Did you ever accidentally sneak up on someone who was acting suspiciously? They get all startled and flustered and so do you because you didn't mean to do it -- maybe didn't even notice the person until he gathers himself up and slinks off?
We did that today in a big way. We took Da Chimpz to the school in the next town because we wanted to use their field to give Cookie some batting practice. Alane was driving us down the school's circular driveway, aiming the car for the big parking lot just beyond but, oops, she somehow missed the fact that the drop to the lot was separated by a grassy burm. As we went sailing Starsky & Hutch-style over the embankment I screamed WTF and it was only then that I saw the only other car in the parking lot...
We have no idea what the guy was doing there, sitting alone in his car in an empty parking lot but we're sure he was up to something nefarious because when he saw us tear-assing over the rough and hurtling in his general direction he got this terrified look on his face, like he feared a mob-style hit, and as we parked next to him he quickly started his car and fled.
Which of course made us laugh even harder -- who does a drive-by shooting from a Subaru?
Alane came home from work all excited the other day because she'd seen a story in the otherwise despicable Plain Dealer -- an AP story about marauding monkeys in Puerto Rico. She found the whole notion extremely entertaining. I, on the other hand, could only think of our old pal Mike Evans who had spent some time down on the island of Desecheo trying to remove the very same unappealing primates. He did a research paper (skip down on this page to see the citation) on his experiences, including his unique opportunity to correlate the physical characteristics of the little beasts to their dietary habits. How does one evaluate the diet of a rhesus monkey? Why, by examining the contents of its stomach, of course. In the cabinet of Mike's dorm room were plastic bags containing the dried contents of those simians' stomachs -- not something you see every day on a mid-1980s college campus (don't know what you'd find on a college campus these days).
Anyway, I remember walking with Mike to his room one day and for some reason he had left his door unlocked. Bad idea -- someone had come in and riffled through his belongings. Interestingly, the burglar appeared to have taken a keen interest in those plastic bags -- some were ripped open and crumbly bits of dessicated forest meals were strewn across the floor.
Mike maintained his low-key demeanor and as he began to sweep together the mess he speculated persuasively:
"They must have thought this was some sort of really exotic hashish or something."
It still makes me laugh to think that back in 1986, someone at SUNY Purchase unknowingly smoked monkey-puke expecting to get high. And maybe he did!