Monkey Business (12 page)

After an hour of trailing after the stripy tiger bus and listening to the soft, almost sleep-making, tones of Kitty Bumble explaining the individual habits of every animal on the planet, Felix
at last spotted a sign that told him they had arrived at the part he had been waiting for.

‘MONKEYS!’ he yelled.

Flo screeched in delight and Dad quickly turned up the volume on the CD player to cover up the noise. Kitty Bumble’s smiley voice warned them that the monkeys were ‘
. . . quite
playful and liable to climb on to your vehicle. Do not be alarmed – as long as you keep your doors and windows shut at all times you will be perfectly safe. If at any time you are anxious and
require the assistance of a keeper, simply sound your horn and someone will be with you immediately. Please remember to stay inside your vehicle, and be advised that Shortfleet accepts no
responsibility for damage to your belongings. Have a great visit in the monkey enclosure!
’

Dad let the car slow down a bit. Mum glanced at him questioningly.

‘What’s the matter?’ Felix asked, sensing the tension.

‘Erm,’ said Dad quietly, ‘I’m not sure I want to go in there after all. What if the monkeys do damage the car? I’ve heard awful stories about people losing their
wing mirrors and windscreen wipers.’

Flo gasped and Felix felt a shiver run down his spine.

‘Oh, come on, Ian, this car is hardly our pride and joy. We’ll have a riot on our hands if we don’t go in,’ Mum added, glancing over her shoulder at the back seat.

‘It will be OK, Mr Stowe,’ added Flo with complete certainty. ‘I have seen this part of the park on that utterly brilliant programme called
Safari Park Live
, and they
absolutely definitely never show monkeys destroying cars.’

‘Well, they wouldn’t, would they?’ Dad grumbled.

But Mum shot him one of her looks, and so he had to drive on, gritting his teeth so hard that Felix noticed the veins in his jaw throbbing in a freaky kind of way. He also noticed his dad press
the window lock so that only he could open the windows.

Zed laughed. ‘Maybe the monkeys are trying to tell us something, y’know?’

‘No, Clive,’ said Mum. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, like, maybe monkeys have already worked out that cars are bad for the environment and they are trying to tell the guys here that by jumping all over them?’

‘Clive,’ said Mum, ‘shut up.’

‘Only if you stop calling me Clive, sis,’ Zed said, raising one eyebrow and sitting back in his seat.

Flo took advantage of the boring grown-up-style argument going on to lean in to Felix and loudly whisper, ‘I’ll give the signal.’

Felix frowned hard at Flo and mouthed, ‘NO! I’m giving the signal!’

‘What are you two up to
now
?’ Mum asked irritably. ‘Just sit still. We’re going into the enclosure now – look, the gates are opening. And listen to the CD,
can’t you? That “extremely intelligent” Kitty woman is going to tell us all the fascinating facts she knows about the fascinating monkeys and all their fascinating monkey
habits,’ she added in a tone of voice that suggested she didn’t really mean what she was saying.

‘Can I have a banana?’ Felix asked his uncle.

‘Yes, me too,’ Flo added, staring at Felix in a bit of an Obvious Way. ‘I’m utterly starving.’

‘Here you are. Not going to feed them to the monkeys, I hope!’ Zed said, laughing.

Flo shook her head violently. ‘Absolutely not. What a stupid idea,’ she said. Felix quickly stuffed a piece of banana into his mouth to prove a point.

Dad drove the car cautiously through the gates which were manned by cheery-looking keepers in T-shirts bearing the red-and-white Shortfleet logo. Flo bounced up and down and waved at the
keepers. Felix would normally have joined in, but he was starting to feel distinctly nervous about his plan. Especially now Dad had put the window lock on. Felix stared at the lock and wondered how
he was going to be able to unlock it. And how would he be able to tell Flo what to do quickly enough to stop Mum or Dad spoiling things? He fiddled with a bag of peanuts and clutched a banana a bit
too hard.
SQUELCH!
It sort of popped and a glob of it squidged out on to his jeans. He felt quite hot and itchy and suddenly wished Dad would put his foot down after all about not going into
the monkey reserve. Maybe he should tell Dad that he was worried about the monkeys destroying the car as well? Maybe he should say he felt sick and needed to get out of the car? Maybe he should
scream for help—

‘They are funny, aren’t they? Those two look like they’re playing tag!’ said Dad, pointing to a cute, soft monkey who was repeatedly tapping his friend on the shoulder
and then running off at top speed before he could be caught.

