Monkey June Stories

Story Ten

Once upon a time there was a young monkey named EE-U. EE-U was his name in Monkey Language, of course. His father and mother named him that when he said his first monkey word. Not many people know that baby monkeys are named after their first word—whatever a baby monkey says first, that’s their name for the rest of their life.

This can be embarrassing if a baby monkey accidentally says ‘stinky sun-rotted mango’ as their first word—or ‘fart’—but when that happens, sensible monkey parents just wait for the second (or third or fourth) word that their baby says, and go with that.

EE-U in Monkey Language means ‘wise one’. That is a very good name for a monkey to have. EE-U’s father’s name was U-EE, which means ‘one who loves mangoes’. His mother’s name was Ree-EE, which means ‘adventurous one’.

Those are all very admired monkey names, but this family of monkeys also had English names. They didn’t use them among themselves, of course, but they knew a human girl who used them. U-EE’s English name was ‘Mango Monkey’. He had been given that name by the people of the island where they lived. Ree-EE’s English name was ‘Beautiful’. She had been given that name by the human girl they knew. Ree-EE had no idea what ‘beautiful’ meant, but she loved the sound of it.

EE-U’s English name was ‘Bunky’. The human girl had called him that the first time she met him. She had said that her favorite story was about a monkey named ‘Bunky’.

EE-U was a very young monkey, and if you saw him you’d probably say that he was the cutest monkey you had ever laid eyes on. He was a very curious and adventurous little guy. His parents constantly had to remind him that he was not allowed to leave their secret underground home by himself.

Since he was indoors so much, he had explored every corner of their home. He had been in every room many times. In one of the rooms he kept a collection of strange human items he had found in his explorations. EE-U was fascinated by human items. He always asked his father to tell him what they were, but his father didn’t always know.

His father knew what a ‘flashlight’ was, because he had a lot of those. He also had a large pile of things called ‘batteries’ that went in the flashlights. EE-U was not allowed to touch them or chew on them.

EE-U found a small metal branch once with four tiny branches on one end. His father didn’t know what it was called, but he told EE-U that humans used them to stab food and move it into their mouths. EE-U didn’t understand why humans needed a pointy branch to put food into their mouths. They had hands; why not just grab the food and eat it? EE-U tried stabbing a coconut with one of the metal branches and it didn’t do anything. EE-U thought humans might be crazy. They did a lot of things that didn’t make sense.

EE-U found other metal things that were round, flat, and very heavy. They were shiny and golden-yellow like the sun, so EE-U called them UH-UH, which means ‘sun-sun’ in Monkey Language—a sun that’s smaller than the real sun. His father had no idea what humans did with them, but they were very pretty.

EE-U was tired of exploring their home, though. He wanted to explore other places—like the forest. One morning, after exploring the same old rooms for the millionth time, he found himself at the bottom of the old wooden stairs that led up to the forest. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to just peek outside a little, he thought. He climbed the old wooden stairs…

EE-U had never been outside by himself before. It was a little scary, but the sunlight felt good on his fur, and that made him feel brave. He walked out into the forest a bit. Some large jungle birds made squawking screechy sounds when he startled them. They looked big enough to pick up a small monkey with their claws and fly away. He stayed away from them.

He thought about turning back to play in the safe, dark, wooden rooms below ground. But the sunshine and the interesting sounds of the forest made him curious to discover more. Cautiously, he went farther and farther away from the tree-door and deeper into the forest.

As he explored he found some very strange things. One of the strangest was a big, dark, gooey puddle. It did not look like any water EE-U had ever seen. He touched the mysterious puddle and looked at his fingers. They were covered in dark, gooey stuff that stuck to his fur. He thought it might be fun to jump into the big, dark, gooey puddle and splash around. He decided not to. He didn’t want to have to tell his parents how his fur had gotten so messy.

He used a leaf to wipe the goo off of his fingers and kept exploring.

Soon he came to a roaring river. An old log had fallen across the river. EE-U jumped right up onto the log and scampered across to the other side. This would have been difficult and dangerous for a human, but logs were no trouble for monkeys. Their grippy feet were perfect for logs and trees.

On the other side of the roaring river, EE-U realized that he was getting very far away from home. He decided to go back, but just then, a beautiful butterfly flew past his nose. He chased it, completely forgetting his thoughts about going home.

When the butterfly flew higher, EE-U climbed a tree and followed it through the treetops. When the butterfly flew lower, EE-U dropped to the ground and followed it among the plants and rocks and fallen logs on the forest floor.

After following the butterfly for a while, EE-U stepped out of the forest and found himself on a sandy beach! He had never seen the ocean before! He forgot all about the butterfly. He ran up and down the shore kicking at ocean water and sand, hooting and screeching and having the most fun he had ever had in his life.

There were some huge logs lying on the beach and sticking out into the water. EE-U jumped up onto them and ran back and forth. He loved how the cool ocean water sprayed up when waves hit the logs. He loved how the salty sea mist made his fur wet and tickled his nose.

