fork over their pocket change or face the consequences.
This monkey knew that by begging from the girls that the boyfriends would fork over money. I loved to watch this little con artist work the girls, then bring their boyfriends’ coins to me.
This great act was growing bigger every week through early summer as more people were vacationing in Panama City.
Then in June things started to change. The crowds were getting bigger and bigger, but the money was getting lower and lower daily. I couldn’t figure it out until I started watching this monkey. I finally caught the little rascal sneaking every other coin inside his shirt and he started having to pee more often.
He would fake having to pee and go around the corner into a bush and hide his stolen money, then bring me the rest. Well, I can’t stand a thieving monkey, especially one that would bring me my money and look me in the eye as if he was being straight with me. That monkey had buried $2,500 under that bush around the corner.
When I found that buried money and dug it up that monkey sulked for a week, would not work and gave me the evil eye. He could do it better than my wife at her best.
There was only one thing to do. Try to sell that monkey. I called the local radio station in Panama City, Florida, told them I would like to sell a monkey on “Trade Time” and the show host hung up on me, so on to Plan 2. I put an ad in the local newspaper asking $500 for the thieving monkey. No offers.
I put another ad in the local Trade-A-Paper pricing that thief at $400. I got a call from a farmer near Wewahitchka, Florida, who offered me $200 for that little thief and I accepted quickly.
My idea for a beach life went down the drain with that thieving monkey. After him I could never trust another monkey. The last I heard of that monkey the farmer who bought him was retraining him to catch rats and feed them to rattlesnakes.
That’s right—as the farmer raised rattlesnakes for Snake-A-Toriums across the USA. They want large fat rattlesnakes to bring in paying tourists. That monkey learned to be fast.
Well, that little thief lasted seven years as a rattlesnake rat catcher and only suffered two rattlesnake bites.
On the first bite he hesitated to scratch a flea on his rump and was nailed by a 12-inch pygmy rattler. He survived the first bite because it was a glancing bite on his left hind leg. He saw the rattlesnake striking and he jumped and almost made it.
His second bite came during his seventh year as a professional rattlesnake rat catcher. He took the second bite on his nose because he slipped on a wet concrete floor while slipping up to feed a six-foot rattlesnake a large rat.
He got pegged pretty good on that bite and after a six-month recovery he was left with a permanently sideways smile that gave him a weird look.
The farmer had become quite fond of that little thief and retired him on his farm to live out his life in peace. He was sitting in the farmer’s backyard one afternoon a couple of years later when a large bird swooped down for some monkey hash.
The last time that little thief was seen was in the talons of that bird flying toward the Dead Lakes area. No one that actually knows the fate of that monkey, but after all these years, I have lost my animosity for him and hope he made it and is living a good life in the swamps of Dead Lakes, Florida. I swear this to be the truth.