‘Oh man, look at the car in front!’ Zed said. ‘They’re all over the roof! And they’re grooming each other! I just love it when they scratch themselves.’ He
chuckled. ‘Look at their long arms. They crack me up. They are so funny!’

‘You’ve gone very quiet, Felix. Don’t you like them?’ Mum asked, turning round.

Felix shrugged and tried to look Cool and Calm.

‘Phew, am I glad our car doesn’t have a roof-rack or anything,’ Dad said. ‘See that caravan up in front – the one with the orange canoes on it? The monkeys are
having a ball up there.’

Felix peered through the windscreen to where Dad was pointing. The monkeys certainly were having a ball – dancing in and out of the canoes, ripping bits off them. And nibbling them! What
on earth could be tasty about a canoe, Felix wondered idly. Come to that, why would someone want to take canoes into a safari park, anyway? Forget the monkeys, it was people that were odd, Felix
decided.

The monkeys very quickly made up their minds that there actually wasn’t much to be recommended about the flavour of orange plastic, and they hopped out and started ripping bits of rubber
from around the windows of the caravan instead.

‘My goodness,’ said Mum in horror. ‘Are they actually
eating
that?’

But before anyone could agree or disagree: ‘Oh look, Felix. Look!’ Flo cried, grabbing on to his sleeve and pulling him towards her side of the car. ‘There are BABIES! We must
get the babies.’

The minute Flo said the word ‘babies’, lots of things happened at once. Afterwards Felix could not think what had happened first and all the events got jumbled up into his mind in a
big panicky tangle. He knew that he had stopped worrying and started to giggle when he saw a crowd of monkeys jabbering and gesturing to each other and running towards his dad’s car. And Zed
had definitely laughed too and said, ‘Man, those apes are going, like, APE!’ And he was pretty sure that it was while Dad was jamming on the brakes and the monkeys were cackling and
pinging the windscreen wipers at each other and Mum was screaming and flinging her arms around her face, that Flo chose her moment to quietly reach forward to the window controls in the arm rest on
Dad’s door and press all the buttons at once.

What impressed Felix, and what he was sure he would never forget, was the speed at which the monkeys took over. His plan had not needed so much Careful Forethought after all. He had assumed that
the monkeys would be shy of humans and that they would need Coaxing and Tempting to convince them to get into the car. But they hadn’t needed anything at all in the way of encouragement. It
had not taken the smallest shake of a bag of peanuts or the tiniest wave of a banana skin to entice them – the opening of the car windows had been invitation enough.

Felix had the impression that up until that point events had happened in slow motion with the sound turned off. He was sure he was actually standing outside it all, and watching it like a person
on the street watching a telly screen in a shop window.

But the instant the monkeys started pouring into the car, the volume went up full blast and the action sped up to full throttle.

‘Quick, Felix, grab one!’

‘I can’t! They’re too fast and – OW! – scratchy!’

‘WHO OPENED THE WINDOWS?’

‘
Monkeys such as these tend to live in family groups and enjoy grooming—
’

‘GET THEM OFF ME!’

‘Chill, guys. Remember what Kitty Bumble said—’

‘But we have STAYED IN THE VEER-KUL!’

‘AAAIIIEEE! THEY’RE PULLING MY HAIR!’

The car was full of monkeys: big ones, small ones, fat ones, baby ones, smelly ones – actually they were all smelly.

‘SOUND THE HORN – QUICK!’

It was Mum that said that, Felix was pretty sure. It was difficult to tell, though, as all he could see were monkeys’ tails and monkeys’ teeth, monkeys’ hands and
monkeys’ bottoms. So many monkeys’ bottoms. And the noise. Oh, the noise. It was worse than Felix’s worst ever nightmare about being eaten alive by fire-breathing, roaring piranha
fish.

‘THE HORN, IAN – THE HORN!’

Yup, that was definitely Mum, thought Felix, as he screwed his eyes tight shut and tried in vain to get the car seat to swallow him up and take him away from there.

PAAAARRRRRP!

The horn sounded, Flo screamed an ear-splittingly horrific scream and the monkeys joined in.

This was what it must be like being a soldier right in the middle of a horrendous battle zone, Felix thought. If not, facing Mum (if he ever got out of there alive) would most certainly be.

The next noise Felix heard was a sound like an ambulance or an air-raid siren. He had seen a film once about evacuees in the Second World War, so he knew what an air-raid siren sounded like.
Maybe this
was
a war zone. And who was that screaming?

