At one time, "exotic" animals could be sold, bought, and kept, in New York City. This was back in the late-1950's into the early '60s...then the laws changed. When I was still in grade-school, I resolutely decided I just had to have a pet monkey. No ifs, ands, or buts. I had all the details planned out. The monkey would live in my boring bedroom, in a giant cage, I'd feed the thing bananas, teach the monkey tricks, and that obedient monkey would go with me, to school, and sit on my shoulder while I learned my readin' writin' and 'rithmetic lessons. Yes, you read right. I was gonna bring a monkey into a NYC school.... and I would be , of course, the talk of the schoolyard. I'd be the only kid with a monkey on his back! That was the master plan.
So, I announced my monkey plans to my parents and told them that I was buying a monkey. I told them that I had saved enough money to buy the creature, but they'd have to put up the money for the expensive cage. My father was usually a pretty calm guy, but it was my mother, who was far more volatile, and quick to react. So I kept my distance when I made my demands. Pop's eyebrows raised, and quickly told me "NO"!...and suggested that I have my head examined. Dear Mom, may she RIP, told me under no circumstances, no way, no how, would a disgusting, filthy, monkey come into her house, and that if I persisted to give them orders, to tell THEM what I wanted, she'd pull out my hair by the roots, and put me in a coffin!
The monkey lived in my dark basement, in the cage that Mom and Dad paid for. After 6 month's worth of my sulking, crying, promising to keep the cage clean....the monkey got bought, by me, with the money I saved up. While I was in school, dear Mom was the one who fed the monkey, cleaned the cage, and put up with the stink of rotting food, and monkey scat. The monkey never got trained to sit on my shoulder. The monkey never went to school. Squirrel Monkeys are social creatures, and should be in trees with other kindred monkeys. Monkeys also can be quite filthy, and they will throw uneaten food all over the place....and also amuse themselves, sexually, when bored. Just like humans. I finished learning about the birds and bees from that simian degenerate.
After a while, I got tired of the poor monkey, put an add in the paper, and sold the monkey... cage and all.... to some other dumb-ass kid. From my room window, I watched as the disgusted father and happy kid drove away in their green De Soto, and was thankful that someone was even more idiotic than I was. But I was still a kid and regrets were few. I forgot all about my wanker monkey. But.... in the back of my mind, I knew I grew up a little by this unplanned for, experience....an experience that didn't have a romantic, happy ending. I lost some childish innocence.
A few years later, after watching a movie called, "Born Free", I tearfully and wistfully realized that the poor monkey should've never been captured and sold for human pleasure, for amusement, to subject it to a forced life of human domination. It's a terrible thing, to consign God's creatures to a wasted life of confinement, or, to be ritually harvested, or worse, vainly slaughtered, for no good reasons.