One day on my rounds as a zookeeper, the day began in a strange way. I loved my animals as pets. I kept my keys on a ring in my shirt pocket and tied on a wire.

Our animals laughed and pointed south. I strolled my natural way and watched each enclosure until I came to the far end of the zoo.

The lion usually climbed onto a rock and slept, but today he sat on a tree branch beside the rock. It’s a hot day, I thought.

Our chimpanzee, played her drum to the beat of a war song. Bum bum bum…bum bum bum. Okay that’s interesting.

Our cheetah laid on his back with a smirk on his face. He must be hungry.

There are two black and white colobus monkeys. One hid on the ground and the other hung upside down from a wire just outside the enclosure. The wire is electric so we’ll have to check on that.

What is going on today I thought. I called for help by dialing 444 which is our alert number. “Hello, the Colobus monkey is hanging outside its enclosure on a wire. Please send help.”

Around the corner in a flash came Tommy with a ladder. I stood the ladder next to the enclosure while Tommy went to check the electric fence breaker to see if it was turned off. Sure enough the breaker was flipped off. Tommy climbed the ladder and sweet talked the monkey to jump on him with some leaves from the tree. Tommy fed the monkeys twice a day so they had a relationship. Tommy carried the monkey inside the enclosure then I flipped the breaker switch on.

“Phew that was close!”said Tommy.

When I looked down my keys disappeared. While we were rescuing the monkey from the wire, the other monkey grabbed my keys or the keys got unhinged from my ring.

“I’ll go grab them from the other monkey; see they’re in the shrubs,.“ said Tommy.

“Wow this has been a crazy day of rounds,” I said. “Thank you for your help.”

“It’s a pleasure. These monkeys are my friends.”