It took Felix a couple of seconds to realize that it was his own scream he could hear.

His door was wrenched open and hands grabbed at the monkeys skittering around inside the car. Seeing as one of them was connected to Felix’s hair, that made him scream quite a lot louder.
He found himself wondering if the monkeys had got hold of Flo’s hair and hoped very much that they had not. Thank goodness Dad was mostly bald apart from those tufty bits around his ears. If
this was how mean monkeys could be, Felix found himself thinking he had quite firmly made up his mind that he did not actually want a monkey as a pet any more. Why did they look so cute if they
were really so horrible? Colin was not this bad, even on a Bad Day. In fact, even Merv was nicer than this lot.

‘Stay calm!’ a voice ordered. ‘The more noise you make, the more excitable the monkeys will be.’

‘
Stay calm?
’ That was Mum, Felix told himself. At least she was still alive. Felix was staring hard at his knees as someone prised a monkey from his head so he couldn’t
see what was going on around him. ‘Stay CALM, did you say? I am being scalped alive by fifty-six million apes and you tell me to STAY CALM!!!’

‘Yes, madam,’ came the reply.

Gradually the chattering and shrieking and pulling and scratching subsided and Felix was able to raise his head from his knees and look up to see some people dressed in dark green tops and
army-type trousers putting monkeys into cages and helping Felix’s mum and dad and Zed and Flo out of the car.

The army had come to rescue them!

The Stowes and Zed and Flo were ushered into a zebra-striped minibus and the caged monkeys were put into a white van.

‘Wh-where are you taking us?’ Felix shakily asked.

‘We are the keepers who work in the monkey enclosure,’ said one of the green-clad people. Oh, so not the army then, Felix thought. He was glad he had not said anything about the army
or soldiers or anything. That would have been embarrassing.

‘We’ll take you to First Aid and then there’s someone who needs a word with you. We have to find out exactly what happened so we can make a report,’ another keeper said
gruffly. He was a very tall, thickset scary-looking man. A bit like a huge monkey himself, actually, Felix thought. Or a gorilla. In spite of his fear and confusion, a slither of a giggle slipped
out.

‘I don’t know what you are laughing at,’ Mum said, her voice encased in a thick layer of ice, ‘but if I were you I’d stop right now.’

‘Oh, cool it, Marge,’ said Zed. ‘The boy’s stressed. He’s been through enough already.’

‘Don’t you “cool it, Marge” me!’ Mum snapped, her eyes glinting dangerously. ‘This is all your fault,
Clive
. If you hadn’t taken him on all those
wildlife-watching expeditions of yours, and if you hadn’t encouraged Felix to keep a fully fledged menagerie in his bedroom, and if you hadn’t adopted him an orang-utan, then perhaps we
would not be on our way to face the music at the head office of Shortfleet Safari Park with a head full of fleas and goodness knows what else!’

Everyone was staring at Mum with their eyes wide open in a terrified expression, and Felix was sure he had stopped breathing. Even Flo was completely speechless for the first time in her life.
Her face had gone quite white with fright.

Felix was worried that perhaps Mum was about to hit Uncle Zed. The driver of the minibus called out cheerily over his shoulder: ‘Sounds like you’ve got a regular David Attenborough
in the family.’

‘David who?’ Felix asked, feeling braver at the tone in the man’s voice.

‘David Attenborough. He’s a famous naturalist. You should watch some of his wildlife films. He did a brilliant series about creatures who live in the sea called
The Blue
Planet
.’

‘Really?’ Felix sat up straight, perking up. He leaned towards the driver. ‘Can you get it on DVD?’

‘Yeah, mate. I think you can get hold of it at—’ The man broke off when he caught sight of Mum.

‘Do you know,’ Mum said slowly and menacingly, ‘I don’t think at this moment in time that we are very interested in that particular DVD, thank you very much.’

Felix was going to protest, but the sight of Mum with her hair ruffled and her make-up smudged in a clowny fashion and her clothes a bit ripped and that Extremely Dangerous Glint in her eye sort
of made him stop and think. He had a sinking feeling that Mum would be keeping a very Tight Rein on his animal-based activities from now on.

The monkeys had apparently gone to First Aid too. Mum mumbled something about them not needing any medical attention, as they had seemed ‘very much in tip-top condition’. But the
keepers were worried that the monkeys might have injured themselves while they were charging around.