Menagerie: Just between us species.
At the entrance to the Kam Shan Country Park in Hong Kong, a sign told us that if we followed the trail we would almost certainly see wild monkeys. The sign was printed in Chinese and English. Sure enough, a hundred yards in, we ran into a band of the long-tailed type.
I was walking in front, and I stopped at the sight of macaques sitting in pensive poses. I put out my arms like a school-crossing guard and signaled back to my wife and daughter that there were monkeys ahead.
We might have been afraid of the monkeys, but they weren’t afraid of us. They just wanted to know if we were carrying food. I had a banana in my backpack, but I didn’t take out the fruit. It would be recognized immediately. What then? The monkeys might charge at me, shrieking and baring their teeth, clawing at me until I gave them the banana. I didn’t want to give up the banana. I didn’t want to fight over it, especially with a monkey. I wanted to eat it myself or give it to our daughter.
As a result, we didn’t have much to communicate about, we and the monkeys, even though more than 90 percent of our DNA was the same. We just eyed each other in a human-simian standoff.
We walked past the macaques uphill, toward the top of Monkey Mountain — the local name for the reservoir area in Kowloon. Oddly, there were no monkeys on the mountain. There were, however, plenty of mosquitoes. I remembered that the sign at the park entrance had warned of them — they could be carriers of dengue fever. We batted at the insects, but batting did no good.
We rested at the side of a brook as giant butterflies flapped around us. These were Mormons, with dark wings and erratic flight patterns; they were nothing like the Mormons in Utah. The trail we were on stretched out in shadow through the jungle. The mosquitoes didn’t let up. They buzzed around our ears and landed on our faces, arms and hands. More often than not, they drew blood. They made it impossible to appreciate the brook and the butterflies. So we decided to head back.
We had a peaceful hike on the way down. That is, until I walked under a tree that belonged to a monkey. I heard a snarl, a hiss, and looked up to see a lesser primate baring his teeth at me. He was only a few feet away. I didn’t want a monkey on my neck, or on my back, and I considered taking out the butter knife I’d brought to defend myself. (It was the only knife I could find in our hotel.) I could have flashed the utensil at the aggressor in an attempt to frighten him away. There was no way the blunt end would have pierced his hide. This specimen had arms the size of my legs. So I just stepped back from the menacing display.
Shortly after, I heard my wife call my name. “I’m scared!” she shouted. I walked quickly toward her and saw a healthy male — with pink buttocks — circling her. He looked at me as if to say, “What is she screaming about? My buttocks aren’t blushing. I’m just hungry.”
Soon, we were surrounded by monkeys. They were swinging through trees, dropping into a lake beside the road, then emerging on our side, where they shot from the water to swing through more trees. They swam like dogs — not gracefully, but well. When they came out of the water, they blocked our path. They sat on the flagstones in meditative protest over not being fed. I recalled that the sign at the entrance said not to feed the creatures; they were known to attack.
Luckily, we were carrying no nuts — nuts would have driven them crazy. I’d read in a guidebook that some unwary travelers had been attacked — and injured — over a bag of nuts. We had just the banana, and I was hanging onto it at the risk of my life.
We approached the mothers with children. They seemed fairly sane. They were just walking around — the smaller one clinging to the underside of the larger one, the smaller one’s face mirroring the features of the larger one’s — in a quiet hunt for food. Sometimes they paused to sit and pick nits from each other’s fur.
We walked along the monkey road as the primates passed watchfully in the opposite direction. We didn’t run, and they didn’t run, either. We walked past one another calmly — they on four limbs, we on two. They were less threatening that way, walking on their feet and hands. If they didn’t stand up, they couldn’t grab my butter knife and use it against me.
As we waited for the bus that would take us out of the park, we were alone with the macaques. There were no services, no concessions, just a footbridge over the highway and a pull-off area for the bus. The monkeys joined us. Dozens of them occupied the footbridge and balanced on the railings. They sat on the steps leading down to the highway. One of them pulled a weed from the ground with its hand and ate the root. Another flicked at a cricket on the pavement with its fingers, playing with the snack. Still another combed the fur of its offspring, looking for edible parasites.
A Chinese woman showed up and fed some of the creatures. She had something in a bag that she rationed out. When the monkeys came too close, she pointed at them and hissed some words. They turned and ran a short distance, then turned and came back. I guessed they were planning to outflank her, then close in for a final assault on the food.
When the city bus arrived, the kids inside looked out the windows and pointed at the animals. The monkeys showed no interest in the passengers. We got onto the bus, found seats on the upper deck and rode away, in the direction of downtown Kowloon. I still had the banana; I took it out and gave it to our daughter.
Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the novels “Haywire,” “Tetched” and “Roughhouse.” He lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter.