Animal Rentals Blog

The other day was bath day here at Animal Rentals, and I got some great pictures of my dad and my uncle, Mr. Adam Monk.  I love seeing the two of them together, and dad loves reminiscing with Uncle Monk about “the old days”.  Uncle Monk is over 45 years old!  And he and dad have been together a REALLY long time…working, traveling and playing.  Uncle Monk doesn’t travel with us doing Animal Shows or College Entertainment any more, he says his days of being on the road are done and he just wants to relax and enjoy his retirement.  I LOVE traveling and don’t think I will EVER want to retire!  But Uncle Monk and I are completely different.

I guess Uncle Monk is really more of my brother than actually an uncle, since he was dad’s first monkey son.  But he is old and sort of crotchety – which dad tells me is a nicer way of saying cranky, lol – and certainly more like an uncle than a brother.  So he is Uncle Monk to me.

Uncle Monk has had an amazing life – even before he met dad.  He was born in the wild in the jungles of South America, and he was captured and kidnapped and SOLD when he was very young!  He traveled from village to village in small, bamboo cages being sold and traded until he finally came to America and met dad.  Dad likes to say that it was NOT love at first sight – lol.  But he and Uncle Monk grew to first respect then love each other, and together they built Animal Rentals from a highly demanded Organ Grinder act to a business that focuses on bringing people and exotic animals together in an educational and entertaining way.  I even think that it was Uncle Monk’s idea to do our Petting Zoos and Pony Rides. At least, HE says it was.  Dad just rolls his eyes and laughs whenever I ask him about it.

Anyway, I guess after such a long life filled with work and adventure Uncle Monk deserves to relax and be pampered in his retirement.  And he sure does love his bath time!  I don’t blame him, I do too!  What about you?  Do you love bath time too?

HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody!

I am tired but happy from my big New Year’s Eve night out with dad and lots of fun, dancing and new friends.  I would love to be sleeping right now, but dad says I need to make a New Year’s Resolution and share it with everyone so that I stick to it…so here I am, writing to you all about my New Year’s Resolution.

Ok, honestly, I don’t get the whole New Year’s Resolution thing.  Dad says it’s a promise you make to yourself so that you have a guideline and a plan to follow for the upcoming year.  Well let me tell you, a monkey brain doesn’t work like that.  Lol!  We live for the day…actually we live for the moment.  A monkey’s motto is “Do whatever feels good!”  We don’t do a lot of planning.

The above was written on January 1st.  Today is January 27th.  This is the perfect illustration to my point.  I have been “doing whatever feels good” for the last few weeks and totally forgot about finishing my blog post!  Talk about living in the moment – hahahaha!

Dad says I have the emotional maturity of a two year old child.  I’m not sure that’s a compliment, but I suppose it is true.  Us monkeys get easily excited and easily distracted.  It is such a big, wild, wonderful world out there how can anybody NOT get caught up in the thrill of the moment sometimes?  It is so easy to do!

Ok so back to the New Year’s Resolution.  Mine this year is to spend more time telling you all about my wonderful exotic animal friends and family at Animal Rentals and about all the fun we have living and playing and working together.  Sometimes I get so busy traveling around with dad to our College Entertainment shows, or working locally doing our Animal Shows, Petting Zoos and other fun events, that I forget to get online and share our stories with all of my wonderful human friends out there across the country.  Bad Mindy!  Lol.

The really exciting news that you may have already noticed, is that this year I am sharing my blog space with my human and exotic animal friends of Mindy’s Menagerie, and letting them post here too!  So one day you might read a post from me, another day a post from someone on our staff, and another day maybe even one from Casper the Albino Burmese Python or Cleopatra the Serval Cat or Mrs. Clean the Hairless Rat.  You never know who is going to want to pop in as a guest star here on my blog, so be sure to check back often and get to know us all better in 2015!

When you are a monkey April first isn’t the only day that is all about jokes and pranks.  Every day is fun and games day for us! 

Monkeys love to laugh and fool around all of the time.  And we have excellent senses of humor.  In fact, sometimes it is very hard for us to be serious.  And we definitely get excited about things that are interesting and fun.  I guess I can see why dad tells people that emotionally I am at the level of a two year old human child.  But sometimes I think that dad just doesn’t get my jokes.  He has a great sense of humor too, but I don’t know why dad doesn’t think every single thing that I do is hilarious…because I do!

He didn’t laugh the day that I grabbed the end of the toilet paper roll and ran all over the house unrolling it and wrapping it around the furniture in one big long line.  He didn’t laugh the day I grabbed the truck keys out of his pocket and threw them into the wet, muddy water.  And he didn’t even laugh the night that I turned off the lamp every time he just sat down from turning it on so that he had to get back up out of his chair again if he didn’t want to sit in the dark.

Even though dad doesn’t think that everything I do is funny, I have certainly made him laugh out loud lots of times over the years.  Like the time we were traveling to one of our college entertainment shows and I put my water down on the driver’s seat while dad and Mark were pumping gas and Mark didn’t see it when he got back in and he sat right on it and got all wet.  Or the time I was eating strawberries at one of our live exotic animal displays and got sticky red spots from my hands all over dad’s head when I hugged him.  Or the time I pretended to be Lawrence of Arabia on the camel ride at one of our exotic petting zoos.  And he laughed really hard the time I tried to take a picture of myself with his cell phone on the set of one of the television commercials I was in.

So even though today is just a normal day of fun and games for me, I want to wish you all an especially happy April Fools’ Day!  What kinds of jokes and games and pranks did you do today?