He ran back and forth on the logs for a very long time. He eventually wore himself out and got very sleepy. He wished he was back home, where he liked to take his nap curled up near his mother. He was too tired to go home, though. He lay down on the logs. With the sound of the waves all around him and the water lifting the logs a little bit every time a wave came ashore, he felt like his mother was rocking him. He fell into a very deep sleep.

Back at their secret underground home, U-EE and Ree-EE wondered where little EE-U was hiding. They had checked all of his favorite hiding places and he hadn’t been in any of them.

They were starting to think that he might have gone outside by himself. They became very worried. They climbed the old wooden stairs and went out into the forest to look for him.

When EE-U woke up, the sun was high overhead. He looked around and noticed something strange—he couldn’t see the beach anymore. He couldn’t see trees, or sand, or land. There was nothing but ocean all around him!

The logs were still beneath him, but they were floating in the ocean now!

EE-U had never seen a ‘raft’ before, but that’s what those logs were. Someone had lashed some big logs together with vines and made a raft. They had left the raft on the shore, and a certain young monkey had found it, played on it, and gone to sleep on it. The waves had lifted the raft up and away from the shore and out to sea—with that young monkey still sleeping on it.

As the logs floated gently on the waves, EE-U wished very much that he had not wandered off to explore the world by himself.

Ree-EE and U-EE searched the forest all around their home. They found small monkey-footprints on the ground near the big, dark, gooey puddle that were definitely EE-U’s. They also found a leaf there with tiny monkey-finger marks on it in black goo. From there they went to the roaring river and found more of EE-U’s footprints. They were on the right track!

Soon they found the beach where EE-U had run and played in the sand. They saw odd marks on the shore—like someone had pushed a large wooden raft out into the water—but they didn’t think that could have anything to do with a very small monkey like EE-U.

Their search seemed to have reached a dead end.

EE-U saw some land! And his logs were headed right for it!

Before long, the waves pushed the logs up onto the shore. EE-U jumped off of the logs. He hoped that he was home again, but this place did not look like home.

Instead of sand, this beach was all mud and rocks and smelled strange. The trees didn’t look the trees of his forest. He tried to climb one to get a better look around—but he couldn’t climb it. The trunk of the tree was very sticky and the tree had pointy spikes on it instead of leaves.

He ran around looking for normal trees but couldn’t find any. He ran down the shore trying to find anything at all that was normal-looking. After running for a few minutes, he finally saw something interesting on the beach! He ran over to see what it was. It was a bunch of logs tied together like the ones he had been on! And there were tiny footprints in the mud near the logs! There must be another monkey nearby!

Then EE-U realized what he was looking at. Those were his own logs, and those were his own footprints. He was on a very strange beach that went all the way around itself and came back to the same spot.

You’ve probably figured out that EE-U was on a small island, but he had never seen an island before, and he had no idea why a beach would come back around to the same spot like that.

Another thing EE-U didn’t know was that the island he was on was called ‘Monkey Island’. You might think that would be the perfect island for a young monkey to find, but it was actually the worst island for a monkey to find. Monkey Island is legendary among monkeys. It’s an island that monkeys once lived on, but they abandoned it years ago—mainly because it was too small for a lot of monkeys to live on, but also because of…the Curse of Monkey Island.

EE-U was too young to know about the curse, though. To him this was just a strange place with a strange rocky beach. He wondered what he should do next. Should he go into the sticky trees and try to find out more about this confusing place? Or should he just sit on his logs and think for a while?

Which do you think he did?

He decided to sit on his logs and think.

While he was sitting and thinking, the waves suddenly got stronger and lifted his logs up off of the beach! The logs whooshed out over the waves again! What terrible luck! EE-U thought about trying to jump back onto the rocky beach, but he was too afraid to try it. He didn’t know what ‘swimming’ was, and the logs were already too far out for a very small monkey to jump.

Soon he was out to sea again, with no land in sight.

Ree-EE saw something out on the ocean! She jumped and screeched. U-EE came running. He had been climbing around in the trees near the beach hoping that he might find EE-U sleeping in one of the trees.

Ree-EE pointed out over the water, and U-EE saw it too! It looked like a raft made of logs with…a little monkey on it!

The raft got closer and closer, and EE-U’s parents got more and more excited. Soon EE-U was excited too! He could see who was waiting for him on the beach! When the logs slid up onto the sand, all three monkeys ran and hugged each other. For a long time they did nothing but jump and hug and make happy monkey noises.

Then the three of them made their way back to their secret underground home—where they had a wonderful feast of mangoes and bananas to celebrate EE-U’s safe return.

I can’t tell you exactly what EE-U told his parents that night about his adventures, because you don’t speak Monkey Language and none of it would make any sense to you. I will say that he promised he would never wander off by himself again.

When his parents heard about the strange place EE-U had been to, though, they grew very quiet and serious. They couldn’t believe it. Had EE-U truly been to Monkey Island? It seemed impossible! Monkey legends said that the Curse of Monkey Island made it impossible for any monkey to survive there. No monkey had ever even tried to return to Monkey Island.

But now apparently one monkey had been there! EE-U told his parents it had been a very boring place, though. He said he never wanted to go there again.

His parents told him that was good, and then a very, very, very tired little monkey curled up next to his mother and fell asleep.